Schneider Shorts 6.06.2025 – Researchers with High Citation and Publication Counts

Schneider Shorts of 6 June 2025 – one anti-qualified troll to judge all scientists in Italy, another asks Trump for $50 billion, with a celebrated Thai couple, a russian in America, an incredible correction in Frontiers, plus retractions and concerns for some very important people.

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Science Elites

Trump’s boldness and disruptiveness in favor of science

As you know, Trump fascists are dismantling science and higher education in USA, but their goal is not to drive the country into the Middle Ages as many believe. Totalitarian rulers have their own ideas of science, and there are always enough academics to oblige them.

Enter the cancer researcher Wafik El Deiry, professor at Brown University and a massive cheater, with around 80 fake papers on PubPeer. El Deiry hopes to be appointed by the fascist mad king Donald Trump and his Secretary of Health, the antivaxxer-psychopath Robert F Kennedy Jr, as Director of National Cancer Institute (NCI). Read here:

In this regard, we have the interview with El Deiry in Politico from 29 May 2025:

“Dr. Wafik El-Deiry, a cancer researcher and associate dean for oncology at Brown University, has an unlikely sales pitch for President Donald Trump: Pick me to lead the nation’s cancer research and give me a lot more money to spend on it.

Despite slashing billions in health research grants and proposing further cuts in next year’s budget, Trump is considering El-Deiry to lead the National Cancer Institute after a recent interview for the job.

“It has been clear to me for some time that the budget of NCI should be somewhere between $25 billion and $50 billion,” El-Deiry wrote in The Cancer Letter, an industry publication, in May. He argued that the U.S. has underinvested in cancer research for decades — even amid former President Joe Biden’s cancer moonshot plan to halve the death rate from the disease — and is losing ground to foreign rivals. […]

But El-Deiry has something in common with many others serving in top jobs in Trump’s health department: He was attacked online for his views during the pandemic.”

In that short interview, El Deiry said:

“I actually think Trump’s boldness and disruptiveness could work in the favor of science.“

America cannot afford a papermill gap to China and Iran.

Anyway, here just a few examples from the most recent PubPeer posts for El Deiry’s 80 fake papers on PubPeer. All papers are new, published long after El Deiry PubPeer record was established. If you thought he would bother to better hide the manipulations – nope, he knows that he is untouchable:

Yiqun Zhang, Nikos Tapinos, Rishi Lulla , Wafik S El-Deiry Dopamine pre-treatment impairs the anti-cancer effect of integrated stress response- and TRAIL pathway-inducing ONC201, ONC206 and ONC212 imipridones in pancreatic, colorectal cancer but not DMG cells American Journal of Cancer Research (2024) doi: 10.62347/zotv8006 

Like the above, this was also published in the so-called American Journal of Cancer Research by the predatory publisher e-Century, where El Deiry also happens to be Associate Editor-in-Chief, which provides an additional dimension to his shameless trolling:

Vida Tajiknia, Maximilian Pinho-Schwermann, Praveen R Srinivasan , Liz Hernandez Borrero , Leiqing Zhang, Kelsey E Huntington, Wafik S El-Deiry Synergistic anti-tumor activity, reduced pERK, and immuno-stimulatory cytokine profiles with 5-FU or ONC212 plus KRAS G12D inhibitor MRTX1133 in CRC and pancreatic cancer cells independent of G12D mutation American Journal of Cancer Research (2024) doi: 10.62347/dvxl1377 

As you can see, El Deiry’s e-Century predatory journal was founded by some very notorious cheaters: Guido Kroemer and Anil Sood, but also Michael Seckl and Axel Ullrich:

Again El Deiry’s own predatory journal at e-Century:

Cassandra S Parker , Lanlan Zhou , Varun V Prabhu , Seulki Lee , Thomas J Miner , Eric A Ross , Wafik S El-Deiry ONC201/TIC10 plus TLY012 anti-cancer effects via apoptosis inhibitor downregulation, stimulation of integrated stress response and death receptor DR5 in gastric adenocarcinoma American Journal of Cancer Research (2023) Dec 15;13(12):6290-6312.

Hot off the press, same predatory journal:

Elizabeth Ding , Maximillian Pinho-Schwermann, Shengliang Zhang , Connor Purcell , Wafik S El-Deiry Small cell lung cancer and prostate cancer cells with varying neuroendocrine differentiation markers show sensitivity to imipridone ONC201/TIC10 American Journal of Translational Research (2025) doi: 10.62347/ibus3598  

Here another journal set up by Kroemer, published by Nature Portfolio:

Enguang Yang , Suoshi Jing , Fang Wang , Hanzhang Wang , Shengjun Fu , Li Yang , Junqiang Tian , Dragan J. Golijanin , Wafik S. El-Deiry , Liang Cheng, Zhiping Wang Mesenchymal stem cells in tumor microenvironment: drivers of bladder cancer progression through mitochondrial dynamics and energy production Cell Death & Disease (2024) doi: 10.1038/s41419-024-07068-9 

This review was published in an allegedly respectable US society journal, but the text was plagiarised from several publications by unrelated authors:

Xiaobing Tian , Praveen R. Srinivasan , Vida Tajiknia , Ashley F. Sanchez Sevilla Uruchurtu , Attila A. Seyhan , Benedito A. Carneiro , Arielle De La Cruz , Maximilian Pinho-Schwermann , Andrew George , Shuai Zhao , Jillian Strandberg , Francesca Di Cristofano , Shengliang Zhang , Lanlan Zhou , Alexander G. Raufi , Arunasalam Navaraj , Yiqun Zhang , Nataliia Verovkina , Maryam Ghandali , Dinara Ryspayeva , Wafik S. El-Deiry Targeting apoptotic pathways for cancer therapy The Journal of clinical investigation (2024) doi: 10.1172/jci179570 

In the same society journal (its policy towards sleuths will be discussed below):

Jillian Strandberg , Anna Louie, Seulki Lee, Marina Hahn , Praveen Srinivasan, Andrew George, Arielle De La Cruz , Leiqing Zhang , Liz Hernandez Borrero , Kelsey E. Huntington, Payton De La Cruz, Attila A. Seyhan , Paul P. Koffer , David E. Wazer , Thomas A. DiPetrillo, Stephanie L. Graff, Christopher G. Azzoli, Sharon I. Rounds, Andres J. Klein-Szanto, Fabio Tavora, Evgeny Yakirevich, Abbas E. Abbas, Lanlan Zhou, Wafik S. El-Deiry TRAIL agonists rescue mice from radiation-induced lung, skin or esophageal injury The Journal of clinical investigation (2025) doi: 10.1172/jci173649 

Imagine what Wafik and his friends would do with $50 billion.

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A concrete commitment to increase the prestige of Italian universities

In Italy, things are their usual. After Salvatore Cuzzocrea became an advisor to the minister of research and education, Anna Maria Bernini (read August 2024 Shorts), and nobody protested, the twisted Italian academic system had to up the ante.

The Naples native Antonio Giordano, “president” of the Sbarro Institute at Temple University in USA (sponsored by owner of Sbarro Pizza who happens to be Giordano’s father-in-law), litigious bully who likes to sue his critics, and author of many falsified cancer studies (almost 70 on PubPeer), has a new function in Italy.

Italian news from 15 April 2025 (translated):

“Professor Antonio Giordano, professor of Anatomy and Pathological Histology at the University of Siena and director of the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine in Philadelphia, has been appointed by the Minister for Universities and Research, Anna Maria Bernini, to the Commission for the evaluation of the exceptional merit of proposals for the recruitment by direct call of Italian or foreign researchers or technologists with very high scientific qualifications. […]

‘It is an honour for me to be part of this Commission,’ said Professor Antonio Giordano, ‘which has a twofold objective: on the one hand, to encourage the return to Italy of Italian researchers currently abroad, enhancing in our country the skills and knowledge they have acquired; on the other, to promote the internationalisation of the Italian university system, attracting high-profile scholars with excellent curricula. A concrete commitment to increase the prestige and international competitiveness of Italian universities, while strengthening scientific research and higher education in all disciplines’.”

Giordano is now in charge of evaluating all Italian professors and professorship applicants, he will also decide about the distribution of research grants. Last year one of his fake papers was retracted (see June 2024 Shorts). It’s not just fake western blots, here at least the error bars were fabricated:

Roberto Ciarcia , Danila D’Angelo , Carmen Pacilio , David Pagnini , Massimiliano Galdiero , Filomena Fiorito , Sara Damiano , Eliseo Mattioli , Chiara Lucchetti , Salvatore Florio, Antonio Giordano Dysregulated calcium homeostasis and oxidative stress in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) cells Journal of Cellular Physiology (2010) doi: 10.1002/jcp.22140

Giordano collaborators are just as rotten as him: Massimiliano Galdiero also loves to sue his critics and has by now over 40 falsified papers on PubPeer.

The more one looks into Giordano’s papers, the more one finds. From February 2025:

Maria Rita Pitari , Marco Rossi , Nicola Amodio , Cirino Botta , Eugenio Morelli , Cinzia Federico , Annamaria Gullà , Daniele Caracciolo , Maria Teresa Di Martino , Mariamena Arbitrio , Antonio Giordano , Pierosandro Tagliaferri , Pierfrancesco Tassone Inhibition of miR-21 restores RANKL/OPG ratio in multiple myeloma-derived bone marrow stromal cells and impairs the resorbing activity of mature osteoclasts Oncotarget (2015) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.4398 

Again with Pierosandro Tagliaferri and Pierfrancesco Tassone (currently 16 papers on PubPeer, associates of the Dana Farber gang in Harvard), flagged in late 2024:

Lavinia Raimondi , Nicola Amodio , Maria Teresa Di Martino , Emanuela Altomare , Marzia Leotta , Daniele Caracciolo , Annamaria Gullà , Antonino Neri , Simona Taverna , Patrizia D’Aquila , Riccardo Alessandro , Antonio Giordano , Pierosandro Tagliaferri , Pierfrancesco Tassone Targeting of multiple myeloma-related angiogenesis by miR-199a-5p mimics: in vitro and in vivo anti-tumor activity Oncotarget (2014) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.1747 

We also learn this from the news:

“There are three members of the Commission, all of high scientific profile. In addition to Professor Giordano, Professor Alberto Mantovani, Scientific Director of the Humanitas Clinical Institute, and Professor Massimo Inguscio, Emeritus of the Physics of Matter at the University Campus Bio-Medico in Rome and former President of the National Research Council, were appointed by decree of the MUR Minister on 3 April.”

Perfect, also Alberto Mantovani is on board. Read about him below (and most recently in May 2025 Shorts):

Inguscio the physicist has no papers on PubPeer, but I trust his talents match those of Giordano and Mantovani.

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Identify the cause of the error

Meet the russian scholar Vasily Yakovlev, who arrived in 2003 as postdoc to the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in USA, and in May 2024 rose to the rank of associate professor at its Department of Radiation Oncology.

Now, VCU and its School of Medicine is the place where the cancer fraud trio of Paul B Fisher, Steven Grant and Paul Dent operates, read here:

And indeed, Yakovlev published with Dent:

Qifang Zhang , Vidisha Raje , Vasily A. Yakovlev , Adly Yacoub , Karol Szczepanek , Jeremy Meier , Marta Derecka , Qun Chen , Ying Hu , Jennifer Sisler , Hossein Hamed , Edward J. Lesnefsky , Kristoffer Valerie , Paul Dent, Andrew C. Larner Mitochondrial localized Stat3 promotes breast cancer growth via phosphorylation of serine 727 The Journal of biological chemistry (2013) doi: 10.1074/jbc.m113.505057 

Now Yakovlev as last author, working to cure cancer together with a fellow VCU professor from russia, Larisa Litovchick:

Aaron Wilson , Vijay Menon , Zubair Khan , Asim Alam , Larisa Litovchick, Vasily Yakovlev Nitric oxide-donor/PARP-inhibitor combination: A new approach for sensitization to ionizing radiation Redox Biology (2019) doi: 10.1016/j.redox.2019.101169 

By the way, Litovchick coauthored a problematic study, Kumari et al 2021, with a certain Parmjit S. Jat in London, who has a worrisome PubPeer record of his own, and was mentioned here:

The most recent from Yakovlev’s lab on PubPeer:

Mina McGinn , Christopher Rabender , Ross Mikkelsen , Vasily Yakovlev Hepatocyte-derived extracellular vesicles regulate liver regeneration after partial hepatectomy Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (2024) doi: 10.1101/2024.06.25.600679 

Here is Yakovlev first author:

Vasily A. Yakovlev, Stephanie A. Sullivan , Emma C. Fields, Sarah M. Temkin PARP inhibitors in the treatment of ARID1A mutant ovarian clear cell cancer: PI3K/Akt1-dependent mechanism of synthetic lethality Frontiers in Oncology (2023) doi: 10.3389/fonc.2023.1124147 

Yakovlev replied on PubPeer:

“Thank you for identifying errors in the images. We will analyze the data archive for this publication, identify the cause of the error, and replace the incorrect images with the correct ones. After all the images are corrected, we will inform the journal where the article was published about the corrections made.“

Actually it is very easy to find the cause for those errors. This badly forged paper has only one single author:

Vasily A Yakovlev Nitric oxide-dependent downregulation of BRCA1 expression promotes genetic instability Cancer Research (2013) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-12-3270 

Whom to blame…. I asked Yakovlev, and he replied:

“We are working with our archives to determine the cause of these errors. The necessary corrections will be made and sent to the publisher.“

He refused to say who was the cause for the errors in his sole author paper. Maybe Ukrainian drones?

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Scholarly Publishing

We have now performed repeats

In June 2023 Shorts, I wrote about the problematic PubPeer record of the 2019 Nobel Laureate and Oxford University professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe. To be fair, those were mostly collaborative studies from other labs, especially the lab of Ratcliffe’s Oxford colleague, the retired Cancer Research UK (CRUK) professor Adrian L. Harris, about whose bad science I wrote in October 2024 Shorts.

Now one of those papers, in a society journal, was fixed with a small but very dishonest Expression of Concern. The AACR-published study was flagged on PubPeer in October 2020:

Helen J. Knowles , David R. Mole , Peter J. Ratcliffe , Adrian L. Harris Normoxic Stabilization of Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-1α by Modulation of the Labile Iron Pool in Differentiating U937 Macrophages: Effect of Natural Resistance–Associated Macrophage Protein 1 Cancer Research (2006) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-05-2351 

Ratcliffe immediately replied with announcement to investigate. In November 2020, Harris wrote on PubPeer that he and his coauthors “cannot, so many years later ,find the originals, so we are repeating the experiments”. In March 2021, Harris reported success and posted some new gels:

“we have now performed repeats of the experiments originally illustrated in Figure 2a and 2b. […] The repeat experiments using both THP1 and U937 cells confirm the original findings that both ascorbate and FeCl2 reduce or abrogate PMA-mediated accumulation of HIF-1 alpha in these cells. We will inform the journal, as previously indicated“

Here is the final outcome of those repetitions, more than four years later – an Expression of Concern from 2 June 2025:

“The editors are publishing this note to alert readers to concerns about this article (1). The authors informed the journal that in Fig. 2, different exposures of the same β-tubulin Western blot are used for THP1 cells in Fig. 2A and B. In Fig. 2B, different exposures of the same HIF-1α (Fe) Western blot are used for both THP1 and U937 cells.”

A casual reader would think the reused blots showed anyway the same experiments and the same samples, which of course they did not. You can’t expect much from Harris, but this shameful notice is indeed very worthy of the Nobel laureate Ratcliffe who shared the Prize with Gregg Semenza. Thing is, Semenza had to retract 11 papers already (see March 2024 Shorts), while Ratcliffe weasels out with such Expressions of Concern.

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Authors have rectified these mistakes

A bizarre correction fail, this time by Frontiers. The last author is Claudio Festuccia, a Top Italian Scientist from University of L’Aquila, who was briefly mentioned here:

Festuccia has over 20 papers on PubPeer, the study at hand shares figures with several of them, all in a different experimental context:

Andrea Mancini , Alessandro Colapietro, Loredana Cristiano , Alessandra Rossetti , Vincenzo Mattei , Giovanni Luca Gravina , Héctor Perez-Montoyo , Marc Yeste-Velasco , Jose Alfon , Carles Domenech , Claudio Festuccia Anticancer effects of ABTL0812, a clinical stage drug inducer of autophagy-mediated cancer cell death, in glioblastoma models Frontiers in Oncology (2022) doi: 10.3389/fonc.2022.943064

In the face of such shameless fraud, Frontiers had no choice but to publish this Correction on 22 January 2025:

“In the published article, the authors have identified some errors that happened during the cropping and placing of the IHC images. All authors of the original paper agree to the request for these changes. This has resulted in the incorrect uploading of specific images in Figure 2C (confocal images of ABTL 0812 at 20 µM) and 2D (control image of the invasion assay) as well as in the panel C of Figure 6 that affects images depicting the expression status of pAKT thr 308, tunnel, CD34 and caspase 3 (for control, ABTL 0812 240 mg/kg and Everolimus 5 mg/kg). Similarly, in the panel D of Figure 6 the affected images include those for pAKT ser 473 (control only), tunnel, caspase 3 and HIF-1 alpha (for control, ABTL 0812 240 mg/kg and Everolimus 5 mg/kg). The authors have rectified these mistakes in the revised Figures 2 and 6 and the images have been replaced by the correct ones. The corrected Figure 2 and Figure 6 and their captions appear below.”

The correction was however in need of correcting:

This is one of Festuccia’s papers mentioned above, it has other issues:

Giovanni Gravina, Andrea Mancini, Alessandro Colapietro, Simona Delle Monache , Roberta Sferra, Flora Vitale, Loredana Cristiano, Stefano Martellucci, Francesco Marampon, Vincenzo Mattei, Filip Beirinckx, Philippe Pujuguet, Laurent Saniere, Giocondo Lorenzon, Ellen Van Der Aar, Claudio Festuccia The Small Molecule Ephrin Receptor Inhibitor, GLPG1790, Reduces Renewal Capabilities of Cancer Stem Cells, Showing Anti-Tumour Efficacy on Preclinical Glioblastoma Models Cancers (2019) doi: 10.3390/cancers11030359 

It shares data with another one from the above set, surely Frontiers will correct it also. There, Festuccia proposed to kill, pardon, cure cancer patients with oleander extract:

Alessandro Colapietro , Peiying Yang , Alessandra Rossetti , Andrea Mancini , Flora Vitale , Stefano Martellucci , Tara L. Conway , Sharmistha Chakraborty , Francesco Marampon , Vincenzo Mattei , Giovanni Luca Gravina , Assunta Leda Biordi , Daoyan Wei , Robert A. Newman, Claudio Festuccia The Botanical Drug PBI-05204, a Supercritical CO2 Extract of Nerium Oleander, Inhibits Growth of Human Glioblastoma, Reduces Akt/mTOR Activities, and Modulates GSC Cell-Renewal Properties Frontiers in Pharmacology (2020) doi: 10.3389/fphar.2020.552428 

This was also corrected, but what else can you expect from Oncotarget:

Giovanni Luca Gravina , Andrea Mancini , Alessandro Colapietro , Francesco Marampon , Roberta Sferra , Simona Pompili , Leda Assunta Biordi , Roberto Iorio , Vincenzo Flati , Christian Argueta , Yosef Landesman , Michael Kauffman , Sharon Shacham , Claudio Festuccia Pharmacological treatment with inhibitors of nuclear export enhances the antitumor activity of docetaxel in human prostate cancer Oncotarget (2017) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.22760 

In 2019, Oncotarget proudly corrected only Figures 1A and 2A and warned that “these corrections do not change the results or conclusions of this paper.” The recycled Figure 6 was not addressed, but MDPI corrected the Figure 5 in Gravina et al 2022:

“This error likely occurred when the pool of images, independently provided by several collaborators, was assembled. Unfortunately, it was not caught during the final internal review prior to submission. […] The text and figure legend are unchanged. The authors apologize for any inconvenience caused and state that the scientific conclusions are unaffected.”

Festuccia and his friends don’t really bother to hide the image duplications:

G. L. Gravina , C. Festuccia, V. M. Popov , A. Di Rocco , A. Colapietro , P. Sanità , S. Delle Monache , D. Musio , F. De Felice , E. Di Cesare , V. Tombolini , F. Marampon c-Myc Sustains Transformed Phenotype and Promotes Radioresistance of Embryonal Rhabdomyosarcoma Cell Lines Radiation Research (2016) doi: 10.1667/rr14237.1 

In case you are still unsure about who faked all those figures, ask the first author on this retracted study:

Claudio Festuccia, Giovanni Luca Gravina , Adriano Angelucci , Danilo Millimaggi , Paola Muzi , Carlo Vicentini , Mauro Bologna Additive antitumor effects of the epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor, gefitinib (Iressa), and the nonsteroidal antiandrogen, bicalutamide (Casodex), in prostate cancer cells in vitro International Journal of Cancer (2005) doi: 10.1002/ijc.20917 

This atrocity was retracted already in 2019, “due to reuse of several figure panels in the paper“, and of course the raw data was “no longer available for re‐analysis“.

Science was born in Italy, and that’s where they will kill and bury it.

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Retraction Watchdogging

Researchers with High Citation and Publication Counts

A sleuth collective convinced a society journal to retract fraud from Thailand. Which is no small feat, in all other journals the editors saw conclusions unaffected.

The lead authors are Siriporn Chattipakorn and her husband and fellow Chiang Mai University professor, Nipon Chattipakorn. Both received the “2022 Distinguished Researcher Award” from their university president in a ceremony “to honor the accomplishments & contributions of the researchers with High Citation and Publication Counts“.

This study was published just before the award ceremony, the evidence of fraud was posted on PubPeer from December 2022 on as “a collaborative effort of Drs. Matthew Schrag, Mu Yang, Elisabeth Bik, and Mr. Kevin Patrick“:

Thura Tun Oo , Natticha Sumneang , Benjamin Ongnok , Busarin Arunsak , Titikorn Chunchai , Sasiwan Kerdphoo , Nattayaporn Apaijai , Wasana Pratchayasakul , Guang Liang , Nipon Chattipakorn, Siriporn C Chattipakorn L6H21 protects against cognitive impairment and brain pathologies via toll‐like receptor 4–myeloid differentiation factor 2 signalling in prediabetic rats British Journal of Pharmacology (2022) doi: 10.1111/bph.15741 

The retraction arrived on 27 May 2025:

“The retraction has been agreed upon due to several instances of duplications found in the actin bands of the western blot presented in Figure 6d. Furthermore, multiple overlapping elements were uncovered in Figure 7a. The authors provided some raw data and an explanation; however, the raw data supplied was not consistent and raised additional integrity concerns. Due to the nature and extent of the duplications, the editors consider the results and conclusions of this article to be substantially compromised. The authors were informed of the retraction.”

The Chattipakorns, especially the husband, have much more on PubPeer, currently 26 papers. Like this:

Noppamas Pipatpiboon , Hiranya Pintana , Wasana Pratchayasakul , Nipon Chattipakorn , Siriporn C. Chattipakorn DPP4-inhibitor improves neuronal insulin receptor function, brain mitochondrial function and cognitive function in rats with insulin resistance induced by high-fat diet consumption European Journal of Neuroscience (2013) doi: 10.1111/ejn.12088 

This is also nice:

Patcharapong Pantiya , Chanisa Thonusin , Natticha Sumneang , Benjamin Ongnok , Titikorn Chunchai , Sasiwan Kerdphoo , Thidarat Jaiwongkam , Busarin Arunsak , Natthaphat Siri-Angkul , Sirawit Sriwichaiin , Nipon Chattipakorn , Siriporn C. Chattipakorn High Cardiorespiratory Fitness Protects against Molecular Impairments of Metabolism, Heart, and Brain with Higher Efficacy in Obesity-Induced Premature Aging Endocrinology and Metabolism (2022) doi: 10.3803/enm.2022.1430

Many were already successfully fixed with corrections, like this one:

Apiwan Arinno , Chayodom Maneechote , Thawatchai Khuanjing , Benjamin Ongnok , Nanthip Prathumsap , Titikorn Chunchai , Busarin Arunsak , Sasiwan Kerdphoo , Krekwit Shinlapawittayatorn , Siriporn C. Chattipakorn, Nipon Chattipakorn Cardioprotective effects of melatonin and metformin against doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity in rats are through preserving mitochondrial function and dynamics Biochemical Pharmacology (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.bcp.2021.114743 

The Corrigendum from February 2023 pronounced:

“The authors would like to point out that the wrong version of Figs. 6D and 7C has appeared in the published article. New representative Western blot images of the p62 (Fig. 6D) and Pro-caspase 3 (Fig. 7C) have been replaced. The corrected figures are presented in the below corrigendum and not alter the conclusions drawn from this work. The authors sincerely apologize for these errors.”

This paper will need a second correction:

Sakawdaurn Yasom , Papitchaya Watcharanurak , Narumol Bhummaphan , Jirapan Thongsroy , Charoenchai Puttipanyalears , Sirapat Settayanon , Kanwalat Chalertpet , Wilunplus Khumsri , Aphisek Kongkaew , Maturada Patchsung , Chutha Siriwattanakankul , Monnat Pongpanich , Piyapat Pin‐on , Depicha Jindatip , Rujira Wanotayan , Mingkwan Odton , Suangsuda Supasai , Thura Tun Oo , Busarin Arunsak , Wasana Pratchayasakul , Nipon Chattipakorn, Siriporn Chattipakorn, Apiwat Mutirangura The roles of HMGB1-produced DNA gaps in DNA protection and aging biomarker reversal FASEB BioAdvances (2022) doi: 10.1096/fba.2021-00131 

An Erratum fixed it on 25 January 2023:

“The authors report that inadvertent errors were made in assembling two of the figures submitted for publication. In both Figures 8 and 9, the left-hand row labels “Liver 1” to “Liver 4” are misleading and should not have been inserted. In Figure 8, the images in the 7m PC column should be the same as those shown in the 7m PC column in Figure 9, as the same group of rats is represented in both figures. In Figure 9, a different view of the image in row two of the 30m PC column was inadvertently placed in row four of the 30m PC column. The authors apologize for these oversights and for any confusion caused by the errors. These errors do not affect the results and conclusions reported in the article.”

Elisabeth Bik pointed out that not all duplications were corrected:

Actually, there are never appropriate duplications, because a reused representative image is not representative if it was the only one ever taken. Anyway, this can’t be explained:

This might help understand why most journal editors had no problems with the Chattipakorn fraud:

Nadezhda Fefelova , Suwakon Wongjaikam , Sri Harika Pamarthi , Natthaphat Siri-Angkul , Thomas Comollo , Anshu Kumari , Vivek Garg , Andreas Ivessa , Siriporn C. Chattipakorn , Nipon Chattipakorn , Judith K. Gwathmey , Lai-Hua Xie Deficiency of mitochondrial calcium uniporter abrogates iron overload-induced cardiac dysfunction by reducing ferroptosis Basic Research in Cardiology (2023) doi: 10.1007/s00395-023-00990-7 

The last author Lai-Hua Xie, professor at Rutgers University in USA, explained on PubPeer in May 2025:

“These images were solely for quality control and were not included in any statistical analysis. Based on repeated observations, we confirmed our optimized conditions were suitable, and we have since excluded such images from our data presentations. We have contacted the publisher for clarification or correction, if needed.“

Those are all just illustrations, easily replaceable. Anyway, what are you, a child, that you need pictures to read a paper?

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Potential instances of image manipulation

A retraction for Anne E. Willis, Director of the MRC Toxicology Unit at the University of Cambridge and Knight of the Order of the British Empire “for services to biomedical sciences and supporting the careers of women scientists“, and the University of Glasgow professor Martin Bushell, who testified as research integrity expert in defence of the fraudster Richard Hill. Read about Bushell and Willis here:

This paper is no more:

Ian R. Powley , Alexander Kondrashov , Lucy A. Young , Helen C. Dobbyn , Kirsti Hill , Ian G. Cannell , Mark Stoneley, Yi-Wen Kong , Julia A. Cotes , Graeme C.M. Smith , Ron Wek, Christopher Hayes , Timothy W. Gant, Keith A. Spriggs, Martin Bushell, Anne E. Willis Translational reprogramming following UVB irradiation is mediated by DNA-PKcs and allows selective recruitment to the polysomes of mRNAs encoding DNA repair enzymes Genes & Development (2009) doi: 10.1101/gad.516509 

The discretely placed retraction appeared on 1 June 2025:

“The authors are retracting this article because of anomalies in the data presented in Figure 2, A and B, panel ii, and Supplemental Fig. S1C. Briefly, the corresponding author was made aware of issues regarding the 0 h time point Northern blot data for ERCC1, ERCC5, XPD, and OGG1 and the 4 h time point Northern blot data for ERCC1, ERCC5, XPD, MNAT1, CCNH, OGG1, and PABP in Figure 2A and the ERCC5 Northern blot data in Figure 2B, panel ii. The issues relate to potential instances of image manipulation, including undisclosed splicing, lane flipping, and lane and panel duplications in the preparation of these figures. Due to the intervening time since these data were generated, the original raw Northern blot data for Figure 2 are no longer available for verification and analysis. In addition, the eIF2α Western blot data in Figure 1C were mistakenly duplicated in Figure 2B, panel ii, and Supplemental Figure S1C. Given these concerns and the inability to evaluate the original data for Figure 2, the authors have made the decision to retract the article. Ian Powley, Alexander Kondrashov, Lucy Young, Helen Dobbyn, Kirsti Hill, Ian Cannell, Mark Stoneley, Yi-Wen Kong, Julia Cotes, Graeme C.M. Smith, Ron Wek, Timothy Gant, Keith Spriggs, Martin Bushell, and Anne E. Willis are in agreement with this decision. One author, Chris Hayes, did not respond despite several attempts to contact him. The authors sincerely apologize for any inconvenience these issues might have caused.”

Willis was made aware of many other manipulated figures in her papers, see PubPeer record. Many are coauthored with Bushell. What about those?

A couple of weeks before that retraction, Willis received “the prestigious John Barnes Prize Award from the British Toxicology Society” at the society’s annual congress in Liverpool. In her award lecture on 9 May 2025, Willis celebrated her Nature paper from 2023.

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Unavailable due to a natural disaster

Elisabeth Bik announced on social media the 6th retraction for Thomas Jefferson University professor Guang-Xian Zhang. The sleuth also mentioned that she “reported 25 of Dr. Zhang’s papers to the university in April 2023, and got an acknowledgement of receipt, but never got an update.” All those papers are on PubPeer.

Hilariously, Zhang’s profile at Jefferson University highlights two of his previous retractions, so let me show them here. They are about the natural substance matrine, found in peas and lentils, which cures everything, unless retracted.

Quan-Cheng Kan , Peng Lv , Xiao-Jian Zhang , Yu-Ming Xu , Guang-Xian Zhang, Lin Zhu Matrine protects neuro-axon from CNS inflammation-induced injury Experimental and Molecular Pathology (2015) doi: 10.1016/j.yexmp.2015.01.001 

The retraction from 23 April 2025 went (highlight mine):

“Concerns regarding potentially overlapping areas of images in Fig. 3A and similar areas in Fig. 6A were raised in PubPeer by Dr. Elisabeth M Bik: https://pubpeer.com/publications/B002616E3A84011D7E895A3523DF68 In line with COPE’s policy for investigating post-publication concerns, the Publisher and the Editors determined that the concerns were valid and could indicate undeclared image modifications.

The authors were contacted, and confirmed the inadvertent mistake in Fig. 3 A, offering to provide replicate data. They did not agree with the concerns about Fig. 6 A. When asked to provide the original, raw data for both figures, the authors replied that the original raw data was unavailable due to a natural disaster that occurred in 2021.

After careful consideration, the Editors determined that the confidence in the integrity of the images has been lost, and retraction is warranted.”

The natural disaster was invoked in another retraction by Zhang for Kan et al 2014, about which I reported in May 2025 Shorts. There, the authors bemoaned “that the raw data were lost due to historic heavy rain and flooding in July of 2021 that affected the authors’ city and institution.”

Three more retractions (Zhang et al 2012, Yang et al 2014 and Li et al 2016) took place between March 2023 and March 2024. Those papers were sadly not about matrine. But the most recently retracted was, and it was also coauthored by Lin Zhu, professor at Zhengzhou University in China:

Su Zhang , Quan-Cheng Kan , Yuming Xu , Guang-Xian Zhang, Lin Zhu Inhibitory effect of matrine on blood-brain barrier disruption for the treatment of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis Mediators of Inflammation (2013) doi: 10.1155/2013/736085 

As you see, it shares data with the aforementioned Kan et al 2014, which was “lost due to historic heavy rain and flooding in July of 2021 “. The retraction for Zhang et al 2013 arrived on 29 May 2025:

“The retraction has been agreed following an investigation of the concerns raised by Elizabeth Bik on PubPeer [1], which identified concerns regarding Figures 2a and 6a.

Specifically, similarity has been identified between the features of several panels of Figure 2a with Figure 1c of [2]. In addition, multiple similarities were identified between the features of different panels in Figure 6a.

As a result of the investigation, the data and conclusions of this article are considered unreliable.

The authors had been informed of this retraction but did not provide a response.”

Meh, no mentions of historical rain and flooding.

This matrine fabrication by Zhang and Zhu was however successfully corrected:

Quan-Cheng Kan , Hui-Jun Zhang , Yuan Zhang , Xing Li , Yu-Ming Xu , Rodolfo Thome , Ming-Liang Zhang , Nan Liu , Yao-Juan Chu , Guang-Xian Zhang, Lin Zhu Matrine Treatment Blocks NogoA-Induced Neural Inhibitory Signaling Pathway in Ongoing Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis Molecular Neurobiology (2017) doi: 10.1007/s12035-016-0333-1 

The coauthor Yao-Juan Chu assured on PubPeer in December 2021:

“The pictures in our article are unique and there is no fraud, Although the positions you circled (only accounting for 1% of the whole picture) are somewhat similar, they are not exactly the same. In addition, other positions are completely different. These evidences completely rule out the possibility of reusing the picture. “

The last author Lin Zhu however eventually admitted:

“After carefully re-examined our manuscripts and raw data, it turned out that there were indeed errors in these images and we made a mistake during the figure preparation.“

Note that the historical heavy rain and flooding of 2021 did not touch the raw data for this paper, while it destroyed all raw data for the retracted ones by Zhu and Zhang. Also, the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Benedict Albensi published a lot of fake data himself (see August 2024 Shorts), so of course he swiftly issued this Correction on 18 May 2022:

“In the original article by Kan et al., entitled “Matrine Treatment Blocks NogoA-Induced Neural Inhibitory Signaling Pathway in Ongoing Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis” [Mol Neurobiol. 2017;54(10):8404-8418, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12035-016-0333-1 ], we have found that due to a mistake made during figure preparation, there are errors in the LFB-stained images in the Naïve + Vehicle group of Figs 1B and 1C. The correct Figs. 1B and 1C are displayed below.

The authors confirm that all of the results and conclusions of the article remain unchanged. The authors sincerely apologize for this mistake.”

They need to correct that paper again, because Bik found more:

As you see, some editors are decent, and some are no better that the fraudsters they are supposed to sanction. In this regard, Bik mentioned on social media her experience with another fake paper by Zhang, published in a society journal:

Jingxian Yang , Zhilong Jiang , Denise C. Fitzgerald , Cungen Ma , Shuo Yu , Hongmei Li , Zhao Zhao , Yonghai Li , Bogoljub Ciric, Mark Curtis, Abdolmohamad Rostami , Guang-Xian Zhang Adult neural stem cells expressing IL-10 confer potent immunomodulation and remyelination in experimental autoimmune encephalitis The Journal of clinical investigation (2009) doi: 10.1172/jci37914 

Zhang commented on PubPeer in August 2022:

“We apologize for this mistake, but we believe that this does not change the main conclusion.“

He then announced to “ask the journal editor to correct this erratum.” Also Bik contacted the Editor-in-Chief and Northwestern University professor, Elizabeth McNally, who on 3 April 2023 sent her this message:

“Dear Dr. Bik
If you have specific concerns regarding an individual and he/she/their scientific conduct, your concerns should be directed to the institution(s) that employs this individual.
If you have a specific concern with a manuscript(s) in a given journal, then the specific concern should be brought to those journals without mention of unvalidated concerns at other journals.
In the format that you have chosen where (emailing multiple journals with multiple concerns), you introduce bias into the process.
If you have a specific concern about a paper in the JCI, please include only information relevant to JCI papers.“

McNally obviously doesn’t believe in research fraud as character trait, but not because of some clueless naivity. Rather, McNally hates whistleblowers, especially Bik. Read here:

In brief: on the occasion of Cassava Science fraud scandal, McNally wrote in 2022 an editorial where she accused all data integrity whistleblowers of harbouring financial conflicts of interests. That was indeed true for some of Cassava whistleblowers (they were short-selling Cassava stock), but not for Bik, and anyway, the fraud they exposed was crystal clear and later on confirmed even by the US government. At the same time McNally stuffs her pockets as “consultant to Amgen, Avidity, AstraZeneca, Cytokinetics, 4D Molecular Therapeutics, Janssen/J&J, Pfizer, Tanaya Therapeutics, Invitae Corp and Exonics, and […] founder of Ikaika Therapeutics.” To this day, McNally’s journal refused to retract the fraudulent Cassava paper Talbot et al 2012, with McNally insisting that it is the whistleblowers’ evidence which is fake.

And this hatred for whistleblowers is also why McNally decided to not even correct Zhang’s fraudulent paper.

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Tekle Demsas is fictitious

Finally, a funny papermill retraction. It’s one of those silly animal-themed optimization algorythms.

We have three little piggies from China and a grey wolf. And a mysterious European: a Tekle Demsas of Tallinn University of Technology, an Estonian with a totally un-Estonian name.

Di Miao , Wei Chen , Wei Zhao , Tekle Demsas Parameter estimation of PEM fuel cells employing the hybrid grey wolf optimization method Energy (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.energy.2019.116616 

This was the recent yet undated retraction (highlights mine):

“This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.

Post-publication, an investigation conducted on behalf of the journal by the publisher determined that the author Tekle Demsas is fictitious. Also, Elsevier’s Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics team discovered changes in authorship between the original submission and the revised version of this paper. During revision, the authors Di Miao, Wei Chen and Wei Zhao were added to the revised paper without explanation and without exceptional approval by the journal editor, which is contrary to the journal policy on changes to authorship. Elsevier’s Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics team reached out to the authors for an explanation on the above-mentioned issues, but the authors failed to provide a response.

The Editor has determined that the authorship and the findings of the article cannot be relied upon and has decided to retract the article.”

Now, the corresponding author Tekle Demsas is fictitious. Yet somehow 3 coauthors were added, and one of the (Di Miao of Shenzhen Polytechnic) took over as the corresponding author. And nobody noticed, for 5 years.

It seems, this Estonian scholar was invented as a reviewer sockpuppet, like here:

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