Boys from Brazil

The Brazilian papermill crook Eder Lima managed to install his mentee Glaydson Simões Dos Reis first at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Umea, and then at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland.

All went smoothly, several Swedish and Finnish professors joined Dos Reis in his papermilling, but then I reported the PubPeer evidence to SLU and the Swedish National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct (NPOF). Dos Reis is in big trouble now, his Scandinavian coauthors aren’t his friends anymore.

Dos Reis arrived at SLU as postdoc in 2020, after he graduated with PhD in environmental pollution chemistry under Lima’s supervision at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil in 2016, and remained for a few years as Lima’s postdoc (CV here). This relationship led to a PubPeer record of 27 papers for the young science star. During his PhD, Dos Reis worked for a year in Germany, at the department of Kuresch Rezwan in University of Bremen. Save for one paper of questionable reliability (Dos Reis et al 2016), Rezwan was clever (or lucky) enough not to put his name on any further of Dos Reis’ fabrications with Lima. But the Swedes and Finns decided not to look a gift paper in the figures.

Lima’s own PubPeer record is huge, over 70 papermill fabrications flagged for outright fraud, excessive self-citations, or peer review manipulation. He was seen publishing with the worst of papermillers, but then again, it is rather being seen together with Lima which is a huge red flag.

Here a typical paper by Lima, in an MDPI journal:

Mohamed Abatal, M. T. Olguin, Ioannis Anastopoulos, Dimitrios A. Giannakoudakis, Eder Claudio Lima , Joel Vargas, Claudia Aguilar Comparison of Heavy Metals Removal from Aqueous Solution by Moringa oleifera Leaves and Seeds Coatings (2021) doi: 10.3390/coatings11050508 

The esteemed Brazilian scholar Professor Lima replied very respectfully on PubPeer:

“It seems that #3 is jealous of our paper. The experiments were redone, and a new figure was send to the Journal. How about you #3 send me some of your best papers, that I will certainly find some error. Maybe some tremedous error if you work with adsorption. It is a challenge.“

A Correction was published by MDPI in August 2024 and simply removed the entire Figure 2:

“The XRD analysis is not necessary as it does not affect the main scope and experimental conclusions regarding the remediation performance of the studied biomass-derived materials. The scientific conclusions remain unaffected”

Also text sections and some references were removed.

Here is Lima with his papermilling friends Navid Rabiee, Pooyan Makvandi, Mohammad Reza Saeb, Ali Zarrabi, Milad Ashrafizadeh, and the sacked US fraudster Thomas Webster, in Springer Nature’s Environmental science and pollution research. It lacked ethics approval for animal experiments, or (more likely) it is completely fabricated:

Soheil Sojdeh , Ali Banitalebi Dehkordi , Alireza Badiei , Ali Zarrabi , Pooyan Makvandi , Milad Ashrafizadeh , Mohammad Reza Saeb , Eder C. Lima, Mohammad Rabiee , Mohsen Asadnia , Thomas J. Webster , Navid Rabiee N-doped carbon nanospheres as selective fluorescent probes for mercury detection in contaminated aqueous media: chemistry, fluorescence probing, cell line patterning, and liver tissue interaction Environmental science and pollution research international (2023) doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-25068-0 

On 6 May 2025, the journal fixed this with a Correction: where the authors provided two ethics approval codes from Iran: IR.SBMU.RETECH.REC.1400.652 and IR.SBMU.RETECH.REC.1400.907. Which are of course false. The first code already appeared in an earlier paper by Rabiee (Bagherzadeh et al 2022), where it was used to perform experiments… on cell lines:

“The in vitro analysis was performed with ethical statement (IR.SBMU.RETECH.REC.1400.652) and approved by biomedical ethics committee in Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Two different cell lines have been applied, HT-29 (ATCC HTB-38) and HEK-293 (ATCC CRL-1721) (prepared from Pasture institute cells bank, Tehran, Iran). “

The other ethics approval also was issued for cell culture experiments, and for a person who is not even a coauthor:

Alexander Magazinov found these ethics approvals, and confirmed that the proposals were issued for unrelated scientists, unrelated experiments and even by an unrelated Iranian university:

The publisher Springer Nature and the Editor-in-Chief of that disastrous journal, Philippe Garrigues, seemed not bothered by this evidence of massive ethics fraud, and didn’t reply to my email.

Here is Lima again with Rabiee, Makvandi and Rajender S. Varma, who was kicked out in Czechia for being a papermill fraudster. It is a self-citation orgy for Rabiee:

Moein Safarkhani , Bahareh Farasati Far , Eder C. Lima , Shima Jafarzadeh , Pooyan Makvandi , Rajender S. Varma , YunSuk Huh, Majid Ebrahimi Warkiani, Navid Rabiee Integration of MXene and Microfluidics: A Perspective ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering (2024) doi: 10.1021/acsbiomaterials.3c01361 

This paper by Lima with Rabiee, Ashrafizadeh, Zarrabi and Saeb has all kinds of fraud: citations farming, copy-pasted images, and hand-drawn spectra. It seems that Saeb, who works in Poland (first at Gdansk Polytechnic, now at neighbouring Medical University of Gdansk), invited a colleague named Jozef Haponiuk to join. The editor was Lima’s friend Jörg Rinklebe (who was completely whitewashed in Germany, read June 2024 Shorts).

Sepideh Ahmadi , Vahid Jajarmi , Milad Ashrafizadeh , Ali Zarrabi , Józef T. Haponiuk, Mohammad Reza Saeb , Eder C. Lima, Mohammad Rabiee , Navid Rabiee Mission impossible for cellular internalization: When porphyrin alliance with UiO-66-NH2 MOF gives the cell lines a ride Journal of Hazardous Materials (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2022.129259 

Lima with Saeb and Rabiee, while Rinklebe acted as editor:

Navid Rabiee, Yousef Fatahi , Mohsen Asadnia, Hossein Daneshgar , Mahsa Kiani , Amir Mohammad Ghadiri , Monireh Atarod , Amin Hamed Mashhadzadeh , Omid Akhavan , Mojtaba Bagherzadeh , Eder C. Lima, Mohammad Reza Saeb Green porous benzamide-like nanomembranes for hazardous cations detection, separation, and concentration adjustment Journal of Hazardous Materials (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.127130 

Saeb will feature again in a Coda at the end.

Let us return to Lima’s amazing student, Dos Reis. When I reported this case to SLU, Dos Reis told me that Lima was his “PhD co-supervisor”, and started defending him:

“We can always make mistakes in our publications but never acting intensionally.
Regarding Prof. Eder works, I know him well and I don’t believe he has anything wrong (in this research).“

Followed by:

“I have to say that he always acted fairly when contributing with my papers. But due to these large amounts of issues you brought up I may consider the collaboration with them in my future works.”

In January 2025 Shorts, I reported about Lima’s first retraction. It was a joint paper by Dos Reis and Lima, editorially handled by Lima’s close associate Guilherme Dotto, chemistry professor at the Federal University of Santa Maria in Brazil:

Caroline Saucier , P. Karthickeyan, V. Ranjithkumar, Eder C. Lima, Glaydson S. Dos Reis, Irineu A. S. De Brum Efficient removal of amoxicillin and paracetamol from aqueous solutions using magnetic activated carbon Environmental science and pollution research (2017) doi: 10.1007/s11356-016-8304-7 

There were other issues, including a conflict of interests – editor’s (Dotto’s) past collaboration with Lima. The retraction arrived on 17 January 2025, Lima and Dos Reis disagreed with it:

“The Editor-in-Chief and Publisher have retracted this article. Following publication concerns were raised regarding Figure 1 and Figure S3, specifically:

• In Figure 1, the XRD patterns (b) MAC-1 and (c) MAC-2 appear to be almost identical and some of the peaks appear to have incorrect numbers
• Figure S3 appears to contain inconsistencies, including the signal being horizontally shifted between (d) and (e), and signals in (b) and (c) appearing to be inconsistent with labelling on the x-axis.

The authors have been unable to provide verifiable original raw data to address these concerns.

In addition, further investigations by the Publisher identified concerns regarding compromised peer review and editorial handling, and abnormal patterns of citation..”

Dotto and Lima either publish together or edit each other’s papermill fabrications. In the same journal Environmental science and pollution research, where Dotto is editorial board member, you can find many examples, like Wamba et al 2017, edited by Dotto and authored by Lima and dos Reis. Or this, by Lima, Dotto and Dos Reis:

Andressa Cristiana Fröhlich, Glaydson Simoes Dos Reis, Flávio André Pavan , Éder Cláudio Lima, Edson Luiz Foletto, Guilherme Luiz Dotto Improvement of activated carbon characteristics by sonication and its application for pharmaceutical contaminant adsorption Environmental science and pollution research (2018) doi: 10.1007/s11356-018-2525-x 

This paper wasn’t retracted, probably because Professor Lima provided a scholarly explanation on PubPeer:

“1 and #2 are trying to denigrate other researchers, maybe because they are weak researchers who are spread in the Scientific Community. […] . I strongly recommend that #1 and #2 return to their undergraduate classes and study more Physics and Instrumental Analysis because they were approved without learning the minimum of concepts to make a research.”

The journal editor, Professor Dotto chimed in:

“Prof Éder, thanks for your valuable clarification. I AM Sorry that you need to Lost time with these poor people“

The PubPeer debate continued in the same vein. Here is a paper by Dotto by the way, about incinerated chicken bones. It was published in that same journal where of course he remains editor even today:

Letícia Nascimento Côrtes , Susanne Pedroso Druzian , Angélica Fátima Mantelli Streit , Tito Roberto Sant’anna Cadaval Junior , Gabriela Carvalho Collazzo , Guilherme Luiz Dotto Preparation of carbonaceous materials from pyrolysis of chicken bones and its application for fuchsine adsorption Environmental science and pollution research (2019) doi: 10.1007/s11356-018-3679-2 

Lima also works closely with a certain British scholar named Farooq Sher of Nottingham Trent University, who is not only a papermiller, but also an owner of a scamference business. Read about Sher at the end of this article:

Here a typical paper by Lima and Sher:

Saba Sehar , Farooq Sher, Shengfu Zhang, Ushna Khalid , Jasmina Sulejmanović, Eder C. Lima Thermodynamic and kinetic study of synthesised graphene oxide-CuO nanocomposites: A way forward to fuel additive and photocatalytic potentials Journal of Molecular Liquids (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.molliq.2020.113494

Usually, Sher replies on PubPeer with his standard message:

“The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author Dr. F. Sher, email: Farooq.Sher@ntu.ac.uk, upon reasonable request by editors or individuals, please.”

This time however, this exact text was posted by the coauthor Jasmina Sulejmanović from University of Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Here Sonny and Cher, ahhh pardon, Lima and Sher, were joined by the Mexico-based Pakistani papermill fraudster Hafiz Iqbal (who featured very prominently in the article above). The last author Mirza Nuhanovic is also from the University of Sarajevo:

Hamad Sadiq , Farooq Sher, Saba Sehar , Eder C. Lima , Shengfu Zhang, Hafiz M.N. Iqbal , Fatima Zafar , Mirza Nuhanović Green synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles from Syzygium Cumini leaves extract with robust photocatalysis applications Journal of Molecular Liquids (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.molliq.2021.116567 

But those fake XRD spectra were at least based on something which used to be real spectra sometime somewhere. These, by Lima and Sher, were hand drawn by a drunk idiot:

Usama A. Al-Rawi , Farooq Sher, Abu Hazafa , Tahir Rasheed , Nawar K. Al-Shara , Eder C. Lima , Jabir Shanshool Catalytic Activity of Pt Loaded Zeolites for Hydroisomerization of n-Hexane Using Supercritical CO₂ Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research (2020) doi: 10.1021/acs.iecr.0c05184 

Here another joint paper by Lima and Sher, again with ridiculously hand-drawn spectra:

Ushna Khalid , Farooq Sher, Saima Noreen , Eder C. Lima , Tahir Rasheed , Saba Sehar , Roua Amami Comparative effects of conventional and nano-enabled fertilizers on morphological and physiological attributes of Caesalpinia bonducella plants Journal of the Saudi Society of Agricultural Sciences (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.jssas.2021.06.011 

But I keep digressing, we want to talk Dos Reis and his Swedish papers. Now look at this citation travesty by Dos Reis, Lima and Sher, their coauthors include Lima’s wife (and PhD student!) Diana Ramos Lima, and Dos Reis’ boss at SLU, Sylvia Larsson, who studied, did PhD and continued at SLU to become full professor in 2020, but then submitted her notice of resignation just before she gave her (pandemic-delayed) inaugural lecture in May 2022, and departed in September 2022 (updated information):

Mariene R. Cunha , Eder C. Lima , Diana R. Lima , Raphaelle S. Da Silva , Pascal S. Thue , Moaaz K. Seliem , Farooq Sher , Glaydson S. Dos Reis , Sylvia H. Larsson Removal of captopril pharmaceutical from synthetic pharmaceutical-industry wastewaters: Use of activated carbon derived from Butia catarinensis Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.jece.2020.104506 

It wasn’t the only bad paper where Dos Reis joined Lima and Sher, see also Lima et al 2022 or Teixeira et al 2022, the latter included Rabiee.

A similar self-citation orgy to Lima was detected by Alexander Magazinov in Dos Santos Feitoza et al, 2022, its coauthors next to Dos Reis and Lima being Rabiee and Rinklebe. Lima replied on PubPeer with:

“I recommend Dr. Alexander Magazinov should be worried about the quality of the information and not just the number of citations; it would be more profitable for the scientific community.”

Followed by this:

As you surely already understood, these men of science run a peer review ring, where they editorially handle and review each other’s papers. For example Thue et al 2020 (by dos Reis and Mr & Mrs Lima) was edited by Rinklebe. This editorial sabotage by Rinklebe and Lima, in fact even the above paper, were discussed in this article:

Now, two papers published in parallel by Dos Reis, Lima, Dotto, and a certain Saudi papermiller Muhammad Naushad of King Saud University, who has over 80 totally fake papers on PubPeer (more on him in the second Coda).

• Beatris L. Mello , Pascal S. Thue, Pâmela Vianini Da Silva , Fernando M. Machado , Mu. Naushad , Lotfi Sellaoui , Michael Badawi , Glaydson S. Dos Reis , Guilherme L. Dotto , Eder C. Lima Grafting 3-trimethoxysilylpropyl)diethylenetriamine on microcrystalline cellulose for the adsorption of dyes: Experimental and modeling studies Reactive and Functional Polymers (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.reactfunctpolym.2024.105836 
• Pascal S. Thue , Alfred G. N. Wamba , Beatris L. Mello , Fernando M. Machado , Karoline F. Petroman , Willian Cézar Nadaleti , Robson Andreazza , Glaydson S. Dos Reis , Mohamed Abatal , Eder C. Lima Magnetic Composite Carbon from Microcrystalline Cellulose to Tackle Paracetamol Contamination: Kinetics, Mass Transfer, Equilibrium, and Thermodynamic Studies Polymers (2024) doi: 10.3390/polym16243538 

This is the oldest one on PubPeer for Dos Reis. Here he is with Lima, Dotto and Naushad, and they invited the SLU researcher named Alejandro Grimm to join:

Roberta A. Teixeira , Pascal S. Thue , Éder C. Lima , Alejandro Grimm , Mu. Naushad, Guilherme L. Dotto, Glaydson S. Dos Reis Adsorption of Omeprazole on Biobased Adsorbents Doped with Si/Mg: Kinetic, Equilibrium, and Thermodynamic Studies Molecules (2023) doi: 10.3390/molecules28124591 

Here is Grimm and other SLU researchers with Dos Reis, Lima, Dotto and Naushad, in an MDPI special issue edited by Dos Reis himself. No wonder it passed peer review:

Simon Ekman , Glaydson Simoes Dos Reis , Ewen Laisné , Julie Thivet , Alejandro Grimm , Eder Claudio Lima , Mu. Naushad , Guilherme Luiz Dotto Synthesis, Characterization, and Adsorption Properties of Nitrogen-Doped Nanoporous Biochar: Efficient Removal of Reactive Orange 16 Dye and Colorful Effluents Nanomaterials (2023) doi: 10.3390/nano13142045

These bizarre spectra-free deconvolution figures would be comparable to a hand-drawn cartoon of a newly discovered dinosaur without any original data from actual fossils. And it passes peer review in a palaeopathology journal.

Which brings us to a set of two papers, which can’t be blamed on Lima. Again, we have scientifically illiterate and meaningless figures without any spectra and or even envelope of peaks, but with some deconvolution out of thin air:

• Ravi Moreno Araujo Pinheiro Lima , Glaydson Simões Dos Reis , Mikael Thyrel, Jose Jarib Alcaraz-Espinoza , Sylvia H. Larsson, Helinando Pequeno De Oliveira Facile Synthesis of Sustainable Biomass-Derived Porous Biochars as Promising Electrode Materials for High-Performance Supercapacitor Applications Nanomaterials (2022) doi: 10.3390/nano12050866 
• Glaydson Simões Dos Reis , Chandrasekar Mayandi Subramaniyam , Angélica Duarte Cárdenas , Sylvia H. Larsson , Mikael Thyrel , Ulla Lassi , Flaviano García-Alvarado Facile Synthesis of Sustainable Activated Biochars with Different Pore Structures as Efficient Additive-Carbon-Free Anodes for Lithium- and Sodium-Ion Batteries ACS Omega (2022) doi: 10.1021/acsomega.2c06054 

The above coauthors are Dos Reis’s superiors at SLU: the aforementioned Sylvia Larsson, and his Head of Department, Mikael Thyrel. Plus Ulla Lassi, professor at the University of Oulu in Finland. All presumably highly educated experts who should have never agreed to publish such utter nonsense, if they ever read their own papers, that is. Whether they saw those joke deconvolutions and approved, or approved without looking: either way, this behaviour signals gross professional incompetence and might even suggest research misconduct.

As it happens, the above Pinheiro-Lima et al 2022 paper shares data with this one, by Dos Reis, Lima, Dotto, Larsson and Thyrel:

Glaydson Simões Dos Reis, Sylvia H. Larsson, Mikael Thyrel, Tung Ngoc Pham , Eder Claudio Lima , Helinando Pequeno De Oliveira , Guilherme L. Dotto Preparation and Application of Efficient Biobased Carbon Adsorbents Prepared from Spruce Bark Residues for Efficient Removal of Reactive Dyes and Colors from Synthetic Effluents Coatings (2021) doi: 10.3390/coatings11070772 

Another deconvoluted nonsense by Dos Reis, Lima and Dotto, which for some reason was considered by two SLU professors, Larsson and Thyrel, plus by the French researcher of Institut de Recherches de Chimie Paris, Frederic Rousseau, to be perfectly good science worth putting their names on it:

Marine Guy , Manon Mathieu , Ioannis P Anastopoulos , María G Martínez , Frédéric Rousseau , Guilherme L Dotto , Helinando P De Oliveira , Eder C Lima , Mikael Thyrel , Sylvia H Larsson , Glaydson S Dos Reis Process Parameters Optimization, Characterization, and Application of KOH-Activated Norway Spruce Bark Graphitic Biochars for Efficient Azo Dye Adsorption Molecules (2022) doi: 10.3390/molecules27020456 

Obviously the SLU scholars were happy to have gift authorships, but now the excitement fizzled out, what with my notification of suspected research misconduct against all Sweden-affiliated authors. Dos Reis tried to save himself from their wrath:

“Dr Thyrel and Dr Grimm have nothing to do with these issues. It was my doing to collaborate with these professors and even myself had no clue about these related issues. Thus, Dr Thyrel and Dr Grimm weren’t aware about this papermilling activities.”

I reported Larsson afterwards, maybe that’s why Dos Reis didn’t defend her.

In case you felt this Scandinavian story needed an Italian – here is one: Francesco Gentili, an Umea researcher portrayed in this SLU story from 2024. In this paper, Larsson and Grimm are also on board, their handling editor was the Czech papermiller Jiri Jaromir Klemeš (who died in January 2023, but continued papermilling after his death):

María González-Hourcade , Glaydson Simões Dos Reis, Alejandro Grimm , Van Minh Dinh , Eder Claudio Lima , Sylvia H. Larsson , Francesco G. Gentili Microalgae biomass as a sustainable precursor to produce nitrogen-doped biochar for efficient removal of emerging pollutants from aqueous media Journal of Cleaner Production (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.131280 

Lassi had the bad luck to join as last author on yet another bad paper by Dos Reis and Lima. The boys published the same spectra in parallel, the second time without Lassi but with Dotto and other Brazilians. Grimm and Naushad are however on both versions:

• Glaydson S. Dos Reis , Julie Thivet , Ewen Laisné , Varsha Srivastava , Alejandro Grimm , Eder C. Lima, Davide Bergna , Tao Hu , Mu. Naushad , Ulla Lassi Synthesis of novel mesoporous selenium-doped biochar with high-performance sodium diclofenac and reactive orange 16 dye removals Chemical Engineering Science (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.ces.2023.119129 
• Raphael F. Pinheiro , Alejandro Grimm , Marcos L.S. Oliveira , Julien Vieillard , Luis F.O. Silva , Irineu A.S. De Brum , Éder C. Lima, Mu. Naushad , Lotfi Sellaoui , Guilherme L. Dotto , Glaydson S. Dos Reis Adsorptive behavior of the rare earth elements Ce and La on a soybean pod derived activated carbon: Application in synthetic solutions, real leachate and mechanistic insights by statistical physics modeling Chemical Engineering Journal (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.cej.2023.144484 

Lassi told me she got involved into working with Dos Reis via her colleague Tao Hu, who is associate professor in Oulu.

In this regard, look what utter shittshow by Dos Reis, Lima, Dotto and Naushad our Nordic heroes Lassi, Hu, Grimm, Gentili and Thyrel stepped in. And not only they, but several other Scandinavian scholars, in fact three more Swedish professors: Mahiar Hamedi of KTH, Emma Björk of Linköping University, and Jyri-Pekka Mikkola. The latter is professor not only at Umeå University in Sweden, but also at Åbo Akademi University in Finland, and will you be surprised that Dos Reis now works in Mikkola’s department there?

• Glaydson S Dos Reis, Alejandro Grimm , Denise Alves Fungaro , Tao Hu , Irineu A S De Brum , Eder C Lima, Mu Naushad , Guilherme L Dotto, Ulla Lassi Synthesis of sustainable mesoporous sulfur-doped biobased carbon with superior performance sodium diclofenac removal: Kinetic, equilibrium, thermodynamic and mechanism Environmental Research (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2024.118595 
• Ewen Laisné , Julie Thivet , Gopinathan Manavalan , Shaikshavali Petnikota , Jyri-Pekka Mikkola , Mikael Thyrel , Tao Hu , Eder Claudio Lima, Mu. Naushad , Ulla Lassi , Glaydson Simoes Dos Reis Box-Behnken design for the synthesis optimization of mesoporous sulfur-doped carbon-based materials from birch waste: Promising candidates for environmental and energy storage application Colloids and Surfaces A (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.colsurfa.2024.133899 
• Glaydson S. Dos Reis, Sarah Conrad , Eder C. Lima , Mu. Naushad , Gopinathan Manavalan , Francesco G. Gentili , Guilherme Luiz Dotto , Alejandro Grimm Synthesis of Highly Porous Lignin-Sulfonate Sulfur-Doped Carbon for Efficient Adsorption of Sodium Diclofenac and Synthetic Effluents Nanomaterials (2024) doi: 10.3390/nano14161374 
• Glaydson Simoes Dos Reis, Artem Iakunkov , Jyoti Shakya , Dhirendra Sahoo , Alejandro Grimm , Helinando Pequeno De Oliveira , Jyri-Pekka Mikkola , Emma M. Björk , Mahiar Max Hamedi Nanostructured Sulfur-Doped Carbon from Biomass and Its Layer-by-Layer Self-Assembly for High-Performance Supercapacitor Electrodes ACS Sustainable Resource Management (2025) doi: 10.1021/acssusresmgt.4c00258 

It of course makes perfect sense that Thyrel and Lassi appointed themselves as investigators of the Dos Reis papermill affair. Thyrel wrote to me:

“Dear Leonid,
Thank you for bringing this dire situation to our attention.
We take the suspicion of research misconduct and fraudulent behaviour seriously at SLU.
I, together with Prof. Ulla Lassi (cc) at the University of Oulu, will therefore initiate a thorough investigation into this matter. Prof Lassi is a trusted collaborator for us regarding carbon-material research in an ongoing EU project. None of us has been aware of any deceitful working methods that Glaydson might have used. Instead, we might have put too much trust in him.  
Glaydson left SLU and Sweden in November 2024 for a position at Åbo Academy in Finland.”

Lassi replied to Thyrell and me (highlights hers):

“I am totally against all research misconduct, and as a key member of Research Council of Finland must put effort on this to our ethical committee. Dr. Glaydson is currently funded by Research Council of Finland.
Before that, we need a deep investigation on what has happened. I will contact Dr. Glaydson from myself and ask him to explain those publications and original data. How do discuss with him already, and if not, I will recommend joint meeting with him to explain at the same time to all of us. Our research unit has measured XRD and XPS for two first publications (not all of them), and we have this original research data. If this is used also in other publications, it is unethical.
Once again, thanks for informing us.”

Lassi then set up a meeting with Dos Reis for 16 June 2025, demanding that he presents the original data for criticised papers, and added: “I am totally against to any research misconduct and have zero tolerance to this.“

Aren’t we all.

I tried many times to get Thyrell, Lassi and Larsson to explain to me why they approved of those insane deconvolution figures without any actual spectra. They refused to discuss this, and Larsson anyway never replied to my emails. Update: I was informed that:

“Sylvia Larsson has resigned from SLU in 2022 and has since then not been working within academia“.  

SLU’s Legal Counsel Sebastian Bromander informed me on 16 June 2025:

“SLU’s internal board has contacted Npof regarding the information you provided, and a formal case has been opened, 3.2-25/0076. We aim to be as transparent and cooperative as possible with Npof to ensure a thorough investigation.“

Abo Akademi University’s Vice-Rector for Research Reko Leino also thanked me for the information, and announced to “review and look into this matter“.

---

Coda about Mohammad Reza Saeb

The Iranian papermiller Mohammad Reza Saeb is Poland’s great hope for scientific excellence. He was recruited as head of a “PLATINUM Establishing Top-Class Research Team” to the Gdansk Polytechnic, a university I wrote about in this article.

More recently, Saed moved to the Medical University of Gdansk, where he is now associate professor at the faculty of pharmacy. In Poland, the universities need people who publish a lot, no questions are asked about the how, where and what the f**k. You don’t need to be an expert to recognise hand-drawn spectra:

Mohammad Chahkandi, Mahboobeh Zargazi , Khadijeh Boland Ghiasabadi , Jin Suk Chung, Mohsen Khodadadi Yazdi , Mohammad Reza Saeb , Mehdi Baghayeri Graphitic carbon nitride nanosheets decorated with HAp@Bi2S3 core–shell nanorods: Dual S-scheme 1D/2D heterojunction for environmental and hydrogen production solutions Chemical Engineering Journal (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.cej.2024.155886 

Saeb is a creative boy who loves to draw, and here he was joined by Gdansk Polytechnic professor Jacek Ryl (“World’s Top 2% Scientist in 2022“, self-described as “Always open to cooperation“). One wonders if Ryl ever looked at those spectra before putting his name on them:

Sharanappa Chapi, M. V. Murugendrappa , Ashwini Rayar , Gangadhar Babaladimath , Narasimha Raghavendra , Mohsen Khodadadi Yazdi , Jacek Ryl, Mohammad Reza Saeb Enhanced structural, electrical, and electrochemical performance of polyethylene oxides (PEO)‐based polymer electrolytes for solid state K⁺ ion batteries Journal of Applied Polymer Science (2024) doi: 10.1002/app.55390 

More great stuff by Saeb:

Vahid Vatanpour, Yaghoub Mansourpanah , Seyed Soroush Mousavi Khadem , Sirus Zinadini , Nadir Dizge , Mohammad Reza Ganjali, Somayeh Mirsadeghi , Morteza Rezapour , Mohammad Reza Saeb , Hassan Karimi-Male Nanostructured polyethersulfone nanocomposite membranes for dual protein and dye separation: Lower antifouling with lanthanum (III) vanadate nanosheets as a novel nanofiller Polymer Testing (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.polymertesting.2020.107040 

Saeb’s PubPeer record is huge, over 40 ridiculously fake papers, and as saw above, his collaborators include next to Lima also Navid Rabiee, Ali Zarrabi, Milad Ashrafizadeh , Gautam Sethi, Pooyan Makvandi, Rajender Varma and Farooq Sher. Here is Saed with Rabiee and his fellow Gdansk Polytechnic professor Krzysztof Formela, in an Elsevier journal delisted by Clarivate over excessive editor fraud and papermilling:

Vahid Vatanpour, Maryam Jouyandeh , Seyed Soroush Mousavi Khadem , Shadi Paziresh , Ahmad Dehqan , Mohammad Reza Ganjali , Hiresh Moradi , Somayeh Mirsadeghi , Alireza Badiei , Muhammad Tajammal Munir , Ahmad Mohaddespour , Navid Rabiee, Sajjad Habibzadeh , Amin Hamed Mashhadzadeh, Sasan Nouranian, Krzysztof Formela, Mohammad Reza Saeb Highly antifouling polymer-nanoparticle-nanoparticle/polymer hybrid membranes The Science of the total environment (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152228 

Here is Saeb with another papermill titan, Seeram Ramakrishna, on a paper where data was reused from a much earlier publication with an entirely different set of authors:

Ghasem Sargazi , Daryoush Afzali , Ali Mostafavi , Alireza Shadman , Babak Rezaee , Payam Zarrintaj , Mohammad Reza Saeb, Seeram Ramakrishna , Masoud Mozafari Chitosan/polyvinyl alcohol nanofibrous membranes: towards green super-adsorbents for toxic gases Heliyon (2019) doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01527 

Again the Gdansk superstar Saeb and his friend Masoud Mozafari and three French authors, Michael Badawi, Sophie Morisset and Henri Vahabi:

Peiman Brouki Milan , Sara Khamseh , Payam Zarrintaj , Bahram Ramezanzadeh , Michael Badawi , Sophie Morisset , Henri Vahabi , Mohammad Reza Saeb , Masoud Mozafari Copper-enriched diamond-like carbon coatings promote regeneration at the bone–implant interface Heliyon (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03798 

In their joint paper (Wisniewska et al 2023), Saeb, Vahabi, Ryl and Formella managed to cite an eidotrial about moth pheromones. The Vickers Curse struck, you see.

Here is Saeb with the papermiller Mohammad Reza Ganjali (read February 2025 Shorts), again with those hand-drawn spectra we all love:

Morteza Servatan , Mohammad Ghadiri, Mohsen Khodadadi Yazdi, Maryam Jouyandeh , Ghader Mahmodi , Ali Samadi , Payam Zarrintaj , Sajjad Habibzadeh , Mohammad Reza Ganjali , Mohammad Reza Saeb Synthesis of Cost-Effective Hierarchical MFI-Type Mesoporous Zeolite: Introducing Diatomite as Silica Source Silicon (2021) doi: 10.1007/s12633-020-00786-7

Here we probably have to thank Saeb and Ganjali not to have drawn the fake spectra by hand, but assembled them in Photoshop. Across the paper, the authors also claimed to have used not one, not two, not three, but four different scanning electron microscopes. Published in another Elsevier journal now delisted by Clarivate for papermill excesses:

Vahid Vatanpour, Seyed Soroush Mousavi Khadem , Ahmad Dehqan , Mohammed A. Al‐Naqshabandi , Mohammad Reza Ganjali, Sedigheh Sadegh Hassani , Mohammad Reza Rashid , Mohammad Reza Saeb, Nadir Dizge Efficient removal of dyes and proteins by nitrogen-doped porous graphene blended polyethersulfone nanocomposite membranes Chemosphere (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2020.127892 

So yes, with great minds like Saeb, Polish science can only win.

---

Coda about Mu Naushad

The trash papermiller Muhammad Naushad Shamim Ahmad, whom you saw several times as Lima’s coauthor above, is full professor at the King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. That univeristy (ranked 90th best worldwide) is bursting full from Highly Cited Papermill Fraudsters:

Smut Clyde suspects that the recurrent capital-letters title “HIGHLY CITED RESEARCHER” is in reality “not a boast but actually part of Dr Naushad’s name, bestowed upon him by pround parents with high expectations.”

Naushad was noticed by Smut Clyde and other sleuths via his former colleagues at Shoolimi University in India, Amit Kumar and Gaurav Sharma (over 50 papers on PubPeer), and by this route as a collaborator with Florian Stadler, a German in China. You can read about Stadler, Kumar and Sharma here:

Here is one common paper:

Amit Kumar , Gaurav Sharma , Mu. Naushad , Tansir Ahamad , Renato Cataluña Veses , Florian J. Stadler Highly visible active Ag2CrO4/Ag/BiFeO3@RGO nano-junction for photoreduction of CO2 and photocatalytic removal of ciprofloxacin and bromate ions: The triggering effect of Ag and RGO Chemical Engineering Journal (2019) doi: 10.1016/j.cej.2019.03.196 

This was buried under an Expression of Concern:

Amit Kumar , Ajay Kumar , Gaurav Sharma , Mu. Naushad , Renato Cataluna Veses , Ayman A. Ghfar , Florian J. Stadler , Mohammad Rizwan Khan Solar-driven photodegradation of 17-β-estradiol and ciprofloxacin from waste water and CO₂ conversion using sustainable coal-char/polymeric-g-C₃N₄/RGO metal-free nano-hybrids New Journal of Chemistry (2017) doi: 10.1039/c7nj01580a 

A German name on a paper forbids its retraction, such is the unwritten law for some academic editors. Hence, the case was closed by the Royal Society of Chemistry in September 2023 with an Expression of Concern “to alert our readers that we are presently unsure of the reliability of the XRD data reported in Fig. 2 and Fig. S6“, until Shoolini University finishes “to investigate this matter“, which is of course never.

Still, in 2023 Naushad, Stadler, Kumar and Sharma had to retract Sharma et al 2021 for “manipulation of images and data” (read June 2023 Shorts).

Naushad’s PubPeer record now stands at over 80 papers. He recently began to write his name differently, stopped being “HIGHLY CITED RESEARCHER” and FRSC, and even removed his profile photo. If any journalist ever associates him with those fake papers of Mu. Naushad, he will probably send Saudi killers to cut you into pieces!

A representative paper:

Antonysamy Jeyaseelan , Ayman A. Ghfar , Mu. Naushad , Natrayasamy Viswanathan Design and synthesis of amine functionalized graphene oxide for enhanced fluoride removal Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.jece.2021.105384 

You saw Naushad with Eder Lima and Farooq Sher, but he collaborated very promiscuitively with many other papermill professionals. Like with Lima’s German friend Jörg Rinklebe (Khan et al 2021) and other the members of the Rinklebe vortex, Christian Sonne (e.g., Aswar et al 2023, Wang et al 2023), Pau Loke Show (e.g., Gnanesekaran et al 2022, Rambabu et al 2019), Su Shiung Lam (e.g., Yang et al 2024) or Dai-Viet N. Vo (e.g., Halawy et al 2022).

Often the papermill circles overlap:

Amit Kumar , Sunil Kumar Sharma , Gaurav Sharma , Changsheng Guo , Dai-Viet N. Vo , Jibran Iqbal , Mu. Naushad , Florian J. Stadler Silicate glass matrix@Cu2O/Cu2V2O7 p-n heterojunction for enhanced visible light photo-degradation of sulfamethoxazole: High charge separation and interfacial transfer Journal of Hazardous Materials (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.123790 

Naushad also worked with the ubiquitous papermiller Rajender S. Varma and Varma’s colleague in Czechia, Manoj Gawande, read about them here:

Here is a common paper:

S Arulkumar , S Parthiban , Anandarup Goswami , Rajender S Varma , Mu Naushad , Manoj B Gawande Low temperature processed titanium oxide thin-film using scalable wire-bar coating Materials Research Express (2019) doi: 10.1088/2053-1591/ab5eed

Often Naushad’s coauthors are some no-names from India and Saudi Arabia, and obviously the papermills they rely on are very cheap. You get what you paid for:

Antonysamy Jeyaseelan , Khadijah Mohammedsaleh M. Katubi , Norah Salem Alsaiari , Mu. Naushad , Natrayasamy Viswanathan Design and fabrication of sulfonic acid functionalized graphene oxide for enriched fluoride adsorption Diamond and Related Materials (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.diamond.2021.108446 

Here a paper by Naushad, in an Elsevier journal with the very impressive impact factor of 13.4:

Mu. Naushad , Tansir Ahamad , Basheer M. Al-Maswari , Ayoub Abdullah Alqadami , Saad M. Alshehri Nickel ferrite bearing nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon as efficient adsorbent for the removal of highly toxic metal ion from aqueous medium Chemical Engineering Journal (2017) doi: 10.1016/j.cej.2017.08.079 

The coauthor and Naushad’s fellow King Saud University professor Tansir Ahamad assured on PubPeer that “the figure in question is original and based on authentic data” and that he would happily share “the raw data files […] with any authorized individual or reviewer upon request“. That dude has over 20 papers on PubPeer, he also posted the same message on his fraudulent paper Ahamad and Alshehri 2022.

We end with a very curious collaboration, Naushad with France’s superstar nanotechnologist Sabine Szunerits and her husband Rabah Boukherroub (read the article above):

Zhao-Hui Zhang , Zhi-Ran Yu , Yi Zhang , Alexandre Barras , Ahmed Addad , Pascal Roussel , Long-Cheng Tang , Mu. Naushad , Sabine Szunerits , Rabah Boukherroub Construction of desert rose flower-shaped NiFe LDH-Ni₃S₂ heterostructures via seawater corrosion engineering for efficient water-urea splitting and seawater utilization Journal of Materials Chemistry A (2023) doi: 10.1039/d3ta02770h

 Here an idea: maybe SLU can recruit Naushad in liue of Dos Reis?

---