Schneider Shorts 28.02.2025 – A Guide to Getting a Faculty Position

Schneider Shorts of 28 February 2025 – what Scottish professor and Italian MP have in common, a Croatian genius and his friends, a US inventor with sponge and teabag, with Elsevier afraid of a stalker, a premature correction, sexy retractions, and finally, what to consume against obesity and diabetes.

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Science Elites

A Guide to Getting a Faculty Position

Meet Pasquale Maffia, professor of cardiovascular immunology at the University of Glasgow in UK, with additional affiliation as professor of pharmacology at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, where he studied and did PhD. He is also Vice-President for Engagement at the British Pharmacological Society and Co-Lead of the Africa-Europe Clusters of Research Excellence.

And truly, his research is excellent, as the PubPeer sleuth Aneurus Inconstans will vouchsafe. To be fair, there was no way Maffia could have learned learned anything but bad practices at his Neapolitan university, which even managed to whitewash and support the infamous Alfredo Fusco.

A relatively recent one by Maffia as co-corresponding author with his Italian colleagues from University of Genoa, in an ACS journal which specialises on bad science:

Valentina Di Francesco , Danila Gurgone , Roberto Palomba , Miguel Filipe Moreira Marques Ferreira , Tiziano Catelani , Antonio Cervadoro , Pasquale Maffia , Paolo Decuzzi Modulating Lipoprotein Transcellular Transport and Atherosclerotic Plaque Formation in ApoE^–/– Mice via Nanoformulated Lipid–Methotrexate Conjugates ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2020) doi: 10.1021/acsami.0c12202

These two studies with fake western blots by the same Neapolitan group were flagged 3 years ago by the pseudonymous Claire Francis:

Maffia’s coauthor Angela Ianaro used to work at University of Naples Federico II, but she is more famous as a politician and former Italian MP, first for Movimento 5 Stelle and now for Partito Democratico. She is also an associate of the much-retracted former rector of University of Messina, now governmental consigliere, Salvatore Cuzzocrea, who once blamed Ianaro personally for all the fake science in his papers (read December 2023 Shorts).

In this regard, Maffia, Ianaro, Cuzzocrea and Cuzzo’s former mentor in London, Christoph Thiemermann, retracted a fake paper Cuzzocrea et al 2004 because they couldn’t provide “a satisfactory answer” to the many image manipulations found in that immunological study (see September 2024 Shorts).

Going back in time, Aneurus inconstans caught Maffia and Ianaro doing these dirty deeds:

• Pasquale Maffia, Angela Ianaro, Raffella Sorrentino , Laura Lippolis , Francesco M. Maiello , Piero Del Soldato , Armando Ialenti, Giuseppe Cirino Beneficial effects of NO-releasing derivative of flurbiprofen (HCT-1026) in rat model of vascular injury and restenosis Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (2002) doi: 10.1161/hq0202.104064 
• Pasquale Maffia, Angela Ianaro, Barbara Pisano , Francesca Borrelli , Francesco Capasso , Aldo Pinto , Armando Ialenti Beneficial effects of caffeic acid phenethyl ester in a rat model of vascular injury British journal of pharmacology (2002) doi: 10.1038/sj.bjp.0704720 
• Armando Ialenti, Angela Ianaro , Pasquale Maffia, Rosa Carnuccio , Fulvio D’Acquisto, Francesco Maiello , Massimo Rosa Role of nuclear factor-kappaB in a rat model of vascular injury Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology (2001) doi: 10.1007/s002100100467 
• Fulvio D’Acquisto , Angela Ianaro , Armando Ialenti , Pasquale Maffia, Maria Maiuri , Rosa Carnuccio Transcription factor decoy oligodeoxynucleotides to nuclear factor-kappaB inhibit reverse passive Arthus reaction in rat Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology (2001) doi: 10.1007/s002100100472 

Last author on one of the above papers is a certain Giuseppe Cirino, a close associate of Cuzzocrea and his fellow professor in Messina. A recurrent name is that of the Neapolitan professor Armando Ialenti, who is 67 years old and presumably Maffia’s and Ianaro’s mentor. Fulvio D’Acquisto is likely another mentee of Ialenti, who then became professor at Queen Mary University of London (where he collaborated with Jesmond Dalli!), but left in 2017 for University of Roehampton, also in UK.

More by Maffia and Ianaro, with Ialenti and with Cuzzocrea:

• A. Ianaro, P. Maffia , G. Grassia , P. Di Meglio , R. Sorrentino , R. D’Emmanuele Di Villa Bianca , M. Di Rosa, A. Ialenti Cloricromene in endotoxemia: role of NF-kappaB Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology (2004) doi: 10.1007/s00210-004-0956-z 
• Angela Ianaro , Pasquale Maffia , Salvatore Cuzzocrea, Elena Mazzon , Maria Gabriella Santoro , Massimo Di Rosa , Armando Ialenti 2‐Cyclopenten‐1‐one and prostaglandin J₂ reduce restenosis after balloon angioplasty in rats: role of NF‐κB FEBS Letters (2003) doi: 10.1016/s0014-5793(03)00873-1 
• Gianluca Grassia , Marcella Maddaluno , Claudia Musilli , Daniela De Stefano , Rosa Carnuccio , Maria Vittoria Di Lauro , Christopher A. Parratt , Simon Kennedy , Paola Di Meglio , Angela Ianaro , Pasquale Maffia, Astrid Parenti , Armando Ialenti The I{kappa}B kinase inhibitor nuclear factor-{kappa}B essential modulator-binding domain peptide for inhibition of injury-induced neointimal formation Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (2010) doi: 10.1161/atvbaha.110.215467 

Ianaro’s above mentioned papers D’Acquisto et al. 2000 and Cuzzocrea et al 2004 were however not coauthored by Maffia though.

Feel free to make your own mafia jokes about Maffia and his associates.

Finally, Maffia and Ianaro with a bunch of Glasgow researchers, led by Paul Garside who later on installed Maffia as a fellow professor at his Scottish university:

Pasquale Maffia , James M. Brewer, J. Alastair Gracie, Angela Ianaro, Bernard P. Leung, Paul J. Mitchell, Karen M. Smith , Iain B. McInnes , Paul Garside Inducing experimental arthritis and breaking self-tolerance to joint-specific antigens with trackable, ovalbumin-specific T cells The Journal of Immunology (2004) doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.173.1.151 

In this regard, the paper McQuiniee et al 2012 by Maffia, Garside and Iain McInnes also needs to be corrected.

Ironically, in May 2024, Maffia, together with his old buddy D’Acquisto, was teaching graduate students at University of Naples Federico II on how to get a professorship by faking writing scientific papers:

I notified the University of Glasgow, who then announced to open an investigation. However, I couldn’t be bothered wasting time with the Alfredo Fusco University of Naples. They can’t read For Better Science in Italy anyway.

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Industry Giants

It helps all cancers

Patricia Murray and Peter Wilmshurst wrote a follow-up blog post on the topic of hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy for the treatment of long COVID. For their first article, about a clinical study in the UK which lacked an ethics approval, refer to Wilmshurst’s blog or a summary on October 2024 Shorts.

Now the HBO quackery killed a child:

“Three weeks ago, on 31 January 2025, a fire in a monoplace hyperbaric chamber in the Oxford Center in Troy, Michigan, USA killed a five year old boy in the chamber. The child’s mother was standing next to the chamber and was injured when hot gases erupted through a compromised door seal (early reports said that the chamber exploded, but that was probably incorrect). It is reported that the tragedy occurred in a centre which promoted HBO therapy on its website for conditions not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), such as autism, cerebral palsy, sports injuries, COVID-19, depression, alopecia, HIV/AIDS, strokes, migraine headaches, and as an anti-aging treatment.⁵

A previous monoplace chamber fire did result in an explosion, which killed the occupant and his wife who was standing in front of the chamber door. Two members of hospital staff were also injured in the explosion.”

The child’s death made it into local and national US news, see for example New York Times or Detroit Free Press, the boy burned alive inside the chamber at “Oxford Center” while being treated for ADHD and sleep apnea.

Murray and Wilmshurst explain that fire hazard is the “most common fatal complication“, because HBO therapy works with oxygen partial pressure about 12 times higher than the normal air, meaning that “anyone in the chamber will be rapidly incinerated if a fire occurs“. And yet, there is no oversight for private HBO therapy businesses, and the chambers can be simply ordered online:

“Despite the danger of harms from hyperbaric therapy, anyone can set themselves up to provide it to patients and healthy people. They do not need to be a doctor or other healthcare worker (such as a nurse or physiotherapist). […]
We have come across a tattoo parlour offering non-evidence based HBO therapy for many diseases including cancers. When asked which cancers HBO therapy helps, we were told it helps all cancers. That is false.”

In fact, I saw that tattoo-HBO-therapy parlour in Liverpool myself. Here proof:

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Scholarly Publishing

Face at least 172 in prison

You might remember Matthew Stephenson, an imposter, thief, pathological liar, troll, and unhinged stalker and psychopath. He tried to get mine and Smut Clyde’s reporting about his deeds removed by issuing threats to us and making fraudulent copyright complaints via DMCA.

In brief: Stephenson has less than zero scientific qualifications, while pretending to be a quantum physicist, an oncologist, a neurosurgeon and a computational mathematician, all by simply stealing the work of others. He is an extremely dangerous person to be associated with. Many people who had the misfortune to meet Stephenson were left deeply traumatised (and sometimes also robbed).

But now Elsevier decided to reinstall a (likely plagiarised) paper of his which they previously removed, and you will soon see the real reason as to why:

Matthew James Stephenson QUENCH: Quantum unraveling in enhanced nonlinear CTP hydrodynamics Chinese Journal of Physics (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.cjph.2024.02.048

The paper was flagged by Smut Clyde on PubPeer because Stephenson used yet another made-up academic affiliation, this time of University of Alabama at Huntsville. In other publications published at the same time, he claimed to be employed at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, at Stanford University, at University of Washington and at Barrow Neurological Institute. The publisher temporarily removed that paper in March 2024:

Well, now Elsevier and the journal owner, the Physical Society of Taiwan, clarified things with this Permanent Expression of Concern from February 2025:

“Concerns were raised regarding the validity of the author’s affiliation with the University of Alabama at Huntsville at the time that the manuscript was submitted. Evidence provided by the author and representatives of University of Alabama at Huntsville was not sufficient to decide on the validity of these concerns. As such, the article will remain published accompanied by this notification to readers.”

Basically, the journal received two conflicting messages. University of Alabama at Huntsville says Stephenson is lying, and that student email account he externally acquired doesn’t mean he is affiliated with them. But on the other hand, the fraudster, thief and stalking psychopath Stephenson says the University of Alabama at Huntsville is lying. Indeed, whom to believe…

Now, Elsevier has been receiving emails from Stephenson. In fact, he specifically warned Smut Clyde and yours truly not to report about this Expression of Concern, in an email addressed to us, Elsevier, COPE, various universities, and all randomly picked mailboxes of police and courts in Germany, New Zealand, Belgium and Canada. Subject: “warrant #25-9003174 / 1 S 182/91 (Leonid Schneider and David Bimler)“:

“David Bimler and Leonid Schneider (criminal warrant 1 S 182/91 violating §§ 185–187 StGB). I officially ask you to stop contacting me and posting your baseless libel at public forum at both your personal blog and social media accounts. Any further messages or posts about me will be considered harassment and will get added your criminal credential #25-9003174 for what it’s worth under the law in Quebec and Canada alongside countries at which I’ve held academic positions. Your reported statements are totally unfounded and have been the object of a criminal charge against you made at the local prosecutors office reporting fake and unproven information alleging incorrectness of scientific publications like https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cjph.2024.02.048 (reinstated, laughably much to your obvious chagrin) alongside completely baseless libel and slander and what would appear to be stalking (if you’d like proof I’d be happy to provide; request that data via email)

[…]

It is my understanding that the NZ Police are attempting to arrest David Bimler at [private address removed, -LS] but have not been updated at the status of this. A German court has presumably issued an arrest warrant for Leonid Schneider after making repeated slanderous statements by both Thorsten, Heike Walles and myself. Under sections 298-301 of the Canadian Criminal Code; Leonid and David are committing continuous criminal acts. This offense involves publishing matter that is likely to injure the reputation of a person by exposing them to hatred, contempt, or ridicule. Given that Schneider and Bimler have knowingly published false defamatory libel (both directly and under the use of several alias), they will face up to five years in prison after being found guilty after being apprehended under criminal credential #25-9003174 with overwhelming evidence. Might I remind you that you also face being thrown in prison for at least 5 years for slander under German law (§ 187 StGB): as you have both been involved in making fanatically crankpot statements defamatory in nature that you knows to be completely false, aimed at damaging a my departmental reputation as it was committed publicly and via media. You also face another two years on top of that for defamation (§ 186 StGB) in a laughable attempt to defame them and negatively affect public opinion (which, might I remind you nobody cares about because you’re both fanatical crackpots with kindergarten ideas). Additionally, Bimler is violating the Defamation act of 1992 and will, when apprehended by the local police face at least 172 in prison. So I trust you and yours take active steps to stop. Good day“

You and me laugh, but Elsevier and the Physical Society of Taiwan shat themselves and reinstalled Stephenson’s paper.

Now that I published this all, Smut and I will be arrested and jailed for 172 years.

To make sure you don’t read For Better Science, Stephenson posted a scholarly review on Google Maps.

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Title discontinued

In 2025, Elsevier wrapped up an entire journal, Materials Today: Proceedings, because it consisted entirely of papermill trash. The last proceedings paper was published in December 2024, the journal’s chief editors used to be Syed Nizamuddin Khaderi, Viswanath Chinthapenta, Gangadharan Raju, and M Ramji.

But of course the fake papers were not retracted, merely decorated with an eternal Expression of Concern. Like this one, flagged by Mu Yang aka Dysdera arabisenen:

R. Kirubagharan , C. Ramesh , M. Ranjith , V. Senthil Kumar , N. Soundhirarajan Mechanical behaviour of aluminium based metal matrix composite reinforced with SI3N4 and B4C Materials Today: Proceedings (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.matpr.2020.04.898 

Anyone needs explaining what’s wrong with it? But I do agree, it has an artistic value.

The Expression of Concern was issued in February 2023, almost 2 years before the journal was shut down, and affected a whole long list of papers in that special issue:

“This is an Expression of Concern regarding the Proceedings of the International Conference on Nanotechnology: Ideas, Innovation and Industries (ICN2K19).

Volume 33, Part 7, Pages [2936-3401] (2020).

Subsequent to acceptance of these Proceedings papers by the responsible Guest Editors, Dr. S. Sakthivel, Dr S. Karthikeyan and Dr A. Palani, serious concerns arose regarding the integrity and veracity of the conference organisation and peer-review process.

The journal has assessed the integrity of the conference and has substantiated concerns around the organisation and editorial management of the conference as a whole. If deemed necessary following this assessment, readers will be further updated in accordance with Elsevier and Committee on Publication Ethics best practices.”

Obviously, an eternally unresolved Expression of Concern is exactly what Elsevier and Committee on Publication Ethics best practices are all about.

Note: the author V Senthil Kumar is a different person from the professional papermiller Senthil Kumar Ponnusamy, who has almost a hundred of fake papers on PubPeer.

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This is her mistake

A Springer journal corrected a paper from Iran, all authors are from different universities, indicating a papermill origin. Its title was stupid enough, but as the US oncologist Loren Mell teaches in Retraction Watch, we are not allowed to criticise stupid papers for being stupid. Moll didn’t say if we are allowed to criticise papers for fake data.

Ali Jalili , Fereshteh Shojaei-Ghahrizjani , Mohammad Amin Tabatabaiefar , Shima Rahmati Decellularized skin pretreatment by monophosphoryl lipid A and lactobacillus casei supernatant accelerate skin recellularization Molecular biology reports (2024) doi: 10.1007/s11033-024-09599-y 

The last author Shima Rahmati replied in October 2024 blaming a student:

“Unfortunately, I gave the photos to the student and this is her mistake.”

Presumably, Rahmati blamed her former student Fereshteh Shojaei-Ghahrizjani, who is finishing her PhD at the University of Milan in Italy. A Correction was published on 24 February 2025:

“The original article has been published with incorrect Fig. 4a; for completeness and transparency, the old incorrect version and the corrected version of Fig. 4 are displayed below. The original article has been corrected.”

The corrected figure 4 was still very fake.

Also Figure 7 was bad:

One would think Springer Nature would check papers before issuing corrections, but no.

The journal Molecular biology reports is run by two Editors-in-Chief, Rodrigo Guimarães and Gillian E. Knight, both are presented by Springer as “Unaffiliated Researcher“.

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Retraction Watchdogging

After an investigation

The French nanofabricator Jolanda Spadavecchia, CNRS research director at CB3S in Paris, earns her fifth retraction. This one is however different from her previous retractions. The earlier few retractions happened because the publishers took initiative, other retractions have been so far successfully prevented by CNRS and the University of Paris, who not only whitewashed their scientist in full, but they also a) put the whistleblower Raphael Levy on trial for harassment of the innocent Spadavecchia, and b) bullied Oxford University’s emeritus professor Dorothy Bishop for daring to criticise their decision (read April 2023 Shorts).

Now, to the new retraction, at a Springer journal:

Angelica Sette , Jolanda Spadavecchia , Jessem Landoulsi , Sandra Casale, Bernard Haye, Olivia Crociani , Annarosa Arcangeli Development of novel anti-Kv 11.1 antibody-conjugated PEG-TiO nanoparticles for targeting pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cells Journal of Nanoparticle Research (2013) doi: 10.1007/s11051-013-2111-6 

Unlike with other Spadavecchia papers (almost 40 of them on PubPeer), no data manipulation was reported, just the above. In July 2022, a Correction was issued for a histogram in Figure 2C:

Now, the unexpected retraction from 27 Feberuary 2025 (highlight mine):

“The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article after an investigation by Sorbonne Paris Nord University and CNRS revealed that the histogram published in the Correction [1] is not compatible with the size of the nanoparticles shown in the ME images and the characteristics of the XRD spectrum do not reflect the size of the nanoparticles. The Editors have therefore lost confidence in the findings of this article. J. Spadevecchia does not agree to this retraction. J. Landoulsi, O. Crociani, and A. Arcangeli did not respond to correspondence from the Editor about this retraction. The Editor was unable to establish the current email addresses for A. Setti, S. Casale, and B. Haye.”

There was an investigation by Sorbonne University and CNRS and it found something else than Spadavecchia’s total and absolute innocence, as they previously claimed?

Will there be more retractions for her now?

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Six authors were removed; and four new authors were added

Croatian science superstar Sandro Nižetić earns a retraction for papermilling. This 45 year old genius is professor of engineering at the University of Split, Fellow of Croatian Academy of Technical Sciences, editor of numerous Elsevier jorunals, and, because there is never enough money, professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. He was briefly mentioned here:

Now, the retracted paper:

Swarup Kumar Nayak, Anh Tuan Hoang , Sandro Nižetić , Xuan Phuong Nguyen , Tri Hieu Le Effects of advanced injection timing and inducted gaseous fuel on performance, combustion and emission characteristics of a diesel engine operated in dual-fuel mode Fuel (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.fuel.2021.122232 

The retraction was published presumably in October 2024 (highlights mine):

“An investigation identified violations of the journal’s policies on authorship and conflict of interest related to the submission and review of this paper.

This paper is very similar to an earlier rejected paper submitted to the Journal: “Influence of advanced injection timing and inducted gaseous fuel upon performance, emission and combustion characteristics of a TDI engine operated in dual fuel mode”. Despite the considerable similarities between these two studies (and papers), there is only one common author. Six authors were removed; and four new authors were added (Anh Tuan Hoang, Sandro Nižetić, Xuan Phuong Nguyen and Tri Hieu Le) in between the two separately submitted versions. There was also a change in Corresponding Author from Swarup Nayak to Anh Tuan Hoang. 14 citations to the new Corresponding Author were added in the most recent version of the paper.

In addition, the review process for this paper was handled by Editor Zuohua Huang, despite a recent record of collaboration, including co-publication, with 5 of the authors (Anh Tuan Hoang, Swarup Nayak, Sandro Nižetić, Xuan Phuong Nguyen and Tri Hieu Le). A number of these co-authored papers were under consideration at the same time as this paper was under consideration for FUEL. This compromised the editorial process.

The Corresponding (and other) Authors responded promptly to requests for clarification on these points, but those explanations did not fully address the concerns.”

Now, Nizetic’s Vietnamese buddy and regular coauthor Anh Tuan Hoang was recruited in 2024 as one of chief editors of this same Elsevier journal Fuel. But Hoang was kicked out for being a papermill fraudster before he even started, under the pressure of the chief editor Jillian Goldfarb, who was then made to resign herself. Read about this affair here:

Nizetic has a dozen of papers on PubPeer, many with Hoang, flagged for editorial conflicts of interests. This Nizetic paper is a parade of who-is-who in papermill industry, featuring even Rafael Luque and Ashok Pandey:

Anh Tuan Hoang , Ranjna Sirohi , Ashok Pandey , Sandro Nižetić , Su Shiung Lam , Wei-Hsin Chen, Rafael Luque , Sabu Thomas , Müslüm Arıcı , Van Viet Pham Biofuel production from microalgae: challenges and chances Phytochemistry Reviews (2023) doi: 10.1007/s11101-022-09819-y 

Hoang is a personal friend of Luque, so obviously there are even more common papers by this duo with Nizetic. Other coauthors of the Croatian genius include the Czech papermiller Jiří Jaromír Klemeš (who died in 2023 but continued papermilling after his death), and the Chinese papermiler and bulk-buyer of citations, Changhe Li. Here is Nizetic with Li, Pandey and Hoang:

Prabhakar Sharma , Zafar Said , Anurag Kumar , Sandro Nižetić , Ashok Pandey , Anh Tuan Hoang , Zuohua Huang , Asif Afzal , Changhe Li , Anh Tuan Le , Xuan Phuong Nguyen, Viet Dung Tran Recent Advances in Machine Learning Research for Nanofluid-Based Heat Transfer in Renewable Energy System Energy & Fuels (2022) doi: 10.1021/acs.energyfuels.2c01006 

That seemingly misplaced block was likely inserted by the papermill as citation delivery vehicle to random papers by those who paid.

From Elsevier’s International Journal of Hydrogen Energy you can only expect papermilling. This is not only the usual self-citation orgy by Hoang (and likely also Li), it also contains tortured phrases, likely due to plagiarism:

Prabhakar Sharma , Bibhuti B. Sahoo, Zafar Said, H. Hadiyanto , Xuan Phuong Nguyen , Sandro Nižetić , Zuohua Huang , Anh Tuan Hoang, Changhe Li Application of machine learning and Box-Behnken design in optimizing engine characteristics operated with a dual-fuel mode of algal biodiesel and waste-derived biogas International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2022.04.152 

And here is Nizetic with another giant of papermill fraud, Masoud Afrand:

Amin Shahsavar, Ali H.A. Alwaeli , Neda Azimi , Shirin Rostami , Kamaruzzaman Sopian , Müslüm Arıcı , Patrice Estellé, Sandro Nižetić, Alibakhsh Kasaeian , Hafiz Muhammad Ali , Zhenjun Ma , Masoud Afrand Exergy studies in water-based and nanofluid-based photovoltaic/thermal collectors: Status and prospects Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.rser.2022.112740 

The corresponding author is Müslüm Arıcı (PubPeer record) is a very regular coauthor of Nizetic. In this year 2025, Nizetic and Arici already published two papers together.

So much for Croatia to be proud of.

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Bust Size and Hitchhiking

A mass retraction was caused by Nick Brown.

The perpetrator here is Nicolas Guéguen, who is or maybe was professor at the University of South Bretagne in France. Nick Brown together with James Heathers have been investigating Gueguen’s fabricated psychology studies since 2017, see this blogpost from June 2020, and its updates from August 2024 and September 2024. In the original 2017 blog post, Brown summed up Gueguen’s research:

“Much of Dr. Guéguen’s research focuses on human relationships, in what one might euphemistically term a rather “old-fashioned” way.  You can get a flavour of his research interests by browsing through his Google Scholar profile.  As well as the articles we have blogged about, he has published research on such vital topics as whether women with larger breasts get more invitations to dance in nightclubs (they do), whether women are more likely to give their phone number to a man if asked while walking near a flower shop (they are), and whether a male bus driver is more likely to let a woman (but not a man) ride the bus for free if she touches him (we’ll let you guess the answer to this one).  One might call it “Benny Hill research”, although Dr. Guéguen has also published plenty of articles on other lightweight pop-social-psychology topics such as consumer behaviour in restaurants (does that sound familiar?) that do not immediately conjure up images of sexual stereotypes.

Neither Dr. Guéguen’s theories, nor his experimental designs, generally present any great intellectual challenges.  However, despite their simplicity, and the almost trivial nature of the manipulations, his studies often produce effect sizes of the kind more normally associated with the use of domestic cleaning products against germs.”

So far there were mostly editorial Expressions of Concern for Gueguen’s erotic fantasies, and very few actual retractions (see RW database). But now, five papers were pulled in one go, including “Bust size and hitchhiking: a field study”, where Gueguen dreamt up “the effect of a woman’s bust size on the rate of help offered“.

This is the retraction notice issued by the SAGE journal Perceptual and Motor Skills on 25 February 2025:

“At the request of Sage and the Journal Editor, the following articles have been retracted:

Guéguen, N. (2007). Bust Size and Hitchhiking: A Field Study. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 105(3_suppl), 1294–1298. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.105.4.1294-1298

Guéguen, N., & Lamy, L. (2009). Hitchhiking Women’s Hair Color. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 109(3), 941–948. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.109.3.941-948

Joule, R.-V., & Guéguen, N. (2007). Touch, Compliance, and Awareness of Tactile Contact. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 104(2), 581–588. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.104.2.581-588

Guéguen, N. (2002). Touch, Awareness of Touch, and Compliance with a Request. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 95(2), 355–360. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.2002.95.2.355

Guéguen, N., Fischer-Lokou, J., Lefebvre, L., & Lamy, L. (2008). Women’s Eye Contact and Men’s Later Interest: Two Field Experiments. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 106(1), 63–66. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.106.1.63-66

Sage was made aware of multiple concerns raised by the academic community regarding Dr Nicolas Guéguen’s research (Brown, n.d.; Charlton, n.d.; O’Grady, n.d.). After consideration of these critiques; Sage, the Editor-in-Chief and Assistant Editor of Perceptual and Motor Skills conducted an internal investigation into Dr Guéguen’s published articles in this journal. The following concerns have been identified:

(a) Implausibility of research methods: Study designs were constructed in a format that would require extensive time and labor-intensive work that do not realistically parallel the authors’ Method descriptions, rendering low confidence that the study designs were implemented as described.

(b) Lack of clear ethical approval statements and/or informed consent from the participants: As these were not naturalistic observations, IRB approval and subject consent should have been sought; yet all but two (Gueguen, 2007; Gueguen & Lamy, 2009) of these articles lack a statement regarding ethical approval or attesting to receipt of informed consent. The two (Gueguen, 2007; Gueguen & Lamy, 2009) that did state ethical approval, only claim review by an “ethics committee of the laboratory,” which could not be verified.

(c) Data fidelity concerns in data analyses and data presentations: Relating to concerns about the plausibility of the research methods, much of the data in these articles are implausible or were incorrectly analyzed. For instance, Chi square expressions were calculated in several articles with incorrect result values (Gueguen & Lamy, 2009; Joule & Gueguen, 2007). In other articles (Gueguen et al., 2002, 2008), reporting of the published results did not allow replication.

(d) Antiquated reference lists: Cited literature within these articles cited was, on average, 10–20 years prior to the authors’ publications.

We contacted the authors for comment regarding these concerns, and did not receive a response from the listed authors.

Due to the unresolved concerns surrounding the data and ethics, the Journal Editor and Sage retract these articles.

As corresponding author of [1–4], NG disagreed with the retraction of the articles. The corresponding author of [5] was contacted but did not respond to the publisher. NG disagreed with the retraction of [5].

References Consulted

Brown N. A review of the research of Dr. Nicolas Guéguen. Nick Brown’s Blog. December 18th, 2017. https://steamtraen.blogspot.com/2017/12/a-review-of-research-of-dr-nicolas.html“

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Science Breakthroughs

It’s removing metals from water

US scientists found a simple and clever way to clean rivers from heavy metal pollution. Drop a giant teabag into it.

The Guardian reported excitedly on 25 February 2025:

“Scientists at Northwestern University in the US have found tea removes charged atoms, or ions, of heavy metals from water, apparently by chemically bonding to them.

Benjamin Shindel, the first author of the research, said that while scientists might consider whether the flavour chemicals in tea were driving associated health benefits, the new study suggested an alternative.

“I think the one possible better explanation might be that it’s because it’s removing metals from water,” he said, adding the team found a cup of black tea brewed for five minutes reduced the concentration of lead ions in water by about 15%. […]

“It’s possible that on the margins, tea consumption is reducing [people’s] metal intake by a very small amount, and perhaps over the population of the UK, that’s reducing diseases associated with metal consumption by another commensurately very small amount,” he said.

Among other studies, previous research has suggested people who drink tea may have a lower risk of stroke, dementia and even death.”

The revolutionary discovery hails from the lab of Vinayak Dravid, founding director of Northwestern University Atomic and Nanoscale Characterization (NUANCE) Center in Illinois, USA:

Benjamin Shindel , Caroline Harms , Stephanie Wang , Vinayak Dravid Brewing Clean Water: The Metal-Remediating Benefits of Tea Preparation ACS Food Science & Technology (2025) doi: 10.1021/acsfoodscitech.4c01030 

We are also told by Grauniad:

“The team also found that, at least for the batches they tested, black, green and white teas reduced the concentration of lead ions in the water to a greater degree than camomile, rooibos and oolong teas when left to steep for 24 hours to reach equilibrium.
In the case of bagged tea, the materials also mattered, with empty cellulose bags found to reduce the concentration of lead ions, whereas empty cotton and nylon bags did not.”

This is a particularly peculiar discovery from Dravid and his trusty Shindel because in 2023 they presented a reusable nanoparticle-coated sponge which “can capture and recover critical metals and heavy-metal pollutants“.

Basically same as a teabag, according to same Dravid? This is the paper, and even its Conflicts of Interests statement is behind paywall:

Benjamin Shindel , Stephanie M. Ribet , Caroline Harms , Vikas Nandwana , Vinayak P. Dravid Nano-SCHeMe: Nanomaterial Sponge Coatings for Heavy Metals, an Environmental Remediation Platform ACS ES&T Water (2023) doi: 10.1021/acsestwater.2c00646

“The authors declare no competing financial interest.”

Now that’s a lie. The same announcement says that sponge is based on a product Dravid developed in 2020 and which “is now being commercialized by Northwestern spinoff MFNS Tech“, a company founded and led by Dravid since 2018, and later rebranded to Coral Innovations. The company keeps its team secret, but there are other sources. Also, Dravid’s coauthor and lab member Vikas Nandwana boasts on Medium and on LinkedIn to be the other co-founder.

Just a few days ago, Dravid announced that his sponge also allows removal and recycling of water pollutants like phosphate, copper, and zinc, for future reuse in industry and agriculture:

“Dravid has at times referred to the technology as a “Swiss Army knife” thanks to its versatility and ability to be used again and again. He co-founded NU startup Coral Innovations (formerly MFNS-Tech) to begin the process of commercializing the sponge-based technology for environmental remediation.”

This is the study:

Kelly E. Matuszewski , Benjamin Shindel , Vikas Nandwana , Vinayak P. Dravid Rinse, Recover, Repeat: pH-Assisted Selective Extraction of Phosphate and Metals with a Sponge Nanocomposite ACS ES&T Water (2025) doi: 10.1021/acsestwater.4c01234 

“The authors declare no competing financial interest.”

In 2022, the Northwestern University informed that the Dravid Sponge “can collect oil, phosphates and now microplastics from polluted waters” while absorbing “99% of phosphate ions it encounters and 30 times its weight in oil“, an achievement celebrated in June 2021 in PNAS:

Stephanie M Ribet , Benjamin Shindel , Roberto Dos Reis , Vikas Nandwana , Vinayak P Dravid Phosphate Elimination and Recovery Lightweight (PEARL) membrane: A sustainable environmental remediation approach Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021) doi: 10.1073/pnas.2102583118 

“Competing interest statement: A provisional patent related to this research has been filed.”

Only partially true, but one maybe Dravid’s Coral Innovations will now sell tea bags instead.

There is nothing the Dravid Sponge can’t do. In 2023, Dravid trained it to capture C0₂ from the air:

“Dravid’s team plans to integrate such CO2 capturing materials with their earlier porous sponge platform, which has been developed to remove environmental toxins including oil, phosphates and microplastics.”

This was the paper, carbon capture using humidity and virtually no energy input at all, a miracle no less:

John Hegarty , Benjamin Shindel , Daria Sukhareva , Michael L Barsoum , Omar K Farha , Vinayak Dravid Expanding the Library of Ions for Moisture-Swing Carbon Capture Environmental Science & Technology (2023) doi: 10.1021/acs.est.3c02543 

“The authors declare no competing financial interest”

By the way, Dravid and Nardvana have talents of not only cleaning up environment, but also brains. In 2021, they determined that antibodies against amyloid β oligomers provide a cure for Alzheimer’s, their mouse study in Frontiers (Viola et al 2021) was criticised by Mu Yang as badly underpowered.

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Chocolate, Coffee, and Wine

“Metabolic syndrome” is defined as “a clustering of at least three of the following five medical conditions: abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high serum triglycerides, and low serum high-density lipoprotein“. Basically, it is a pre-diabetic state.

Guess what helps. Newsweek informs on 21 February 2025 about a breakthrough from Brazil, with this headline:

“If You Like Chocolate, Coffee or Wine, Scientists Have Good News for You”

No, they are not being sarcastic.

“A study of more than 6,000 people found a link between diets rich in foods including fruit, vegetables, chocolate, coffee and wine, and the reduced risk of metabolic syndrome. […]

Co-author of the study Isabela Benseñor of the University of São Paulo said in a statement that the results are “good news for people who like fruit, chocolate, coffee and wine, all of which are rich in polyphenols.”

Benseñor explained that while similar findings had been found in previous studies, none had had such a large number of participants, or followed up for as long.

“Our findings in this study leave no room for doubt: promoting diets rich in polyphenols can be a valuable strategy for reducing the risk of cardiometabolic disease and preventing metabolic syndrome,” she said.”

This is the paper:

Renata A Carnauba, Flavia M Sarti, Camille P Coutinho, Neuza MA Hassimotto, Dirce M Marchioni, Paulo A Lotufo, Isabela M Bensenor and Franco M Lajolo, “Associations Between Polyphenol Intake, Cardiometabolic Risk Factors and Metabolic Syndrome in the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil)” The Journal of Nutrition (2024) DOI: 10.1016/j.tjnut.2024.11.016

From a related press release:

“The analysis also showed that elevated consumption of flavan-3-ols, a flavonoid subgroup, was associated with a 20% lower risk of developing metabolic syndrome. Red wine was the main source of flavan-3-ols for the study sample, accounting for 80% of the total intake of this compound. Chocolate was also a significant source, accounting for 10%.[…]

“The results showed that the effects of polyphenols on the metabolism and heart disease were far from negligible. Regardless of the various cardiometabolic risk factors, such as sex, age, smoking, and physical activity, participants who ingested more polyphenols were up to 30 times less likely to develop high blood pressure or insulin resistance, and 17 times less likely to have elevated triglycerides,” Carnaúba said.”

In Brazil, every third person suffers from metabolic syndrome. These people are told by SCIENTISTS that they can must daily consume chocolate, wine and coffee, and this cure will work even if they continue smoking.

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