Schneider Shorts 13.09.2024 – The press’ need to scandalize
Schneider Shorts 13.09.2024 - obituary for an editor, new Swiss rules for authorship, Top Italian Scientist illicitly loses her first paper, an innocent Spanish rector faces retractions, dishonest dishonesty researcher loses lawsuit, with a scandalized German papermiller, concerns and reservations, and finally, with Nazis welcomed by society journal.
Schneider Shorts of 13 September 2024 – obituary for an editor, new Swiss rules for authorship, Top Italian Scientist illicitly loses her first paper, an innocent Spanish rector faces retractions, dishonest dishonesty researcher loses lawsuit, with a scandalized German papermiller, concerns and reservations, and finally, with Nazis welcomed by society journal.
The US oncologist Charis Eng is dead. She was since 2023 the Editor-in-Chief of the fraud-infested journal Human Molecular Genetics, succeeding the previous desastrous EiC, Dame Kay Davies. Read about Davies’s rule here:
This is the second part of the Bologna whistleblower account. As the university was burying their own misconduct findings, Oxford University Press and their ignoble editor were busy punishing and gaslighting the whistleblower.
“Charis Eng, MD, PhD, was the Chair and founding Director of the Genomic Medicine Institute of Cleveland Clinic, founding Director and attending clinical cancer geneticist of the institute’s clinical component, the Center for Personalized Genetic Healthcare, and Professor and Vice Chairman of the Department of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Charis Eng passed away on August 13, 2024
She contributed to the oncology community as Professor of Molecular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and was a member of Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Center and of the CASE Comprehensive Cancer Center.
More recently, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (previously known as Institute of Medicine) of the US National Academies of Sciences for her achievements and leadership in genetics- and genomics-based research and personalized healthcare.”
Normally causing animals such suffering by overgrown tumours is very forbidden in Germany, but Christoph Plass is Division Head at German cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, and such elites are above the rules. Especially since Plass published (and retracted) fake science with a certain Samson T Jacob, who was found guilty of research fraud and kicked out by Ohio State University.
You may remember Damien Weber, medical director of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Zürich, Switzerland. According to a whistleblower complaint, Weber forced every junior researcher at PSI to include him as coauthor, while his fellow PSI leaders and the Ombudsman made sure nobody deviated from this rule. It was never a limitation that the radiation oncologist Weber has little understanding of particle physics – he not only put his name on those papers, but also added and removed co-authors as he saw fit. Read here:
The problem was that there are very clearly defined rules on authorships, especially for medical researchers, and those are also part of the research integrity guidelines of the University of Zürich with which PSI is affiliated.
But now, Weber and his institute found a solution. Read this letter he sent out to everyone at PSI on 17 June 2024.
Nobody at PSI is allowed to publish anything without Weber’s approval
Weber’s approval qualifies him for co-authorship
It is a Catch-22, yes. That’s how it works in detail.
“the co-authorship will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis for any paper written by staff/students involved in research projects at CPT. The authority to grant permission to publish is the PSI. […]
Co-authorship will apply to: 1) Those writing the research plan and grant application if applicable and/or 2) Those reviewing critically the study methodology/design of the work and/or 3) Those substantially contributing to the acquisition and analyses of data and/or 4) Those participating at the critical review of the intermediate results/interpreting thedata (‘research meetings’) and/or 5) Those writing the abstract for congress submission/ manuscript for publication and/or 6) Those who have agreed on the journal to which the article will be submitted and/or MUST: Those reviewing the abstract / the draft manuscript AND MUST: Those approving the final version of the abstract/manuscript As a general guidance to define scientific contribution, if an individual fulfils 3 of the first 6 criteria and the last two ones, she/he can qualify as a co-author.”
As you see, it justifies a co-authorship when Weber approves and “critically reviews” your manuscript and tells you which journal you can send it to.
Naturally, neither Weber nor his fellow PSI leaders Oliver Treuthardt, Thierry Strässle, Tony Lomax, Christian Rüegg or the Ombudsman Roland Horisberger replied to my request for comment on this bizarre letter. They also didn’t comment on this strange order which Weber issued regarding a conference abstract for Particle Therapy Co-Operative Group, in his email from 22 December 2022:
“You should remove Barbara as she will leave CPT and does need this abstract for professional reasons and add Stefan“
What did Barbara do to displease Weber to deserve being kicked off and her work attributed to some Stefan?
The press’s need to scandalize
Meet a German superstar: Hidayat Hussain, an expert in medicinal plant pharmacology and everything else.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Dr Hussain is since 2018 Guest Professor at Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB) in Halle, Germany.
Only that this is only partially true. Hussain indeed used to be employed at IPB since 2018 on a Humboldt-Fellowship as a group leader in the department of Ludger Wessjohann, who is one of IPB directors. But Hussain doesn’t work there anymore. Also his main affiliation as associate professor at the University of Nizwa in Oman ended at 2018. Hussain informs us on his LinkedIn:
“To date he has authored and coauthored over 340 international publications with cumulative impact factor of more than 1250 […] He has also more than 9000 citations with 46 h-index and over 180 i10-index. According to the Stanford University database, his name is included in the top 2% of the most-cited scientists for 2020-2023.”
Gosh, why did Germany let such genius go? Maybe they knew something.
My sleuthing colleague stumbled over Hussain while flagging this paper:
Thallarcha lechrioleuca: “authors simulateed black “pattern” and then produced two more by adding peaks at desirable positions.”“The same XPS figure showing 3 spectra with identical noise (but with some horizontal shift) was published in 3 journals, every time for different type of materials. Sometimes with increase of intensity for peak of interest.” (Aslam et al 2023a, Aslam et al 2023b ) “Three different composite materials were described using nearly the same figures with only some change of labels. All “data” are the same” (Aslam et al 2023a, Aslam et al 2023b )
“Three XPS spectra with unexpectedly similar noise but shifted horizontally to make some difference.”
“Two papers about differently functionalized nanodimanods present the same image.”
A co-author of all these papers, some Muhammad Khan (last employed in China), explained on PubPeer:
“I said many times please study the whole paper completely then you will be able to raise the question. Otherwise you will not get anything related to real science or scientific disscusson“
We are here to study the papers of Hussain and what made him so attractive for German research institutions. In fact, much of his career Hussain spent under the tutelage of the German professor Karsten Krohn, who was a professor at the University of Paderborn and died in 2013. But for Hussain, Krohn will live forever, and so made him the only non-Pakistani coauthor of his paper Malik et al 2020, pretending that Krohn was still alive and working in Paderborn.
Hussain’s focus is ethnopharmacology, often combined with nanoparticles. And so he advanced German science with studies like the following:
The last author Hesham El-Seedi was also the only editor of that MDPI Special Issue which contains this only paper, imagine how tough the peer review must have been. He also has an impressive PubPeer record of fake stuff. Like this:
Betteridge Law applies. But of course Hussain is an expert in virology, see Khan et al 2022, “Omicron: A new face of COVID‐19 pandemic”. He is also an expert in all of medicine:
Raza et al 2019, “Role of Major Caspases in Neurodegenerative Diseases“
Majid et al 2022 “Emergence of resistance against direct acting antivirals in chronic HCV patients: A real-world study” (in Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences which was discontinued in 2024 for excessive papermilling)
Hussain et al 2013, “Prevalence and management of anemia and impact of treatment burden on health-related quality of life in CKD and dialysis patients”
Actually, Hussain is expert for everything! Observe what he published on:
Bibi et al 2022, “Implication and evaluations of indoor soot particles from domestic fuel energy sources using characterization techniques in northern Pakistan“
Hussain et al 2021 “Effect of Graphene Oxide and Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes on the Structure and Properties of Pitch Derived Carbon Foam Composites” (with Amjad Hussain, coauthor on the fraudulent papers above)
Shamraiz et al 2018, “Gold nanotubes and nanorings: promising candidates for multidisciplinary fields”
Shamraiz et al 2019, “α-glucosidase inhibition (antidiabetic) of rubidium doped indium sulfide nanomaterials”
One co-author of the last study, Iftikhar Ali, is a papermilling fraudster with a PubPeer record which proves a direct association with none other but Abhijit Dey, who in turn runs a private papermill of his own, read here:
Which brings us to this paper by Dey and a bunch of fellow fraudsters in an MDPI special issue “Natural Products as Potential Sources of Antidiabetic Compounds“, edited solely by Hussain:
Elisabeth Bik: “Concern about Figure 3. Blue boxes: Panels B and H appear to be identical, while panel F appears to correspond to B/H as well.”
“remarkable similarity between the results of the alpha-Amylase inhibition assay of the Solanum indicum fruit with that of Croton bonplandianum leaf extract, published by three different authors in 2013 in the Asian Journal of Pharmaceutical and Clinical Research (G. Keerthana et al.).”
Elisabeth Bik found further evidence of papermilling:
“…the animal experiments appear to have been performed at the College of Veterinary & Animal Sciences in India, affiliated with the Maharastra Animal & Fishery Sciences University. None of the authors, however, works there. The 11 authors of this paper work at a remarkable 15 different affiliations, but none of them is the college where the animal work was performed.”
But then again, what does Bik know, she is not a Humboldt professor at a Leibniz Institute in Germany. We must trust the expertise of the editor Professor Hussain here!
Now you must see one very special MDPI Special Issue edited by Hussain. It is titled:
A traditional German Festschrift, where colleagues and admirers of Prof Wessjohann, Hussain’s generous host at IPB, were invited to submit their studies.
There is an Editorial by Hussain, titled “Prof. Ludger Wessjohann: A Lifelong Career Dedicated to a Remarkable Service in “Natural Products Sciences”, papers by German colleagues (including from IPB), and this important contribution:
Ahh, how nice to see all those papermilling fraudsters Mehrdad Hashemi, Kiavash Hushmandi , Milad Ashrafizadeh , Sepideh Mirzaei , Ali Zarrabi and Gautam Sethi again. You can read about them in April 2024 Shorts.
I guess it is more or less clear that Hussain is not just a bum-kisser, but also a papermilling phony. How did he become a Humboldt professor at Leibniz institute then? Questions which only his host Wessjohann could answer. The IPB director told me:
“Mr. Hussain is gone from IPB for a long time and I will ask him to update his linked-in profile.”
But I shouldn’t have quoted, since Wessjohann forbade me to quote from his email, because:
“This contradicts the press’s need to scandalize, but of course the same duty of care that rightly applies to scientists in their work must apply in such cases.“
Yes, it is me who is scandalous. Not scientists like Hussain or those papermill crooks invited to Wessjohann’s 60th birthday.
Anyway. The “Theme Issue Honoring Prof. Dr. Ludger Wessjohann’s 60th Birthday” is from 2021. Hussain must still have been at IPB at that time, and indeed he published with Wessjohann at that time, see Agzamova et al 2021. The IPB director refused to specify what “gone for a long time” means in his understanding of time.
True, Hussain’s email account at IPB is defunct. But the institute continues listing his recent papers published under their affiliation, as if Hussain never left (archived version here). There are Hussain’s papers with IPB affiliation from 2024 which the institute should better be ashamed of, rather than flaunt. For example, Eshboyev et al 2024 has several authors from Moscow and Vladivostok, never mind that the Leibniz Association froze its collaborations with russia in 2022.
FIgure 3: a micrograph is reused from a previous publication (Almagrami AA et al., 2014; PlosOne). The micrographs have similar experimental conditions, but one of the micrographs have been modified.
Figure 4A, D: two micrographs have been reused from a two previous publications: 4A: taken from Al-Henhena N et al., 2014; PlosOne. The image is rotated and has different exp. condition. 4D: taken from Al-Henhena N et al., 2015; Sci Rep. The image has different exp. condition.
Figure 5C,D: a micrograph has been duplicated and presented with different experimental conditions.”
And some more by Hussain’s buddy, with much more on PubPeer (flagged by Indigofera tanganyikensis):
Wessjohann remained silent when confronted with Hussain’s trash listed by IPB as the institute’s own achievements.
Well, dear Prof Wessjohann, you may have lost Hussain, but why not recruiting El-Seedi instead, as another Humboldt Professor?
Coherent and well-founded
The Spanish computer engineering professor Juan Manuel Corchado was exposed as papermiller, citation scammer and scamference organiser during his campaign to become rector of the University of Salamanca (read original reporting in El Pais and May 2024 Shorts for summary). He won the elections being the only candidate, and now he continues bringing shame over his university.
The journalist Manuel Ansede reports again for El Pais on 9 September 2024 that Corchado was whitewashed in full (Google-translated):
“Two investigations into the current rector of the University of Salamanca have reached radically different conclusions. The publisher Springer Nature has initiated an apparently massive retraction of studies by Juan Manuel Corchado’s group, after detecting “problems” related to “inappropriate or unusual citations and undeclared conflicts of interest,”” […] The “independent” research commissioned by the University of Salamanca itself to the historian Salvador Rus Rufino maintains, however, that the quotes in the rector’s articles “are coherent and well-founded.””
Obviously Springer Nature decided not to listen to that independent historian:
“Springer Nature, alerted by the news in this newspaper, began an investigation at the end of May. Last Thursday, September 5, at least a dozen Corchado co-authors received messages from the publisher with the subject “Your study presented at the congress is going to be retracted.” In the email, the company warned: “We have identified problems in your article, after a broader investigation into a set of studies. Issues include, but are not limited to, questions about editorial handling, inappropriate or unusual citations, and undeclared conflicts of interest. After a thorough analysis, the person in charge of the series and the editor have decided to retract this study.” Co-authors have until September 19 to say whether or not they accept the retraction, a measure taken by publishers when they detect scientific misconduct. EL PAÍS is aware of at least 12 retracted studies, but there could be several dozen, given the volume of similar works.”
The magnificent Juan Manuel Corchado on his election as rector Photo: J.M. García (EFE)
And yes, of course, there are fascist politics involved, Rus Rufino works for the Franco-worshippers of the far-right xenophobic party Vox:
“On July 3, the Governing Council of the Salamancan institution, controlled by Corchado himself, elected Salvador Rus Rufino , a historian from the University of León who was in the pools, to be Minister of Culture of the Junta de Castilla y León at the proposal of Vox, […]
Rus Rufino’s report, to which EL PAÍS has had access, praises the rector. “The relevance of Dr. Juan M. Corchado’s research among his colleagues, assigned to the University of Salamanca, is very high in terms of volume of publications and high in terms of h-index, even when self-citations and co-author citations are excluded,” […]
Salvador Rus Rufino is an old acquaintance of Corchado. They have even given conferences together. On May 21, the historian suggested the existence of a conspiracy against the rector in his column in Abc. […] Barely a month after publishing this text, the Governing Council of the University of Salamanca considered that Rus Rufino was the best person to investigate the rector.”
We learn that Corchado even created fake sockpuppet accounts on ResearchGate to cite himself, and then blamed a conspiracy by former colleagues when caught. He also ordered his university repository technician to destroy evidence and delete around 200 fake papers which Corchado created for no other purpose but to provide citations to him. El Pais however found some external backups, available on Core.ac.uk.
The Confederation of Scientific Societies of Spain (COSCE) demands a new rectorship election, but Corchado has his university and the Vox fascists on his side.
Harvard treated Professor Gino differently
The cheating Harvard psychologist Francesca Gino lost her libel lawsuit against the sleuths of Data Colada who found fabrications in her research. As reminder, Gino used to be a celebrity scientist who earned huge money with books and talks on the topic of dishonesty. It was all dishonest though, Harvard found her guilty of research misconduct, ordered retractions of her papers and put her on a two-year unpaid leave.
The Chronicle of Higher Educationreported on 11 September 2024:
“A federal judge in Massachusetts has dismissed Francesca Gino’s claims against the trio of scholars who uncovered evidence of fraud in her research, ending a high-profile dispute that had unnerved the scientific community. […]
In August of last year, Gino filed a $25-million lawsuit in federal court against the university, the dean of Harvard Business School, and Uri Simonsohn, Leif Nelson, and Joseph Simmons — three business-school professors who blog together as Data Colada, and who had initially contacted Harvard over their concerns about four papers she co-authored. All four have been retracted. The findings of Harvard’s investigation were detailed in a 1,300-page report made public in court filings earlier this year. […] Outside researchers had worried that the case would silence whistleblowers and suppress scholarly criticism, and a GoFundMe for their legal defense raised more than $378,000.”
Also, Gino’s claims of being “defamed” by her employer Harvard University over the ordered retractions and suspension was rejected, but her lawsuit about the alleged breach of the employment contract will continue, because in 2021 the university “created a new “interim” policy for investigating research-misconduct allegations” which validity Gino disputes. In fact, Gino’s lawyer was actually right when he said:
“Today’s decision clearly demonstrates Harvard treated Professor Gino differently from other misconduct investigations and their own stated policies”
“not everyone in the research community accepts that the problem requires such attention; some believe it is overblown.” -Jeffrey Flier, emeritus dean of Harvard Medical School
“First, I spotted this artwork in October 2015 and reported it to the editors – who did not do anything noticeable for 4 years. So I posted it on @PubPeer in 2019.”
In March 2022, the senior coauthor Rodrigo López-Muñoz of the Austral University of Chile educated Bik:
“Indeed the blots seem very similar between them, but they are not the same band. The bands were cut because the original membrane contained the technical replicates. Following you can see the complete bands series. The bands presented in the manuscript corresponds to each condition described in the figure. Maybe it was a bad decision to cut the bands, but they are true.”
Bik eventually analysed the “raw data” provided by Lopez-Munoz:
“the ‘complete bands series’ provided by Dr. López-Muñoz in comment #2 appears to contain not only three occurrences of the band marked with red boxes, but also two occurrences of another band, highlighted with blue boxes.”
It seems even PLOS understood the raw data was even more fraudulent than the published figure. So they pretended it never happened, an Expression of Concern was published on 5 September 2024, after nine years of investigating (highlights mine):
“The corresponding author acknowledged that an error occurred during the preparation of this figure and stated that the original underlying images are no longer available. They stated that the underlying data for all other results remain available and can be provided on request.
They repeated the western blot experiment in Fig 2D and quantification in Fig 2E, and the results of this repeat experiment, underlying data, and revised protocol are provided with this notice in S1 and S2 Files.
There are discrepancies between the published results in Fig 2E and the repeat experiment, as COX-2 expression is lower in the Raw + LPS group than Raw + T. cruzi in the published graph, but higher than Raw + T. cruzi in the repeat experiment. Additionally, the expression of COX-2 in both groups is higher in the published graph compared to the repeat data (~5 and 10 fold difference for LPS and T. cruzi, respectively).
A member of the journal’s Editorial Board assessed these data and advised that the results of this repeat experiment support the article’s conclusions regarding the effect of T. cruzi infection on COX-2 expression in Raw cells, and that the method of density quantification is valid. They stated that results do not appear to be fully reproducible across replicas for COX-1, but did not express concern about this or the discrepancy between COX-2 expression in the published graph and repeat data.
Given the nature of the concerns, which cannot be fully resolved in the absence of the original underlying data, the PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases Editors issue this Expression of Concern.”
To sum up: Figure 2D is fake, its supplied raw data is even faker, the authors admitted it, their results are not reproducible even by themselves, but some nameless fellow cheater says this is how science is supposed to be done.
Lebensunwertes Wokeness
Look who published what in a society journal by the Scandinavian Psychological Associations, issued by Wiley:
“Many studies have found that conservatives show an advantage in mental health and happiness and various causes of this have been debated (e.g., religiousness, ideology, or genetics). […] We analyzed data from two large Finnish surveys of adults (Ns = 848 and 4,978) from Lahtinen (2024), that measured general anxiety and depression symptoms, as well as a new wokeness scale. Using differential item functioning tests, we found no evidence for measurement bias in these scales. The correlation between index scores of wokeness and mental health (internalizing) was 0.36, which increased to 0.41 when measurement error was removed. The association between wokeness and anxiety (r = 0.33, adjusted r = 0.37) was stronger than wokeness and depression (r = 0.20, adjusted r = 0.22).”
The study claims to prove that those affected by “wokeness” (defined as “leftism“, “liberalism“, atheism, vegetarianism, “concern for environmental issues“, and “non-standard gender identity and non-heterosexuality“), are mentally and genetically defective (presumably lebensunwert?), while the conservatives are smarter, healthier, sexier and genetically superior.
I wrote about these two authors, who are probably best described as Nazis, in this article:
In 2019, MDPI published a Special Issue “Beyond Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability”, one year later its owner Shu-Kun Lin expressed admiration for Trump and said “Black Lives Matter. White Lives Matter. All Lives Matter.”
As per Rational Wiki, the Danish “far-right eugenicist” Emil Kirkegaard is “a global-warming denier, anti-feminist, ableist, homophobe, Islamophobe, transphobe” who “promoted white supremacy“, and was one of the organisers of racist eugenics conferences with “Neo-Nazi links” at UCL in London. He is the current domain owner of the Nazi-pseudoscience journal Mankind Quarterly and publishes “racist, pseudoscientific bullshit masquerading as legitimate research” in his pseudojournals OpenPsych. Kirkegaard also suggested (in a comment section here) “it is a good idea to legalize child porn. Some studies show that the availability of porn has reduced rape rates” and went even further in a now deleted post from 2012: “a compromise is having sex with a sleeping child without them knowing it (so, using sleeping medicine). If they dont notice it is difficult to see how they cud be harmed, even if it is rape.”
The “anti-semite and white supremacist” Edward Dutton also hates Muslims (who he says have a “retarded IQ”) and disapproves of “interracial” marriages. He is a fellow of Richard Lynn’s Ulster Institute (Nazi pseudoscience), board member of Mankind Quarterly and a close associate of Kirkegaard and the wealthy Scottish aristocrat, racist and women-hater Michael Woodley of Menie, “a eugenicist and ecologist who first proposed the batshit-crazy spiteful mutant hypothesis“.
Kirkegaard’s and Dutton’s paper heavily cites their own Nazi dreck and that of Woodley of Menie.
The question is why was it published in a society journal. I contacted Wiley and the Editor-in-Chief Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair, professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim.
It is possible Kennair and Kirkegaard know each other. On the right are their separate papers, published in 2019 in the same issue of an APA journal, Kirkegaard’s is openly antisemitic (not that anyone minded).
Kennair ignored all my emails, refused to distance himself from Kirkegaard and Dutton and from the Nazi dreck which he chose to publish in his journal. But the editor apparently complained to Wiley that he is being harassed by a woke mob, since I received this message from the publisher:
“Dear Leonid Schneider, The article is currently under investigation by Wiley’s Research Integrity and Case Resolution department, and we politely but firmly request that you direct all correspondence regarding this article directly to researchintegrity@wiley.com.“
Also the Deputy Editor Jan Antfolk of Åbo Akademi University in Turku remaind silent. The relevant journal section editors, Annika Gunst of the same Finnish university, Torsten Martiny-Huenger of the Arctic University of Norway, Kristin Gustavson of University of Oslo, and Jonas Rennemo Vaag of Nord University, also in Norway, didn’t reply either.
In their world, I must be the bad guy. Not Kirkegaard, who is a valuable peer.
Comprehensive understanding of Marxism
The Elsevier journal Entertainment Computing publishes Chinese propaganda about the virtues of totalitarian indoctrination. I don’t know if it makes things better that those studies are papermilled:
Lu Chen Analysis of facial recognition attendance technology based on artificial intelligence algorithms in political course e-learning teachingEntertainment Computing (2025) doi: 10.1016/j.entcom.2024.100821
“In order to solve the attendance problem in online teaching of ideological and political courses in universities, this article adopts facial recognition attendance technology based on artificial intelligence algorithms.”
Lei Zhang , Hong Yu , TianMeng Xu Simulation of interaction E-learning mode in political courses based on virtual reality and digital entertainment environmentEntertainment Computing (2025) doi: 10.1016/j.entcom.2024.100857
“These courses not only provide students with a comprehensive understanding of Marxism, but also help them develop a correct world outlook, values, and ethics.”
Jingwen Dang Design of political classroom interaction system in social virtual reality entertainment environment based on convolutional neural networkEntertainment Computing (2025) doi: 10.1016/j.entcom.2024.100860
“Through communication, reminders, lectures, and other forms, timely guidance was provided to the classroom environment and atmosphere in the process of ideological and political education, in order to promote and guide students’ behavior. […] this article designs a political classroom AI intelligent system based on convolutional neural networks, and utilizes this system to leverage the advantages of political classrooms, cultivate learning habits, innovate classroom teaching, expand practical teaching, and turn political courses into courses that students like”
The surprising thing is that the two editors-in-chief of this journal are not Chinese. Matthias Rauterberg is professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology, Ryohei Nakatsu also has a website at the same Dutch university. The 78 year old Nakatsu was formerly at National University of Singapore, and is now part-time at Kyoto University. I aslo infomred them and Elsevier that papermills were selling authorships in their journal:
Rauterberg replied indicating that he doesn’t want to be pestered under his university email address. Elsevier announced to have a look.
Retraction Watchdogging
No illicit image manipulation
Two Italian professors of medicine, Umberto Galderisi and Lucia Altucci, both of the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” in Naples, lose a paper. As reminder: Galderisi is a member of the biomed mafia at the Sbarro Pizza Institute at Temple University, USA, run by a fellow Neapolitan, Antonio Giordano. This article showcases several of their joint fabrications:
“The relentless defence of duplicated, fabricated or falsified data is, per se, a form of serious misconduct…” Antonio Giordano, President of Sbarro Pizza Institute at Temple University
Giordano previously sued me in Italy, read March 2022 Shorts (it also discusses some fake science by Galderisi). I don’t know what for and how it ended because Italian courts like to keep such information secret.
Now, to the retracted paper, flagged in April 2024 by Aneurus Inconstans:
“The retraction has been agreed upon following an investigation into concerns raised by a third party, which revealed unambiguous image manipulation in Figure 3, SAHA – H2O2 Treatment and SAHA – Untreated panels. The authors admitted to these image alterations, cooperated with the investigation, and were able to provide partial raw data of the article including some of the original, unmodified images. Nonetheless, the modification of the images to change the appearance is clearly against the ethical policy of the journal and Wiley’s Best Practice Guidelines on Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics. In addition, based on the received partial raw data, regarding the positive cell counts for the 8oxodG assay, the journal team could not exclude that the visual modification of these images affects the number of counted 8oxodG-positive cells, and consequently the related conclusions of the article. Therefore, the editors have lost confidence in the data presented and have decided to retract the article. The authors were informed of the decision to retract but did not agree to the retraction.”
Aneurus Inconstans found that paper while studying the works of Lucia Altucci, who is a Top Italian Scientist and a star at her Neapoletan university. In fact, Altucci is provost for research and coordinatorThanks to Aneurus (who took over the work of Clare Francis), Altucci now has almost 40 papers on PubPeer, all very fake. She briefly featured in this article:
“You may think this is just a silly prank with zero impact on whatsoever, but no. […] this initiative is useful for something. It provides solid numbers for quantifying the extent of scientific misconduct in Italy and beyond” – Aneurus Inconstans
Vincenzo Carafa, Angela Nebbioso, Francesca Cuomo , Dante Rotili , Gilda Cobellis , Paola Bontempo, Alfonso Baldi , Enrico P. Spugnini , Gennaro Citro , Angela Chambery , Rosita Russo , Menotti Ruvo , Paolo Ciana , Luca Maravigna , Jani Shaik , Enrico Radaelli , Pasquale De Antonellis , Domenico Tarantino , Adele Pirolli , Rino Ragno , Massimo Zollo, Hendrik G. Stunnenberg, Antonello Mai, Lucia Altucci RIP1-HAT1-SIRT Complex Identification and Targeting in Treatment and Prevention of CancerClinical Cancer Research (2018) doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.ccr-17-3081
“Figure 2C and 2D: despite three different cell lines were used (yellow boxes), the tubulin and HSP90 controls appear the same across the panels (red and blue boxes).”
“Figure 6F: two micrographs appear to overlap (magenta boxes), but treatments are different (yellow boxes).”
Normally, Altucci doesn’t suffer from retractions or other setbacks. This one was resolved with an eternal Expression of Concern:
“Figure 2B, panel MEF2D, shows a striking similarity between the first and fourth band, and a potential splice line between band 3 and band 4. A digital image provided by the authors as representative of the source data for lane MEF2D of Fig 2B (see Image A below) does not match to the published image in one of the four lanes (lane 3) […]
In Fig 2C, panel HDAC4, we observed similar background patterns in lanes 2 and 5. […] Both panels concern significant aspects of the scientific conclusions of the manuscript,” […] the authors provided source data for replicate experiments […]
Further, we have been informed by Antimo Migliaccio, head of the department which corresponding author Lucia Altucci is presently affiliated to Dipartimento di Medicina di Precisione, Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Napoli, that an institutional investigation formally concluded that no illicit image manipulation is apparent in the manuscript.”
Actually, the Neapolitan university has a point. Data manipulation is certainly not illicit in Naples and in much of Italy. Reporting it is illicit, which is why For Better Science website is now blocked in Italy (read September 2024 Shorts).
Anyway, Antimo Migliaccio is very slightly biased as investigator. For one, he has a PubPeer record of his own (including as first author, on the right), for another, some of it is coauthored by Altucci:
Aneurus inconstans: “Figure 1: two sets of micrographs overlap (boxes of same color), but are supposed to describe different conditions.”
The EMBO Reports paper couldn’t be retracted because the unwritten statutes of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) forbid retractions for EMBO members. Altucci’s coauthor Hinrich Gronemeyer, research director at IGBMC Strasbourg in France, is an EMBO member. Here is another garbage paper of his with Altucci:
“Figure 3C: the micrograph describing immunofluorescence of histone H3 acetylation levels in UVI5008-treated cells is the same one published four years earlier in Figure 5C of Bontempo et al. 2007 where it was described as immunofluorescence of histone H3 acetylation levels in purified flavone-treated cells.”
Here is Altucci’s and Gronemeyer’s paper flagged by Clare Francis years ago, of course the first author Angela Nebbioso made it to full professor at the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli:
This text was first published on September 30th as Spanish translation on Hipertextual. The Spanish Institut d’Investigació Biomèdica de Bellvitge (IDIBELL) in Barcelona has discovered a new application of the famous Schrödinger uncertainty theory, by extending quantum mechanics from single atoms to entire scientific publications and its authors. The traditional Schrödinger cat inside a box…
Here is Altucci with the Spanish cheater Manel Esteller and another Top Italian Scientist, Antonello Mai of Sapienza University of Rome (who previously retracted a fake paper with Susanna Scarpa, read November 2023 Shorts), because of course such people are attracted to each other:
“Figure 3: several bands have been copy & pasted (boxes of same color).”
Some of Altucci’s fake science rots on PubPeer since 2016. Like this:
Angela Nebbioso, Vincenzo Carafa , Mariarosaria Conte , Francesco Paolo Tambaro , Ciro Abbondanza , Joost Martens , Matthias Nees , Rosaria Benedetti , Isabella Pallavicini , Saverio Minucci , Guillermo Garcia-Manero , Francesco Iovino , Gabriella Lania , Concetta Ingenito , Valeria Belsito Petrizzi , Hendrik G. Stunnenberg , Lucia Altucci c-Myc Modulation and Acetylation Is a Key HDAC Inhibitor Target in CancerClinical Cancer Research (2017) doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.ccr-15-2388
Fig 2D
Much more by Altucci on PubPeer. She didn’t reply to my email.
Reservations about the accuracy
Antoni Camins, neuroscience professor at the University of Barcelona in Spain, loses a paper. He once blamed an Olympus confocal microscope for faking his otherwise totally trustworthy images, both the published figures and the raw data. This technical sabotage was then officially certified in a corrigendum. Read May 2022 Shorts and here:
“The Editor in Chief has retracted this article. After publication, concerns were raised in regards to some figures, specifically:
Figure 1 A: In the Ob-R panel, two bands representing different time points (15 and 21 days) appear to be similar, after adjusting brightness;
The P-38 image in Fig. 4B and the beta-actin image in Fig. 6B appear to overlap.
The author provided some of the raw data that would support the results presented in the paper. Post-publication review resolved the issue for Fig. 1A. However, concerns remained about the duplication of images in Figs. 4B and 6B. The analysis of the raw images revealed the following issues with the figures in question:
Figure 4B: The raw data provided by the author did not match the images that were presented in the results.
The author did not provide raw data for Fig. 6B as they did not have access to it anymore.
Based on the above, it is not possible to publish alternate images for Figs. 4B and 6B without reliable original data. A further check by the post-publication reviewers also identified concerns regarding Western blot images supporting the other figures presented in this published paper, including inconsistencies between the images presented in the paper and the original membranes, apparent differences between replicates of the same experiment, poor quality of the provided images, and reservations about the accuracy of data normalization. Based on these uncertainties, the Editor in Chief has lost confidence in the integrity of the article’s findings. The authors do not agree to this retraction.”
Those rascals, they submitted falsified raw data.
Donate!
If you are interested to support my work, you can leave here a small tip of $5. Or several of small tips, just increase the amount as you like (2x=€10; 5x=€25). Your generous patronage of my journalism will be most appreciated!
FM has equity interests in The Longevity Labs (TLL) and Samsara Therapeutics. GK has been holding research contracts with Daiichi Sankyo, Eleor, Kaleido, Lytix Pharma, PharmaMar, Osasuna Therapeutics, Samsara Therapeutics, Sanofi, Sutro, Tollys, and Vascage. GK is on the Board of Directors of the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation France. GK is a scientific co-founder of everImmune, Osasuna Therapeutics, Samsara Therapeutics and Therafast Bio. GK is in the scientific advisory boards of Hevolution, Institut Servier, Longevity Vision Funds and Rejuveron Life Sciences. GK is the inventor of patents covering therapeutic targeting of aging, cancer, cystic fibrosis and metabolic disorders. GK’s brother, Romano Kroemer, was an employee of Sanofi and now consults for Boehringer-Ingelheim. GK’s wife, Laurence Zitvogel, has held research contracts with Glaxo Smyth Kline, Incyte, Lytix, Kaleido, Innovate Pharma, Daiichi Sankyo, Pilege, Merus, Transgene, 9 m, Tusk and Roche, was on the on the Board of Directors of Transgene, is a cofounder of everImmune, and holds patents covering the treatment of cancer and the therapeutic manipulation of the microbiota. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results. MA, SS, FM and GK hold patent(s) dealing with the cardiometabolic effects of spermidine. All other authors declare no competing interests.
Some other issues with Emil Kirkegaard and Edward Dutton’s article:
Edward Dutton on the paper claims to be affiliated to Asbiro University. The problem is, this university is a private business school. It does not teach or award psychology courses. Dutton only taught a single lecture there as a guest in 2020:
Therefore, the affiliation is clearly questionable.
As for Emil Kirkegaard, he claims on the paper to be living in Aarhus, Denmark.
However this is apparently false based on a public court judgment which documents he is a debtor who moved from Denmark to Germany to evade paying a debt.
Another issue with the paper is it cites a white nationalist / neo-Nazi book which is completely unreliable and shows a flaw in the peer-review.
Dutton, E. (2023). Breeding the human herd: Eugenics, dysgenics and thefuture of the species. Perth: Imperium PressImperium Press is a far-right publisher of racist/eugenics books:
I wrote to the other editor-in-chief, Marianne Rots, a couple of years ago about Lucia Altucci’s Pubpeer record, but I think that must have been an etiquette faux-pas as nothing has happened, probably branded as extremely rude and aggressive.
Anyway, the journal and publisher seem as happy as Larry about the status quo.
On September 12, 2024, Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel at Justice Catalyst Law filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against six commercial publishers of academic journals, including Elsevier B.V., John Wiley & Sons, Wolters Kluwer NV, and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), on behalf of a putative class of scientists and scholars who allege that these six world’s-largest for-profit publishers of peer-reviewed scholarly journals conspired to unlawfully appropriate billions of dollars that would otherwise have funded scientific research. …
Excluded from this definition are all employees, officers, and directors of Defendants; and any judges, justices, or chambers’ staff assigned to hear or adjudicate any
The Scholar Plaintiff brings this action as a representative of a Class under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(a), (b)(2), and (b)(3). The class is defined as follows: All natural persons residing in the United States who performed peer review services for, or submitted a manuscript for publication to, any of the Publisher Defendants’ peer-reviewed journals from September 12, 2020 to the present.
A report made for the Spanish Committee on Research Ethics shows that the Salamanca rector is involved in industrial-scale fraud. The committee also shows that on its inception some 1-2 years ago it was given no teeth at all; the committee can only advice the university to take the concerns serious.
Two Italian professors of medicine, Umberto Galderisi and Lucia Altucci, both of the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” in Naples, lose a paper.”
20 November 2024 Expression of Concern for Lucia Altucci, Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli. and also Hinrich Gronemeyer, Strasbourg, France.
The editors would like to alert the readers that concerns have been raised regarding some of the data presented in the figures of this article. Specifically:
Fig. 1a AcH3 lanes 3 and 4 appear highly similar;
Fig. 1a H3 lanes 2 and 3 appear highly similar;
Fig. 2a H3 lanes 5–10 and 14–19 appear highly similar (with one lane flipped vertically);
Fig. 2h lanes 11 and 12 appear highly similar;
Fig. 3a (bottom left) the left and right sides of the image appear highly similar (rotated 180 degrees).
Due to the age of the article, the original data are no longer available for validation. Readers are therefore advised to interpret these results with caution.
Alessandro Weisz agrees to this Editorial Expression of Concern. Angela Nebbioso, Emmanuelle Germain, Concetta Ambrosino, Paola Bontempo, Rosana Alvarez, Angel R de Lera, Hinrich Gronemeyer and Lucia Altucci do not agree to this Editorial Expression of Concern. The editors have not been able to obtain current email addresses for Nicole Clarke, Emilie Voltz, Ettore M Schiavone, Francesco Bresciani and Felicetto Ferrara.
Expression of Concern: Naturally occurring germline and tumor-associated mutations within the ATP-binding motifs of PTEN lead to oxidative damage of DNA associated with decreased nuclear p53Human Molecular Genetics, ddaf041, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddaf041Published: 28 March 2025This is an expression of concern about: Human Molecular Genetics, Volume 20, Issue 1, 1 January 2011, Pages 80–89, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddq434
This is an expression of concern regarding: Xin He, Ying Ni, Yu Wang, Todd Romigh, Charis Eng, Naturally occurring germline and tumor-associated mutations within the ATP-binding motifs of PTEN lead to oxidative damage of DNA associated with decreased nuclear p53, Human Molecular Genetics, Volume 20, Issue 1, 1 January 2011, Pages 80–89, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddq434
In September 2024, a reader contacted the journal about similarities in bands in Figure 2G and 5A, which were also raised on PubPeer (see https://pubpeer.com/publications/4D1FDE28F9B3385293083484CC65BB). The journal has contacted the authors and is investigating these concerns in line with COPE guidance. In the interim, the journal is publishing this Expression of Concern to alert readers while the outcome of the investigation is pending and advises readers to examine the details of this study with particular care.
28 March 2025 Expression of Concern https://academic.oup.com/hmg/advance-article/doi/10.1093/hmg/ddaf042/8098983
Expression of Concern: Cowden syndrome-associated germline SDHD variants alter PTEN nuclear translocation through SRC-induced PTEN oxidation Human Molecular Genetics, ddaf042, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddaf042 Published: 28 March 2025 This is an expression of concern about: Human Molecular Genetics, Volume 24, Issue 1, 1 January 2015, Pages 142–153, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddu425
This is an expression of concern regarding: Wanfeng Yu, Xin He, Ying Ni, Joanne Ngeow, Charis Eng, Cowden syndrome-associated germline SDHD variants alter PTEN nuclear translocation through SRC-induced PTEN oxidation, Human Molecular Genetics, Volume 24, Issue 1, 1 January 2015, Pages 142–153, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddu425.
In September 2024, a reader contacted the journal about similarities in bands in Figure 6A, which were also raised on PubPeer (see https://pubpeer.com/publications/91BB44A9963C29ED0AE3C4F30F4305). The journal has contacted the authors and is investigating these concerns in line with COPE guidance. In the interim, the journal is publishing this Expression of Concern to alert readers while the outcome of the investigation is pending.
15 September 2025 retraction (second retraction) in Cancer Research.
Retraction: Phosphatase and Tensin Homologue Deleted on Chromosome 10 (PTEN) Has Nuclear Localization Signal-Like Sequences for Nuclear Import Mediated by Major Vault Protein | Cancer Research | American Association for Cancer Research https://share.google/DOfl0GBIqLMLTMhaM
For Better Science 
Science Breakthrough
A surge in endogenous spermidine is essential for rapamycin-induced autophagy and longevity
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15548627.2024.2396793
Received 21 Aug 2024, Accepted 22 Aug 2024, Published online: 12 Sep 2024
Just because… old friends…
Disclosure statement
FM has equity interests in The Longevity Labs (TLL) and Samsara Therapeutics. GK has been holding research contracts with Daiichi Sankyo, Eleor, Kaleido, Lytix Pharma, PharmaMar, Osasuna Therapeutics, Samsara Therapeutics, Sanofi, Sutro, Tollys, and Vascage. GK is on the Board of Directors of the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation France. GK is a scientific co-founder of everImmune, Osasuna Therapeutics, Samsara Therapeutics and Therafast Bio. GK is in the scientific advisory boards of Hevolution, Institut Servier, Longevity Vision Funds and Rejuveron Life Sciences. GK is the inventor of patents covering therapeutic targeting of aging, cancer, cystic fibrosis and metabolic disorders. GK’s brother, Romano Kroemer, was an employee of Sanofi and now consults for Boehringer-Ingelheim. GK’s wife, Laurence Zitvogel, has held research contracts with Glaxo Smyth Kline, Incyte, Lytix, Kaleido, Innovate Pharma, Daiichi Sankyo, Pilege, Merus, Transgene, 9 m, Tusk and Roche, was on the on the Board of Directors of Transgene, is a cofounder of everImmune, and holds patents covering the treatment of cancer and the therapeutic manipulation of the microbiota. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results. MA, SS, FM and GK hold patent(s) dealing with the cardiometabolic effects of spermidine. All other authors declare no competing interests.
LikeLike
Before clicking on your link or reading beyond it I knew from the title of the paper it will be Guido Kroemer and Frank Madeo.
LikeLike
Lucia Altucci (38 papers on pubPeer) is provost for research and Coordinator of Quality of Research at her university.
https://www.unicampania.it/index.php/ateneo/uffici/rettorato
Angela Nebbioso (26 papers on PubPeer) is provost for the “university ranking”, whatever that means.
Fortunato Ciardiello (16 papers, 2 retractions) is Vice Rector for relations with the University Hospital.
What a lovely crowd of crooks!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Does this mean you need at least 2 retractions to become Vice Rector at Uni Campania? Altucci has one already!
LikeLike
Rogues’ gallery.
https://jeccr.biomedcentral.com/about/editorial-board
Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research.
Regina Elena National Cancer Institute, Roma, Italy, in house journal.
LikeLike
Profound contributions to pristine prostate research.
PubPeer – Search publications and join the conversation.
Runner-up.
2. Allen C. Gao, M.D., Ph.D. for UC Davis Health
PubPeer – Search publications and join the conversation.
Such wonderful lineages!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Can anybody explain this?
PubPeer – Hsp27 knockdown using nucleotide-based therapies inhibit tum…
LikeLike
Some other issues with Emil Kirkegaard and Edward Dutton’s article:
Edward Dutton on the paper claims to be affiliated to Asbiro University. The problem is, this university is a private business school. It does not teach or award psychology courses. Dutton only taught a single lecture there as a guest in 2020:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Asbiro_University#Edward_Dutton_controversyhttps://www.asbiro.pl/ludzie/profil/?id=886053
Therefore, the affiliation is clearly questionable.
As for Emil Kirkegaard, he claims on the paper to be living in Aarhus, Denmark.
However this is apparently false based on a public court judgment which documents he is a debtor who moved from Denmark to Germany to evade paying a debt.
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2024/698.html
Another issue with the paper is it cites a white nationalist / neo-Nazi book which is completely unreliable and shows a flaw in the peer-review.
Dutton, E. (2023). Breeding the human herd: Eugenics, dysgenics and thefuture of the species. Perth: Imperium PressImperium Press is a far-right publisher of racist/eugenics books:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/15/imperium-press-western-australia-book-publisher-scrutiny-white-nationalist-booktopia-removed
Dutton’s book is an extremist text which promotes far-right viewpoints.
The editorial of the journal has refused to respond to complaints hence contact the publisher Wiley.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Some of Altucci’s fake science rots on PubPeer since 2016.”
If you procrastinate for long enough it is the same as doing nothing.
The editors know that. In fact, Lucia Altucci is an editor herself.
Editorial Board | Clinical Epigenetics (biomedcentral.com)
I wrote to the other editor-in-chief, Marianne Rots, a couple of years ago about Lucia Altucci’s Pubpeer record, but I think that must have been an etiquette faux-pas as nothing has happened, probably branded as extremely rude and aggressive.
Anyway, the journal and publisher seem as happy as Larry about the status quo.
LikeLike
Altucci is a role model for women in STEM you know.
LikeLike
Fo teh lulz…
Academic Journal Publishers Antitrust Litigation
https://www.lieffcabraser.com/antitrust/academic-journals/
On September 12, 2024, Lieff Cabraser and co-counsel at Justice Catalyst Law filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against six commercial publishers of academic journals, including Elsevier B.V., John Wiley & Sons, Wolters Kluwer NV, and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), on behalf of a putative class of scientists and scholars who allege that these six world’s-largest for-profit publishers of peer-reviewed scholarly journals conspired to unlawfully appropriate billions of dollars that would otherwise have funded scientific research.
…
LikeLike
It looks like a bad joke. Anyone has a clue which “scientists” are behind the lawsuit?
LikeLike
DR. LUCINA UDDIN, Plaintiff
s. Also VI:
https://www.lieffcabraser.com/pdf/AcademicPublicationsComplaintFinal.pdf
VI. CLASS ACTION ALLEGATIONS
Excluded from this definition are all employees, officers, and directors of
Defendants; and any judges, justices, or chambers’ staff assigned to hear or adjudicate any
The Scholar Plaintiff brings this action as a representative of a Class under
Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(a), (b)(2), and (b)(3). The class is defined as follows:
All natural persons residing in the United States who performed
peer review services for, or submitted a manuscript for publication
to, any of the Publisher Defendants’ peer-reviewed journals from
September 12, 2020 to the present.
…
LikeLike
Her CV has 64 pages
Click to access CurriculumVitaUddin2024.pdf
And a Wikipedia page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucina_Uddin?wprov=sfla1
LikeLike
‘Her CV has 64 pages’
At that level of detail… who hasn’t?
LikeLike
Forcing every researchers to put the name is a norm, so you can alone authored 80% of the institute paper.
https://scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=AbLpTrkAAAAJ&hl=pt-PT
LikeLike
Update from El Pais on Juan Manuel Corchado / Salamanca: https://elpais-com.translate.goog/ciencia/2024-09-23/un-informe-para-el-comite-espanol-de-etica-confirma-la-manipulacion-sistematica-del-curriculum-del-rector-de-salamanca.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=nl&_x_tr_pto=wapp.
A report made for the Spanish Committee on Research Ethics shows that the Salamanca rector is involved in industrial-scale fraud. The committee also shows that on its inception some 1-2 years ago it was given no teeth at all; the committee can only advice the university to take the concerns serious.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“No illicit image manipulation
Two Italian professors of medicine, Umberto Galderisi and Lucia Altucci, both of the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” in Naples, lose a paper.”
20 November 2024 Expression of Concern for Lucia Altucci, Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli. and also Hinrich Gronemeyer, Strasbourg, France.
Editorial Expression of Concern: Tumor-selective action of HDAC inhibitors involves TRAIL induction in acute myeloid leukemia cells | Nature Medicine
Addendum to: Nature Medicine https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1161, published online 26 December 2004.
The editors would like to alert the readers that concerns have been raised regarding some of the data presented in the figures of this article. Specifically:
Due to the age of the article, the original data are no longer available for validation. Readers are therefore advised to interpret these results with caution.
Alessandro Weisz agrees to this Editorial Expression of Concern. Angela Nebbioso, Emmanuelle Germain, Concetta Ambrosino, Paola Bontempo, Rosana Alvarez, Angel R de Lera, Hinrich Gronemeyer and Lucia Altucci do not agree to this Editorial Expression of Concern. The editors have not been able to obtain current email addresses for Nicole Clarke, Emilie Voltz, Ettore M Schiavone, Francesco Bresciani and Felicetto Ferrara.
LikeLike
“Achievements and leadership – Charis Eng, editor of Human Molecular Genetics”
24 March 2025 Expression of Concern.
Expression of Concern: The ERK1/2 pathway modulates nuclear PTEN-mediated cell cycle arrest by cyclin D1 transcriptional regulation | Human Molecular Genetics | Oxford Academic
LikeLike
Two March 28 2025 Expressions of Concern for Charis Eng.
28 March 2025 Expression of Concern
https://academic.oup.com/hmg/advance-article/doi/10.1093/hmg/ddaf041/8098709
Expression of Concern: Naturally occurring germline and tumor-associated mutations within the ATP-binding motifs of PTEN lead to oxidative damage of DNA associated with decreased nuclear p53Human Molecular Genetics, ddaf041, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddaf041Published: 28 March 2025This is an expression of concern about: Human Molecular Genetics, Volume 20, Issue 1, 1 January 2011, Pages 80–89, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddq434
This is an expression of concern regarding: Xin He, Ying Ni, Yu Wang, Todd Romigh, Charis Eng, Naturally occurring germline and tumor-associated mutations within the ATP-binding motifs of PTEN lead to oxidative damage of DNA associated with decreased nuclear p53, Human Molecular Genetics, Volume 20, Issue 1, 1 January 2011, Pages 80–89, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddq434
In September 2024, a reader contacted the journal about similarities in bands in Figure 2G and 5A, which were also raised on PubPeer (see https://pubpeer.com/publications/4D1FDE28F9B3385293083484CC65BB). The journal has contacted the authors and is investigating these concerns in line with COPE guidance. In the interim, the journal is publishing this Expression of Concern to alert readers while the outcome of the investigation is pending and advises readers to examine the details of this study with particular care.
28 March 2025 Expression of Concern https://academic.oup.com/hmg/advance-article/doi/10.1093/hmg/ddaf042/8098983
Expression of Concern: Cowden syndrome-associated germline SDHD variants alter PTEN nuclear translocation through SRC-induced PTEN oxidation Human Molecular Genetics, ddaf042, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddaf042 Published: 28 March 2025 This is an expression of concern about: Human Molecular Genetics, Volume 24, Issue 1, 1 January 2015, Pages 142–153, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddu425
This is an expression of concern regarding: Wanfeng Yu, Xin He, Ying Ni, Joanne Ngeow, Charis Eng, Cowden syndrome-associated germline SDHD variants alter PTEN nuclear translocation through SRC-induced PTEN oxidation, Human Molecular Genetics, Volume 24, Issue 1, 1 January 2015, Pages 142–153, https://doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddu425.
In September 2024, a reader contacted the journal about similarities in bands in Figure 6A, which were also raised on PubPeer (see https://pubpeer.com/publications/91BB44A9963C29ED0AE3C4F30F4305). The journal has contacted the authors and is investigating these concerns in line with COPE guidance. In the interim, the journal is publishing this Expression of Concern to alert readers while the outcome of the investigation is pending.
LikeLike
07 August 2025 retraction for recently deceased Editor-in-Chief Hum Mol Genet. Retraction: The ERK1/2 pathway modulates nuclear PTEN-mediated cell cycle arrest by cyclin D1 transcriptional regulation | Human Molecular Genetics | Oxford Academic
LikeLike
15 September 2025 retraction (second retraction) in Cancer Research.
Retraction: Phosphatase and Tensin Homologue Deleted on Chromosome 10 (PTEN) Has Nuclear Localization Signal-Like Sequences for Nuclear Import Mediated by Major Vault Protein | Cancer Research | American Association for Cancer Research https://share.google/DOfl0GBIqLMLTMhaM
LikeLiked by 1 person