Carlos Cordon-Cardo and Friends

Carlos Cordon-Cardo looks like an actor from French films. And indeed, he only pretends to be a scientist, certainly his published cancer research is just a ham-acted pretence of dressed-up data. Also interesting are all these star scientists whom Cordon-Cardo trained or collaborated with.

The Schneider Rule teaches that if you wish to meet many science cheaters you must follow one of them. The rule was in fact established by anonymous data integrity sleuths, but then Schneider put his name on it and claimed credit, because this is how it works both in science and in science sleuthing.

Cordon-Cardo is the best example of the Schneider Rule.

Our Spanish hero is the “Irene Heinz Given and John LaPorte Given” Chair in Pathology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Prior that, he was Vice-Chair of Pathology at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University and founding director of Division of Molecular Pathology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC).

That was at the time when MSKCC was ruled by a fellow Spaniard, José Baselga, who was caught on hiding his immense conflict of interests with phrama industry and forced to step down in 2018 (but MSKCC gave him $1.5 million on his way). The confusing thing is that all big doctors in academia hide their industry COIs with impunity, and somehow only Baselga was punished for just that (at least that’s the official version). And the saddest thing is that Baselga couldn’t enjoy all that money for long, he died in March 2021 aged 61 from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, home in Spain. Baselga also has a PubPeer record, but what’s the point now.

We are here to talk about Carlos Cordon-Cardo who is very much alive, wealthy, and aged merely 67. His publications already featured on For Better Science several times, most recently in this article about his collaborator Arnold Levine:

Much of what follows was flagged on PubPeer by the pseudonymous sleuth Clare Francis. Presently, Cordon-Cardo has over 30 papers on PubPeer.

As I mentioned, before coming to Mount Sinai, Cordon-Cardo was at Columbia University. There he met a certain Igor Matushansky, who later left for pharma industry, while retaining a faculty position at Columbia. Here the result of that encounter:

Igor Matushansky, Eva Hernando , Nicholas D Socci , Joslyn E Mills , Tulio A Matos , Mark A Edgar, Samuel Singer , Robert G Maki , Carlos Cordon-Cardo Derivation of sarcomas from mesenchymal stem cells via inactivation of the Wnt pathway Journal of Clinical Investigation (2007) doi: 10.1172/jci31377   

This paper by Colon-Cardo and Matushansky in the same journal is not only fraudulent, but also displays sadistic cruelty to animals, certainly forbidden at Columbia University and the publishing society:

Elizabeth Charytonowicz , Melissa Terry , Katherine Coakley , Leonid Telis , Fabrizio Remotti , Carlos Cordon-Cardo, Robert N Taub , Igor Matushansky PPARγ agonists enhance ET-743-induced adipogenic differentiation in a transgenic mouse model of myxoid round cell liposarcoma Journal of Clinical Investigation (2012) doi: 10.1172/jci60015 

But top scientists like Cordon-Cardo are entitled to torture animals, after all, it is for the greater good of their personal enrichment.

Next, a paper by Cordon-Cardo with his mentee Susana Gonzalez, who later became Spain’s famous fraudster and zombie scientist, and with her other mentor, the anti-aging superstar Manuel Serrano (see his PubPeer record), who in turn later defended his collaborator and Spain’s martyr saint Carlos Lopez-Otin, read here:

Susana Gonzalez, Manuel M. Perez-Perez , Eva Hernando, Manuel Serrano, Carlos Cordon-Cardo p73beta-Mediated apoptosis requires p57kip2 induction and IEX-1 inhibition Cancer Research (2005) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-04-3047 

That other paper by Gonzalez and her mentor Cordon-Cardo also includes Carol Prives, Columbia University professor and former wife of Joal Prives, best friend of the sexual harasser Joseph Schlessinger…

Unlike its 2005 counterpart, this paper was retracted, because different society publishers:

Susana Gonzalez , Carol Prives , Carlos Cordon-Cardo p73alpha regulation by Chk1 in response to DNA damage Molecular and Cellular Biology (2003) doi: 10.1128/mcb.23.22.8161-8171.2003   

“After publication, this article was found to have problematic figures. Digital experts have informed us that some of the published data in this paper were very likely digitally manipulated. This represents a major deviation from established scientific standards for publications, and therefore we retract this paper.”

Retraction March 2023

By the way, if you think Carol Prives became honest or at least bothered to be more careful, nope. Here here 3 year old paper:

David R. Tong , Wen Zhou , Chen Katz , Kausik Regunath , Divya Venkatesh , Chinyere Ihuegbu , James J. Manfredi , Oleg Laptenko , Carol Prives p53 Frameshift Mutations Couple Loss-of-Function with Unique Neomorphic Activities Molecular Cancer Research (2021) doi: 10.1158/1541-7786.mcr-20-0691 

Cordon-Cardo’s aforementioned other Spanish mentee Eva Hernando, now professor of pathology at Grossman School of Medicine of New York University, has her own PubPeer record. With luminaries like Arnold Levine, Michele Pagano and Jesus Gil. Here by the way a nice paper by Hernando with some Spanish lab:

Here is Cordon-Cardo with Hernando and Pier-Paolo Pandolfi, an Italian cheater who was sacked by Harvard for sexual harassment, fled back home to Italy where he almost became an institute director, got kicked out there as well and then found a new job somewhere in Nevada.

Spotted rather recently, in February 2024:

Did you notice Dana Farber’s Sabina Signoretti as coauthor? Read about her here:

Sholto David found this paper while investigating Signoretti and Dana Farber cancer fraud, from the labs of Cordon-Cardo and Pandolfi:

Ming Chen , Jiangwen Zhang , Katia Sampieri , John G. Clohessy , Lourdes Mendez , Enrique Gonzalez-Billalabeitia , Xue-Song Liu , Yu-Ru Lee , Jacqueline Fung , Jesse M. Katon , Archita Venugopal Menon , Kaitlyn A. Webster , Christopher Ng , Maria Dilia Palumbieri , Moussa S. Diolombi , Susanne B. Breitkopf , Julie Teruya-Feldstein , Sabina Signoretti, Roderick T. Bronson , John M. Asara , Mireia Castillo-Martin, Carlos Cordon-Cardo, Pier Paolo Pandolfi An aberrant SREBP-dependent lipogenic program promotes metastatic prostate cancer Nature Genetics (2018) doi: 10.1038/s41588-017-0027-2 

Schneider Rule applies again – coauthor Roderick Bronson of Harvard featured in this article by Aneurus Inconstans:

Another one by Cordon-Cardo and Pandolfi:

Amita Shukla-Dave, Mireia Castillo-Martin , Ming Chen , Jose Lobo , Nataliya Gladoun , Ana Collazo-Lorduy , Faisal M. Khan , Vladimir Ponomarev , Zhengzi Yi , Weijia Zhang , Pier P. Pandolfi , Hedvig Hricak, Carlos Cordon-Cardo Ornithine Decarboxylase Is Sufficient for Prostate Tumorigenesis via Androgen Receptor Signaling American Journal Of Pathology (2016) doi: 10.1016/j.ajpath.2016.08.021 

The name of MSKCC professor Hedvig Hricak may ring a bell for most dedicated For Better Science readers. A whistleblower reported this top US radiologist for plagiarism, with no consequences whatsoever of course.

The next Cordon-Cardo/Pandolfi/Hernando/Matushansky copro-duction shows the so-called “corner clones” which happen when labels of the figure panels need to be erased to comply with the journal’s labelling standards. It is very unlikely that Nature journals do such digital manipulations behind authors’ back. Rather, the authors didn’t have the original microscopy images anymore (or at all), hence their resorting to Photoshop:

Eva Hernando , Elizabeth Charytonowicz , Maria E Dudas , Silvia Menendez , Igor Matushansky , Joslyn Mills , Nicholas D Socci , Nille Behrendt , Li Ma , Robert G Maki , Pier Paolo Pandolfi , Carlos Cordon-Cardo The AKT-mTOR pathway plays a critical role in the development of leiomyosarcomas Nature Medicine (2007) doi: 10.1038/nm1560 

Here is Cordon-Cardo with his New York colleague Scott Lowe of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), who has a PubPeer record of his own. Are those corner clones again?

Michael T. Hemann , Jordan S. Fridman , Jack T. Zilfou , Eva Hernando , Patrick J. Paddison , Carlos Cordon-Cardo, Gregory J. Hannon , Scott W. Lowe An epi-allelic series of p53 hypomorphs created by stable RNAi produces distinct tumor phenotypes in vivo Nature Genetics (2003) doi: 10.1038/ng1091 

Cordon-Cardo with Lowe again, plus the late Imperial College professor Gordon Peters (died in 2016). Peters had no luck with his collaborators – his dishonest mentee Jesus Gil made it to Imperial College professor himself (read July 2024 Shorts).

Clare L Scott , Jésus Gil , Eva Hernando , Julie Teruya-Feldstein , Masako Narita , Dolores Martínez , Tapio Visakorpi , David Mu , Carlos Cordon-Cardo , Gordon Peters , David Beach , Scott W Lowe Role of the chromobox protein CBX7 in lymphomagenesis Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2007) doi: 10.1073/pnas.0608721104  

Here is something from Lowe’s lab again:

Another two Cordon-Cardo papers published in parallel while recycling data in different context:

This is the other paper, it has other issues:

Having learned all the right skills in Cordon-Cardo’s lab, Marta Sánchez-Carbayo returned to Spain, where she is now professor at the University of Basque Country. She continued collaborating with her mentor in New York. Plus with someone else, and it is not at all surprising to see the Barcelona native Cordon-Cardo with the cheater Manel Esteller, whose fake science earned him the directorship of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute in Barcelona.

A set of two Cordon-Cardo/Sanchez-Carbayo/Esteller papers

• A Aleman , L Adrien , L Lopez-Serra , C Cordon-Cardo, M Esteller , T J Belbin , M Sanchez-Carbayo Identification of DNA hypermethylation of SOX9 in association with bladder cancer progression using CpG microarrays British Journal of Cancer (2008) doi: 10.1038/sj.bjc.6604143 
• Ainel Aleman , Virginia Cebrian , Miguel Alvarez , Virginia Lopez , Esteban Orenes , Lidia Lopez-Serra , Ferran Algaba , Joaquin Bellmunt , Antonio López-Beltrán , Pilar Gonzalez-Peramato , Carlos Cordon-Cardo, Javier García , Javier García Del Muro , Manel Esteller , Marta Sánchez-Carbayo Identification of PMF1 methylation in association with bladder cancer progression Clinical Cancer Research (2008) doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.ccr-08-0778 

Cordon-Cardo with Richard Kolesnick of MSKCC who also has his own PubPeer record and two retractions thanks to his mentee H Rosie Xing, who in turn was found guilty of fraud by HHS-ORI in 2014:

H Rosie Xing , Carlos Cordon-Cardo , Xinzhu Deng , William Tong , Luis Campodonico , Zvi Fuks , Richard Kolesnick Pharmacologic inactivation of kinase suppressor of ras-1 abrogates Ras-mediated pancreatic cancer Nature Medicine (2003) doi: 10.1038/nm927 

Of course Kolesnick was declared an innocent victim of Xing’s fraud, as a consolation he only had to retract two of their many fake papers. No Xing here though:

José Lozano , Rosie Xing , Zhenzi Cai , Heather L Jensen , Carol Trempus , Willie Mark , Ron Cannon , Richard Kolesnick Deficiency of kinase suppressor of Ras1 prevents oncogenic ras signaling in mice Cancer Research (2003) 63 (14): 4232–4238.

And here is Cordon-Cardo with Dana Farber’s William Hahn and with Ronald DePinho‘s wife and fellow MD Anderson professor Lynda Chin:

Minjung Kim , Joseph D. Gans , Cristina Nogueira , Audrey Wang , Ji-Hye Paik , Bin Feng , Cameron Brennan , William C. Hahn , Carlos Cordon-Cardo, Stephan N. Wagner , Thomas J. Flotte , Lyn M. Duncan , Scott R. Granter, Lynda Chin Comparative oncogenomics identifies NEDD9 as a melanoma metastasis gene Cell (2006) doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2006.06.008 

Just so you see how Chin and her husband (who had to resign as President of MD Anderson for causing a billion-heavy loss) do science, again with Signoretti and a certain Massimo Loda:

Zhihu Ding , Chang-Jiun Wu , Gerald C. Chu , Yonghong Xiao , Dennis Ho , Jingfang Zhang , Samuel R. Perry , Emma S. Labrot , Xiaoqiu Wu , Rosina Lis , Yujin Hoshida , David Hiller , Baoli Hu , Shan Jiang , Hongwu Zheng , Alexander H. Stegh , Kenneth L. Scott , Sabina Signoretti , Nabeel Bardeesy , Y. Alan Wang , David E. Hill, Todd R. Golub, Meir J. Stampfer, Wing H. Wong, Massimo Loda, Lorelei Mucci, Lynda Chin, Ronald A. DePinho SMAD4-dependent barrier constrains prostate cancer growth and metastatic progression Nature (2011) doi: 10.1038/nature09677  

Here is one more Cordon-Cardo paper, with a fellow Spaniard at Mount Sinai:

Now, in case any Mount Sinai research integrity officers read this, here are two papers by the pathology professor Jose M Silva:

• Javier Silva , Gemma Domínguez , José M Silva , Jose M García , Isabel Gallego , César Corbacho , Mariano Provencio , Pilar España , Félix Bonilla Analysis of genetic and epigenetic processes that influence p14ARF expression in breast cancer Oncogene (2001) doi: 10.1038/sj.onc.1204617 
• José M Silva , Gemma Domínguez , José M García , Blanca Cantos , Rufo Rodríguez , Francisco J Larrondo , Mariano Provencio , Pilar España , Félix Bonilla Concomitant expression of p16INK4a and p14ARF in primary breast cancer and analysis of inactivation mechanisms The Journal of Pathology (2003) doi: 10.1002/path.1297 

As you see, it pays off to follow Cordon-Cardo, look how many amazing cancer researchers you met!

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