Schneider Shorts 15.08.2025 – Leaks, unauthorized access, and unforeseen breaches

Schneider Shorts of 15 August 2025 – how to cite only good sources, two Californian professors and one Canadian victimised by time-warp conspiracies, with a Nature Exclusive, Cell Press refusing retraction, a German professor papermilling, and Manhattan Project of Eugenics!

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Industry Giants

Manhattan Project

George Church, MIT professor and serial entrepreneur, most known for his slightly unhinged de-extinction company Colossal, founded a new eugenics business.

Well, he didn’t found it himself directly, probably because a) some people still remember Church’s eugenics dating app digiD8 (read article below), and b) the new business is just too nasty for Church to be seen directly associated with.

This is why a certain Eriona Hysolli. Church’s MIT lab member and Colossal’s Head of Biological Sciences (celebrated as such in 2023 TIME100 Next!). founded the Manhattan Project: a business designed to deliver gene-edited babies to rich customers:

“We use precision gene correction to address inherited disease at its source, the embryo, before it can affect future generations. All of our work is conducted within the United States, under rigorous regulatory oversight and guided by deep ethical responsibility.”

Indeed, what a perfect timing to pick that name for a eugenics company on the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing. Under Trump and RFK Jr, this business not only won’t be sanctioned, the US government will probably provide the company with detained immigrant women to experiment upon.

Even if one doesn’t care about basic ethics and moral: how does one genetically edit out Alzheimer’s if science still doesn’t know what causes it and whether it is a genetic disease at all?

But actually, Church is not the main man behind the Manhattan Project. Another celebrity geneticist is.

Some may recall the case of Jiankui He in China, who in 2018 announced to have gene-edited human embryos which resulted in the birth of live babies. Back then, He was fired, his lab closed and he himself was put in prison for 3 years. Read here:

In his November 2018 interview with Science, Church defended He from criticism, which he saw “like a bullying situation“. Church admitted knowing He personally, and made clear he had absolutely no problem with this kind of human experiments:

“The most serious thing I’ve heard is that he didn’t do the paperwork right.”

In this regard, MIT Technology Review brought on 23 May 2025 an article about the other founder of Manhattan Project, titled “Meet Cathy Tie, Bride of “China’s Frankenstein”. The Frankenstein is Jiankui He, who set up a Twitter/X account after his prison release, @Jiankui_He:

“…over time, it evolved and started to go viral. First came a series of selfies accompanied by grandiose statements (“Every pioneer or prophet must suffer”). Then, in April of this year, it became particularly outrageous and even troll-like, blasting out bizarre messages (“Good morning bitches. How many embryos have you gene edited today?”). This has left observers unsure what to take seriously.

Last month, in reply to MIT Technology Review’s questions about who was responsible for the account’s transformation into a font of clever memes, He emailed us back: “It’s thanks to Cathy Tie.” […]

He’s posts became increasingly provocative, with better English and a unique sensibility reflecting online culture. “Stop asking for cat girls. I’m trying to cure disease,” the account posted on April 15. Two days later, it followed up: “I literally went to prison for this shit.” “

Yes, Manhattan Project’s other founder Cathy Tie is the wife of Jiankui He, since April 2025. He’s previous wife divorced him “divorced him in 2024 “because of a major fault on his side.”. In fact, we learn that Manhattan Project was originally set up by He 3 days before his marriage to Tie, and called… “Cathy Medicine”.

MIT Technology Review also mentions in passing that Tie used to be sponsored by none other but the infamous far-right billionaire Peter Thiel, a native German in USA who sponsors various fascist movements to destroy democracy:

“She became a Thiel fellow in 2015, when she was just 18. That program, started by the billionaire Peter Thiel, gave her a grant of $100,000 to drop out of the University of Toronto and start a gene testing company, Ranomics. […]

By February 2025, Tie was ready to announce another new venture: the Los Angeles Project, a stealth company she had incorporated in 2023 under her legal name, Cheng Cheng Tie. The company, started with the Texas-based biohacker and artist Josie Zayner, says it will try to modify animal embryos; one goal is to make fluorescent glow-in-the-dark rabbits as pets.”

What can go wrong. He’s wife Tie and Church’s uhm, let’s say “postdoc” Hysolli, found a eugenics company to deliver perfect gene-edited children for the ultra-rich men. Together with that insane lunatic Josiah Zayner. And it is quite likely that the money comes from Thiel.

I wonder if they were inspired by Epstein’s plans.

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Science Elites

Four Cameroonian Plant Extracts

Meet Udo Bakowsky, director of the Institute for Pharmaceutical Technology & Biopharmacy of the University of Marburg in Germany. He studies nano-scale drug delivery systems you probably already go ooof.

Here is cancer being successfully cured with not one, not two, not three, but four Cameroonian plants! In MDPI again, only the penultimate author is from Cameroon, all others from Bakowsky’s institute:

Ahmed Somaida, Imran Tariq, Ghazala Ambreen, Ahmed Mohamed Abdelsalam, Abdallah Mohamed Ayoub, Matthias Wojcik , Jean Paul Dzoyem , Udo Bakowsky Potent Cytotoxicity of Four Cameroonian Plant Extracts on Different Cancer Cell Lines Pharmaceuticals (2020) doi: 10.3390/ph13110357 

Another study from Marburg, and here the sleuth found something more peculiar than an image duplication:

Imran Tariq , Muhammad Yasir Ali , Muhammad Farhan Sohail , Muhammad Umair Amin , Sajid Ali , Nadeem Irfan Bukhari , Abida Raza , Shashank Reddy Pinnapireddy , Jens Schäfer , Udo Bakowsky Lipodendriplexes mediated enhanced gene delivery: a cellular to pre-clinical investigation Scientific Reports (2020) doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-78123-6 

Another MDPI masterpiece, this time Bachowsky is the only author from Germany:

Sherif Ashraf Fahmy, Iten M. Fawzy, Basma M. Saleh, Marwa Y. Issa, Udo Bakowsky, Hassan Mohamed El-Said Azzazy Green Synthesis of Platinum and Palladium Nanoparticles Using Peganum harmala L. Seed Alkaloids: Biological and Computational Studies Nanomaterials (2021)  doi: 10.3390/nano11040965

Another Egyptian papermill product, again MDPI, and what is this strange obsession with chitosan papermills have?

Sherif Ashraf Fahmy , Asmaa Ramzy , Asmaa A. Mandour, Soad Nasr , Anwar Abdelnaser , Udo Bakowsky, Hassan Mohamed El-Said Azzazy PEGylated Chitosan Nanoparticles Encapsulating Ascorbic Acid and Oxaliplatin Exhibit Dramatic Apoptotic Effects against Breast Cancer Cells Pharmaceutics (2022) doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics14020407 

It all is rather reminiscent of the case of another German ethno-pharmacologist Michael Wink, retired dean at the University of Heidelberg, whose former PhD students kept supplying him with papers of which one wonders if any research was ever performed at all, or rather bought off a papermill (read March 2024 Shorts). Considering the affiliations, exactly the same must be true with Bakowsky, the difference to Wink is: he doesn’t reply to emails.

Now, Pakistan papermills, and hooray, there can be no nanotheranostics bullshit bingo without curcumin:

Imran Tariq, Hira Hassan , Sajid Ali , Syed Atif Raza , Pervaiz Akhtar Shah , Muhammad Yasir Ali , Zain Tariq , Udo Bakowsky Ameliorative delivery of docetaxel and curcumin using PEG decorated lipomers: A cutting-edge in-vitro/ in-vivo appraisal Journal of Drug Delivery Science and Technology (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.jddst.2024.105814 

Mistake of oversight, will Bachowsky surely say. This also? the figures were published in parallel by unrelated authors!

Sherif Ashraf Fahmy , Eduard Preis , Udo Bakowsky , Hassan Mohamed El-Said Azzazy Palladium Nanoparticles Fabricated by Green Chemistry: Promising Chemotherapeutic, Antioxidant and Antimicrobial Agents Materials (2020) doi: 10.3390/ma13173661 

That Vijilvani et al 2020 paper also contains utterly fake EDX spectra. It was submitted on 10 October 2019 and published on 15 November 2019. Bachowsky’s paper was submitted on 19 July 2020, more than half a year later. The Marburg professor as the corresponding author can therefore take his pick: being guilty of plagiarism or of using the same papermill. But we know they will all agree it is not his paper and not his responsibility.

Finally, here is Bachowsky and his Marburg institute colleague, Professor Cornelia Keck, with a genius idea of new interesting ways to use a cucumber:

Abraham M. Abraham, Sabrina Wiemann , Ghazala Ambreen, Jenny Zhou, Konrad Engelhardt, Jana Brüßler, Udo Bakowsky, Shu-Ming Li, Robert Mandic, Gabriella Pocsfalvi, Cornelia M. Keck Cucumber-Derived Exosome-like Vesicles and PlantCrystals for Improved Dermal Drug Delivery Pharmaceutics (2022) doi: 10.3390/pharmaceutics14030476 

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Leaks, unauthorized access, and unforeseen breaches

Meet US cancer researchers Lin Zhang and his wife Jian Yu. They met as postdocs at Johns Hopkins University, then in 2002 they went together to the University of Pittsburgh, where they simultaneously became professors in 2015. In April 2023, they both left the east coast for the west coast to become professors at Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

And yes, they always publish together. 22 of their papers are already flagged for data manipulation on PubPeer. Like this, in the prestigious PNAS:

Suisui Hao , Jingshan Tong , Anupma Jha , Denise Risnik , Darleny Lizardo , Xinyan Lu , Ajay Goel , Patricia L. Opresko , Jian Yu , Lin Zhang Synthetical lethality of Werner helicase and mismatch repair deficiency is mediated by p53 and PUMA in colon cancer Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022) doi: 10.1073/pnas.2211775119 

Here an older paper with our young and creative couple and some academic heavyweights: Gerard Zambetti is Associate Director for Education and Training at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, there are also two Pittsburgh professors, Michael Epperly and Joel Greenberger:

Wei Qiu , Eleanor B. Carson-Walter , Hongtao Liu , Michael Epperly , Joel S. Greenberger , Gerard P. Zambetti , Lin Zhang , Jian Yu PUMA regulates intestinal progenitor cell radiosensitivity and gastrointestinal syndrome Cell Stem Cell (2008) doi: 10.1016/j.stem.2008.03.009 

There’s another older study by Yu and Zhang with Zambetti, Wu et al Gut (2007), a western blot was duplicated there.

eLife is a non-profit journal which generally has zero tolerance for research fraud. Let’s see if they read For Better Science. There’s an interesting coauthor: the McGill university professor Nahum Sonenberg who acts as PhD mentor to some Davis Joseph, the prodigy son of the known FLOGEN scamference organiser, Florian Kongoli (read November 2024 Shorts).

Hang Ruan , Xiangyun Li , Xiang Xu , Brian J Leibowitz , Jingshan Tong , Lujia Chen , Luoquan Ao , Wei Xing , Jianhua Luo , Yanping Yu , Robert E Schoen , Nahum Sonenberg , Xinghua Lu , Lin Zhang , Jian Yu eIF4E S209 phosphorylation licenses myc- and stress-driven oncogenesis eLife (2020) doi: 10.7554/elife.60151  

The Pittsburgh gastroenterology professor Robert Schoen is coauthor on both papers reusing same images. The second one has other issues:

Hang Ruan , Brian J Leibowitz , Yingpeng Peng , Lin Shen , Lujia Chen , Charlie Kuang , Robert E Schoen, Xinghua Lu , Lin Zhang , Jian Yu Targeting Myc-driven stress vulnerability in mutant KRAS colorectal cancer Molecular Biomedicine (2022) doi: 10.1186/s43556-022-00070-7 

Schoen again:

Xiao Tan , Jingshan Tong , Yi-Jun Wang , Rochelle Fletcher , Robert E. Schoen, Jian Yu, Liangfang Shen, Lin Zhang BET Inhibitors Potentiate Chemotherapy and Killing of -Mutant Colon Cancer Cells via Induction of DR5 Cancer Research (2019) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-18-3223

Song et al Theranostics (2020) by Zhang, Yu and Schoen has very similar problems. Zhang and Yu’s paper were first flagged in 2022 by the pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis, more recently Sholto David joined the hunt. Here older findings:

Xiangyun Li , Mei Li , Hang Ruan , Wei Qiu , Xiang Xu , Lin Zhang , Jian Yu Co-targeting translation and proteasome rapidly kills colon cancer cells with mutant RAS/RAF via ER stress Oncotarget (2017) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.14063 

This was already corrected, featuring Alberto Bardelli, the Scientific Director of IFOM institute in Milan:

Kyle Knickelbein , Jingshan Tong , Dongshi Chen , Yi-Jun Wang , Sandra Misale , Alberto Bardelli , Jian Yu , Lin Zhang Restoring PUMA induction overcomes KRAS-mediated resistance to anti-EGFR antibodies in colorectal cancer Oncogene (2018) doi: 10.1038/s41388-018-0289-x

In November 2022, Zhang replied with “We will look into the original data and handle this matter properly once we figure out what was going on.” A Correction was published in May 2023:

“Following publication of this article, the authors noted incorrect flow cytometry pictures had inadvertently been used to summarize the results of the described experiment in a file that was used to generate Fig. 2F. […]

The authors regret the error and confirm it does not impact on the conclusions of the paper.”

I don’t think anything Zhang and Yu ever published had any other conclusions except being totally fraudulent. But I agree, those conclusions are unaffected.

Here is a mysterious case. Data reused inside the paper and between papers by Yu and Zhan. But not only. Some western blots appeared one year later in a 2018 paper by another team of Chinese authors. But then again, the same western blot also appeared in a totally fraudulent Chinese papermill fabrication with a yet another set of authors, which was submitted to Oncotarget in July 2016 and published in December 2016. The mystery is that Yu’s and Zhan’s study was submitted to Cancer Research later, in November 2019, and published in January 2017:

Jingshan Tong , Peng Wang , Shuai Tan , Dongshi Chen , Zaneta Nikolovska-Coleska, Fangdong Zou , Jian Yu, Lin Zhang Mcl-1 Degradation Is Required for Targeted Therapeutics to Eradicate Colon Cancer Cells Cancer Research (2017) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-16-3242 

Here it became really interesting:

Jingshan Tong , Xiao Tan , Xiangping Song , Man Gao , Denise Risnik , Suisui Hao , Kaylee Ermine , Peng Wang , Hua Li , Yi Huang , Jian Yu, Lin Zhang CDK4/6 Inhibition Suppresses p73 Phosphorylation and Activates DR5 to Potentiate Chemotherapy and Immune Checkpoint Blockade Cancer Research (2022) doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.can-21-3062 

Not just these duplications. Some images in this paper stem from works published years before. And by totally different authors. And two of those were already retracted.

Both Qu et al 2020 and Yue & Sun 2018 were flagged by Smut Clyde on PubPeer in 2022 as the sleuth was chasing Chinese papermills, the former paper was retracted in June 2024 for sharing images with unrelated publications, the latter paper was retracted in October 2024, for same reasons. Again, Jian Yu and Lin Zhang are not coauthors, and neither is anyone of their colleagues.

But Zhang still could explain, as he did on PubPeer:

“3. We were shocked by your finding that two representative images in Fig. S6B appeared in a paper published in August 2019 (DOI:10.1111/jcmm.14591). Although our own paper was published in 2022, the experiments it describes were initiated before 2014. […]

4. We were deeply surprised by your finding that two panels in Fig. S4 appeared in two retracted papers (DOI:10.1186/s12935-020-01693-y; DOI:10.1038/s41419-018-0960-8) that were published prior to ours. […]

The only plausible explanation we can offer for Issues 3 and 4 is that our unpublished data may have been misappropriated, potentially via leaks during conference presentations, unauthorized access to files, or other unforeseen breaches.”

It a gigantic conspiracy, in fact a gigantic China Hoax which goes to the very root of the Deep State and must involve the Clintons, Obama and other Democrats!

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Appointed to assume

In UK, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of London was removed for bullying. The Standard reported on 30 May 2025:

“Professor Wendy Thomson was suspended following a board meeting on May 21, which was chaired by deputy chair Kavita Reddi, according to The Times.

In a letter seen by the newspaper, Simon Cain, the university’s director of human resources, confirmed the board of trustees had unanimously decided to suspend Thomson pending the outcome of an independent investigation. […]

In a second letter sent by staff to the board of trustees, Thomson was accused of presiding over a “culture of bullying and fear”.”

No details on Thomson’s bullying were provided, but what the journalists reported as a side note is actually another scandal:

“Professor David Latchman, the deputy vice-chancellor, was appointed to assume Thomson’s duties”

David Latchman! The multimillionaire heir who, when he was still Master of Birkbeck, was charged with research misconduct in countless biomedical papers, and escaped all responsibility by recruiting the most expensive law firm which then bullied his investigator and by donating huge amounts of money to his employer. Latchman’s mentees Tiziano Scarabelli and Anastasis Stephanou were found guilty and kicked out. Latchman himself was declared only “reckless“, because his lawyers re-wrote the investigative report which actually found Latchman guilty of research misconduct.

Now, we don’t know if Latchman is also a bully on top of being a cheater and a liar, to qualify for his new job as Vice Chancellor of the University of London. Fact remains the main problem was him, not just his fraudster goblins Scarabelli and Stephanou.

Yogesh J.K. Patel , Martin D. Payne Smith , Jacqueline De Belleroche , David S. Latchman Hsp27 and Hsp70 administered in combination have a potent protective effect against FALS-associated SOD1-mutant-induced cell death in mammalian neuronal cells Brain research. Molecular brain research (2005) doi: 10.1016/j.molbrainres.2004.10.028 

Or this, also flagged by Claire Francis:

• Elizabeth Ensor , Karen Mathews , Martin D. Payne Smith , David S. Latchman Sensory neurons from mice lacking the Brn-3b POU family transcription factor are resistant to death-inducing stimuli both in vitro and in vivo Brain research. Molecular brain research (2003) doi: 10.1016/s0169-328x(03)00322-x 
• Elizabeth Ensor , Martin D. Smith , David S. Latchman The BRN-3A transcription factor protects sensory but not sympathetic neurons from programmed cell death/apoptosis The Journal of biological chemistry (2001) – doi: 10.1074/jbc.m007068200 

You got the message. More in my older articles.

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Scholarly Publishing

Some authors disagree

Cell is being it nasty self again.

A Cancer Cell paper by the cancer researchers Sonia Melo (now zombie scientist at I3S in Porto, Portugal), her former postdoctoral mentor Raghu Kalluri, and his colleague George Calin (both professors at MD Anderson in Houston, Texas, USA), received a very peculiar expression on concern. I first reported about the PubPeer-recorded problems in this study in an article from December 2015, the study was just one year old then. Several more articles about Melo and Kalluri followed.

Kalluri previously set up a company based on Melo’s research, Codiak Biosciences, which raised huge amounts of money but went bancrupt in 2023 (read March 2023 Shorts). Only one paper by Melo and Kalluri was retracted, Melo et al, Nature Genetics, 2009, Melo also lost her EMBO Young Investigator funding (see my article from March 2016), other joint papers were saved, like the one which follows.

Sonia A. Melo , Hikaru Sugimoto , Joyce T. O’Connell , Noritoshi Kato , Alberto Villanueva , August Vidal , Le Qiu , Edward Vitkin , Lev T. Perelman , Carlos A. Melo , Anthony Lucci , Cristina Ivan , George A. Calin, Raghu Kalluri Cancer exosomes perform cell-independent microRNA biogenesis and promote tumorigenesis Cancer Cell (2014) doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2014.09.005 

The PubPeer evidence was all posted in 2015-2016. Elsevier and Cell Press knew and did absolutely nothing until now. On 7 August 2025, a bizarre Expression of Concern was published (highlights mine):

“The editors of Cancer Cell are issuing this temporary Expression of Concern regarding the above article.

Substantial concerns have been raised about the integrity of several figures in the publication. The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) has completed an institutional investigation into both the data in the article and related data in patent WO 2015/085096. The investigation identified the following issues:

1. The last six lanes of the Dicer blot in Figure 3A are duplicated, flipped, and relabeled from the anti-CD9 blot in the same figure.
2. Source data for Figure 2C tRNA^Met and Figure 5C derive from a single experiment but are labeled as separate experiments.
3. Figure 1G tRNA^Met appears to originate from the same experiment as Figure 1G miR-10b, despite being published as separate experiments.
4. The final three lanes of the anti-flotillin control blot in Figure 7B are duplicated from Figure S3A, though represented as different experiments.
5. Figures 1G miR-10b and miR-21 do not match the laboratory records, with mislabeled time points and missing molecular weight markers in the original data.
6. Figure S1I contains TSG101 blots that are mislabeled and do not correspond to the correct cell lines or experiments, with some data omitted.
7. Figure 5A tRNA^Met in the patent reuses a flipped version of Figure 2C tRNA^Met from the paper, despite being presented as derived from different cancer cell types.
8. Figure 5A tRNA^Val in the patent reuses and mislabels Figure 2C pre-miR-21 from the paper, again with mismatched cell types.
9. Figure 5A tRNA^Leu in the patent reuses and mislabels Figure 5D pre-miR-21 from the paper, also with mismatched cell types.

The MDACC investigation concluded that there are no authentic, original, and uncontested data to verify the results presented in the publication and recommended retraction of the article.

Some authors disagree with these findings. They state that MDACC previously investigated the publication in 2016 without recommending retraction and believe that this earlier conclusion should not be disregarded, as they are unaware of any new data integrity concerns. They also assert that all original data supporting the paper’s conclusions have been located and provided to the MDACC committee and can be used to correct the figure errors.

Cancer Cell is currently reviewing these concerns in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and Elsevier’s policies. This Expression of Concern will remain associated with the article while our review is ongoing. Once a conclusion is reached, the editors will take appropriate action. Should the editors determine that a satisfactory resolution cannot be reached with the information available, a further notice will be issued to update the scientific community.”

I wrote about that 2016 investigation by MD Anderson which indeed whitewashed Kalluri, simply because he rose $80 million for his Codiak scam:

But now that Codiak spectacularly failed and lost a lot of people (not just investors, also the public!) a lot of money, Kalluri’s standing is not as good as it used to be. Thus, a new investigation, which finally found fraud and ordered a retraction.

And if you are surprised that Cell Press refuses to follow up on an institutional request for a retraction: this is their normal policy. Unless the corresponding author begs for it, there will be no retraction. Leiden University Medical Centre was told by Cell press to go f*** themselves with their request for Maria Fousteri retractions, the university spent years twisting Fousteri’s former mentor’s and last author’s arm to make him agree to a retraction. Read November 2021 Shorts and here:

Now the question is: will MD Anderson give up, and do as Cell Press wants (nothing)? Or will they also waste years pressuring Kalluri to agree to a retraction?

Oh, and Melo’s and Kalluri’s coauthor George Calin is not just someone, he is the mentee of Carlo Croce and was so far completely untouchable despite all the massive fraud in his miRNA oncology “research”. Read here:

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We recognize the similarity

I previously wrote about the Knight of the Order of Canada Martin Gleave, distinguished professor of urology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and founding director of the Vancouver Prostate Centre. Gleave’s support also brought Amina Zoubeidi to the top, she is now UBC professor and member of the Executive Board of the Vancouver Prostate Centre:

Aneurus Inconstans followed in Claire Francis’ footsteps and had a look at more of Zoubeidi’s papers. He found a lot of naughty stuff there, currently around 30 papers on PubPeer in total. In one case, a journal by the the American Society for Clinical Investigation has acted decisively:

Shaghayegh Nouruzi , Takeshi Namekawa , Nakisa Tabrizian , Maxim Kobelev , Olena Sivak , Joshua M Scurll , Cassandra Jingjing Cui , Dwaipayan Ganguli , Amina Zoubeidi ASCL1 regulates and cooperates with FOXA2 to drive terminal neuroendocrine phenotype in prostate cancer JCI Insight (2024) doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.185952 

A clear case of plagiarism? Wait!

The finding above was independently made by Claire Francis and Aneurus. The former notified the journal, and received on 8 August 2025 this reply from Corinne Williams, Senior Science Editor at JCI Insight (highlight mine):

“Thank you for bringing the issue below to our attention. The Editors have had the opportunity to review the source files of the tissue microarray panels presented in the JCI Insight manuscript and have determined that the data were collected in 2016 by the pathology core at the Vancouver Prostate Centre (VPC), using British Columbian Canadian prostate cancer specimens obtained from surgeries performed at Vancouver General Hospital and UBC Hospital.

As the source of the samples was not clearly stated in the original publication, we have issued a formal correction to include this information (https://insight.jci.org/articles/view/196861).

We recognize the similarity between the images in the Frontiers Oncology paper and the JCI Insight paper; however, we are only able to o verify the data in our own paper.“

See, the editors believe the authors who say the image is theirs, and it was the Chinese who must have stolen it, jumped into a time machine, and published it 3 years earlier. You saw the same attitude in another Short above.

The Corrigendum from 8 August 2025 actually doesn’t even refer to immunohistochemistry data, but to “tissue microarray” gene expression dataset which “was generated in 2016 by the pathology core at the Vancouver Prostate Centre“.

Anyway, here some more examples of Zoubeidi’s research:

Thomas Cordonnier , Jennifer L. Bishop , Masaki Shiota, Ka Mun Nip , Daksh Thaper , Sepideh Vahid , Devon Heroux, Martin Gleave, Amina Zoubeidi Hsp27 regulates EGF/β‐catenin mediated epithelial to mesenchymal transition in prostate cancer International Journal of Cancer (2015) doi: 10.1002/ijc.29122 

Or this:

N Li , A Zoubeidi, E Beraldi , M E Gleave GRP78 regulates clusterin stability, retrotranslocation and mitochondrial localization under ER stress in prostate cancer Oncogene (2013) doi: 10.1038/onc.2012.212 

And more recent papers, without Gleave:

D Thaper , S Vahid , K M Nip , I Moskalev , X Shan , S Frees , M E Roberts , K Ketola , K W Harder , C Gregory-Evans , J L Bishop , A Zoubeidi Targeting Lyn regulates Snail family shuttling and inhibits metastasis Oncogene (2017) doi: 10.1038/onc.2017.5 

This is even worse, flagged by Aneurus and Claire Francis:

Nakisa Tabrizian , Shaghayegh Nouruzi , Cassandra Jingjing Cui , Maxim Kobelev , Takeshi Namekawa , Ishana Lodhia , Amina Talal , Olena Sivak , Dwaipayan Ganguli , Amina Zoubeidi ASCL1 is activated downstream of the ROR2/CREB signaling pathway to support lineage plasticity in prostate cancer Cell Reports (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2023.112937 

And guess what, the above paper was just retracted in August 2025:

“This article has been retracted at the request of the editors.
Post-publication, an investigation conducted on behalf of the journal by Elsevier’s Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics (RI&PE) team identified concerns around the authenticity of the following figures/image panels:
(1)
Figure 4D (WB ROR2 16D CRPC), Figure 5A (WB ROR2 16D CRPC), and Figure 6D (WB ROR2 16D CRPC) appear to depict the same source image but are described as representing different experimental samples;
(2)
Figure 4D (WB ROR2 42D ENZR) and Figure 6D (WB ROR2 42D ENZR) appear to depict the same source image but are described as representing different experimental samples;
(3)
Figure 4D (WB B-actin 16D CRPC) and Figure 6H (Wb B-actin 42D ENZR) appear to depict the same source image but are described as representing different experimental samples;
(4)
Figure 5A (WB ERK 42F ENZR) and Figure 5F (WB ERK whole lysate) appear to share an overlapping region indicating that they depict the same source image but are described as representing different experimental samples;
(5)
Figure 5D (WB b-actin) and Figure 6E ( WB b-actin) appear to depict the same source image but are described as representing different experimental samples;
(6)
Figure 5D (WB ROR2) and Figure 6E (WB ROR2) appear to depict the same source image but are described as representing different experimental samples;
(7)
Figure 5D (WB ERK) and Figure 6E (WB ERK) appear to depict the same source image but are described as representing different experimental samples;
(8)
Figure 5A (WB p-ERK) and Figure 6E (WB p-ERK) appear to share an overlapping region indicating that they depict the same source image but are described as representing different experimental samples;
(9)
Figure 6E (WB CREB1) and Figure 6D (WB b-actin CREB1 CRPC 16D CRPC) appear to share an overlapping region indicating that they depict the same source image but are described as representing different experimental samples; and
(10)
Figure 6D (WB b-actin CRPC C4-2B) and Figure 6D (WB b-actin NEPC 42D ENZR) appear to share an overlapping region indicating that they depict the same source image but are described as representing different experimental samples.
Figures S2B, S4B, S5D, and S5E also had issues that were discovered by the authors during the investigative process.
The editors and RI&PE team requested that the authors provide comment on these concerns, as well as the original unprocessed image files to aid investigation. Although the authors were cooperative in providing raw data, the editors, alongside the support of the RI&PE team, determined that the explanations and the data provided were unsatisfactory in resolving these concerns.
The editorial team has determined that the findings of the article cannot be relied upon and has decided to retract the article.
The authors do not agree with the decision of the editors.”

Maybe there was an Investigation in Vancouver, where Zoubeidi was ordered to ask for this retraction?

Not yet retracted yet very fake, a collaborative study with a fellow Vancouver Prostatian, Paul Rennie:

Peyman Tavassoli, Latif A. Wafa , Helen Cheng , Amina Zoubeidi , Ladan Fazli , Martin Gleave, Robert Snoek , Paul S. Rennie TAF1 differentially enhances androgen receptor transcriptional activity via its N-terminal kinase and ubiquitin-activating and -conjugating domains Molecular endocrinology doi: 10.1210/me.2009-0229 

And a paper from before Zoubeidi met Gleave:

Amina Zoubeidi, Joice Rocha , Fatima Z. Zouanat , Lucie Hamel , Eleonora Scarlata , Armen G. Aprikian , Simone Chevalier The Fer Tyrosine Kinase Cooperates with Interleukin-6 to Activate Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 3 and Promote Human Prostate Cancer Cell Growth Molecular cancer research (2009) doi: 10.1158/1541-7786.mcr-08-0117 

Let me end with a somewhat bizarre video of Zoubeidi. I guess it must have inluenced the decision of the men running JCI Insights?

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Bitter competition instead of collaboration

A major papermill study has just revolutionised everything. It was so important that the God of science writers, Carl Zimmer himself, wrote about it in New York Times, and all the media worldwide followed suit:

“A team of researchers found evidence of shady organizations churning out fake or low-quality studies on an industrial scale. And their output is rising fast, threatening the integrity of many fields.

“If these trends are not stopped, science is going to be destroyed,” said Luís A. Nunes Amaral, a data scientist at Northwestern University and an author of the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. […]

For their analysis, the scientists built a database of more than a million scientific papers. They searched for the papers in online forums where sleuths share duplicated images and tortured phrases, as well as the Retraction Watch Database, maintained by the Center for Scientific Integrity.

The researchers compiled a list of 30,000 papers that have either been retracted or show signs of having come from a paper mill.”

This is the paper:

Reese A. K. Richardson , Spencer S. Hong , Jennifer A. Byrne , Thomas Stoeger , Luís A. Nunes Amaral The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025) doi: 10.1073/pnas.2420092122 

And this is the Dataset S01 of 30k papers from “online forums” which you can download in Supplemental Data and which Zimmer spoke of:

As you will see if you zoom in, almost all of the sources the Richardson et al study used came from For Better Science, including all those Google Sheets files by Smut Clyde. Which is great, surely the authors will have credited our work with references and acknowledgements in the main text, not just with hyperlinks hidden in a supplemental Excel sheet?

Well, nope. Their acknowledgments only credit funding sources. The references never mention For Better Science or Smut Clyde. No, not because it is editorially forbidden to reference blogs – Retraction Watch is well referenced. Also these authoritative studies were referenced:

“Universities can sanction researchers with rescission of contracts. Journals can sanction authors with retraction of publications. Literature aggregators can sanction journals by removing them from their indices (deindexing) (38–40).”

(39) J. Teixeira da Silva, Paper mills and on-demand publishing: Risks to the integrity of journal indexing and metrics. Med. J. Armed Forces India 77, 119–120 (2020).
(41) J. A. Teixeira da Silva, A. Al-Khatib, Ending the retraction stigma: Encouraging the reporting of errors in the biomedical record. Res. Ethics 17, 251–259 (2021).

Of course they had to cite that stalker looney Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva (JATdS), who used to be a plant scientist and an image integrity sleuth, but then gradually went mad, paranoid, and deluded. JATdS publishes his unhinged brainfarts every few days and on any random topic, occassionally accusing everyone of everything. In predatory journals mostly, which makes him a valued expert on pradatory publishing.

Did the authors of the PNAS study ever read what JATdS writes? Most recent JATdS masterpieces were titled “Linguistic wokeism: Revisionism of the gypsy moth and Asian carp, and fate of the Russian salad” (Teixeira da Silva 2025) and “Variation in the Spelling of Ukrainian President’s Family Name in Indexed Academic Literature” (Teixeira da Silva & Erfanmanesh 2025), and I demand these must be also cited by Richardson et al. I have more suggestions of JATdS studies to cite, especially the last one in the list:

• “Unsolicited Emails and Spam: An Unsustainable Burden for Academics” (Teixeira da Silva 2025)
• “A Vision for the Formal Documentation and Digitalization of Sports Commentators’ Commentaries” (Teixeira da Silva & Scelles 2025)
• “Crow (Corvus spp.) meat: research possibilities to determine nutritional quality and health risks” (Teixeira da Silva 2024)
• “Why the secrecy behind an award-winning skin cancer-treating soap?” (Teixeira da Silva 2024)
• “Twitter should now be referred to as X: How academics, journals and publishers need to make the nomenclatural transition” (Teixeira da Silva & Nazarovets 2024)
• “Vigilantism and “Plastic Wrap Civil Justice” in 2022 during the Russo-Ukrainian War” (Teixeira da Silva 2024)
• “Is ChatGPT a valid author?” (Teixeira da Silva 2023)
• “Use of nasal tampons for on-field management of nasal bleeds (epistaxis) in sports” (Teixeira da Silva 2023)
• “A new dimension in publishing ethics: social media-based ethics-related accusations” (Teixeira da Silva & Dobránszki 2019),
• “The illicit and illegitimate continued use of Jeffrey Beall’s “predatory”open access black lists” (Teixeira da Silva 2018)
• “The opacity of the PubPeer Foundation: what PubPeer’s “About” page tells us” (Teixeira da Silva 2018)
• “Science Watchdogs” (Teixeira da Silva 2018)
• “Freedom of speech and public shaming by the science watchdogs” (Teixeira da Silva 2018)
• “Challenges to Michael Eisen’s bid for US Senate seat in 2018” (Teixeira da Silva 2018)
• “Preprints should not be cited” (Teixiera da Silva 2017)
• “Slang and profanity: poor moderation and journalistic / editorial standards by Retraction Watch” (Teixeira da Silva et al 2017)
• “An Interview with Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva: Insight into Improving the Efficiency of the Publication Process” (Teixeira da Silva & Shaughnessy 2017)
• “Why does Retraction Watch continue to offer support to Jeffrey Beall, and legitimize his post-mortem “predatory” lists?” (Teixiera da Sila 2017)
• “The Profoundly Unethical Nature of Retraction Watch’s Call for Coercion” (Teixiera da Sila 2017)
• “Ivan Oransky the 2004-2006 Digital Undertaker for Elsevier’s the Lancet” (Teixiera da Sila 2017)
• “Stings, hoaxes and irony breach the trust inherent in scientific publishing” (Al-Khatib & Teixeira da Silva 2016)
• “Leonid Schneider calls Springer Nature’s Science and Engineering Ethics Predatory, Without Proof” (Teixeira da Silva et al 2019)

But academia loves citing JATdS already (especially “Ethical perspectives and ramifications of the Paolo Macchiarini case“, Teixeira da Silva et al 2017), exactly because there is nothing else in the “peer reviewed literature” on those specific topics. And nobody in academia ever reads a paper beyond the title, even those academics who specialise on research integrity and publication ethics and berate others for using nonsense references.

By the way, the celebrity coauthor of the PNAS study, the Australian professor Jennifer Byrne, became in 2020 the world-known authority on papermills after she was falsely attributed with the work of Smut Clyde and other sleuths (originally published on For Better Science), specifically for finding over 600 papermilled studies and tracing them to a single Chinese papermill. A false claim which admittedly others kept making, but which Byrne never found time to publicly correct. I briefly discuss it here:

It is a bit ironic that five years later Byrne gets credited by all the authoritative media with Smut Clyde’s work on For Better Science a second time.

Because instead of the actual sleuths, authoritative sources like this had to cited:

“Agents for paper mills have also recently been reported to attempt to bribe journal editors (29, 30) and to “hijack” the entire editorial processes at some journals (31–33).”

(30) B. A. Sabel, E. Knaack, G. Gigerenzer, M. Bilc, Fake publications in biomedical science: Red-flagging method indicates mass production. medRxiv [Preprint] (2023). https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.06.23289563 (Accessed 18 October 2023).

Now, Berhard Sabel‘s papermill study was ridiculed and debunked by proper experts as rubbish already when it appeared as preprint (read May 2023 Shorts). That’s probably why it never resurfaced in a peer reviewed journal. But Sabel is a German professor who even wrote a book about papermills (or had one written, read May 2025 Shorts), and therefore he must be referenced.

And this:

“Because of the increasing complexity of the knowledge being created and increased specialization, the system relies on the good-faith assumption of genuine contributions by all participants (7–10).”

(8) E. M. McNally et al., Conflicting interests: When whistleblowers profit from allegations of scientific misconduct. J. Clin. Investig. 132, e166176 (2022).
(10) J. P. Tennant, T. Ross-Hellauer, The limitations to our understanding of peer review. Res. Integr. Peer Rev. 5, 6 (2020).

Now, Jon Tennant (who died in a midnight motorcycle accident in Bali) used to be celebrated by everyone in the Open Access community (including the Plan S author and former EU Commissioner Robert-Jan Smits), at least up until Tennant was ousted and shunned over accusations of sexual harassment. His sister Rebecca and others cried conspiracy and even murder, and blamed Leonid Schneider for their hero’s death as if I was some brand of alcohol. A great guy to be cited.

Elizabeth MCNally accused Elisabeth Bik and other sleuths in her referenced editorial of being greedy rotten characters who slander scientists for money. Discussed here:

Maybe this is why For Better Science and its contributors are not thanked or referenced. We are bad, horrible, nasty people. Unlike Tennant or JATdS.

By the way, there is a supplementary text (Appendix 01) with more references. None again to For Better Science though. At least there, David Bimler aka Smut Clyde gets mentioned, but not for providing the immense dataset which the Richardson et al study used:

” Like disease and gene regulation, there are other fields with a high demand for publications for which templates could be used to produce plausibly-motivated but otherwise fraudulent publications. For instance, there is growing concern about papermills in materials science (20, 21)…”

(20) D Bimler, Better living through coordination chemistry: A descriptive study of a prolific papermill that combines crystallography and medicine. Res. Sq. (2022).246
(21) R Richardson, J Moon, SS Hong, LA Amaral, Widespread misidentification of sem instruments in the peer-reviewed materials science and engineering literature. OSF Prepr. (2024).

The lead author Reese Richardson is also a sleuth, he described his study as “A do-or-die moment for the scientific enterprise” in his blog, where he also decided never to mention For Better Science or Smut Clyde, whose work he used for his research. Instead, Reese decided to warn the humanity of a future where scientific exploration will cease to exist, leaving humanity only with “bitter competition instead of collaboration, pageantry instead of exploration“, “drudgerous pursuit of meaningless metrics” and “cheap answers” instead of abundant questions and wondering.

My readers know that Reese describes the already existing daily reality in academia worldwide. The “bitter competition instead of collaboration” bit can be even observed on his own PNAS paper.

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A million thing to do

In the context of the above discussed Richardson et al PNAS 2025 study, Nature revealed on 7 August 2025 their own “Exclusive“:

“Nearly one-third of all retracted papers at PLoS ONE can be traced back to just 45 researchers who served as editors at the journal, an analysis of its publication records has found.

The study¹, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on 4 August, found that 45 editors handled only 1.3% of all articles published by PLoS ONE from 2006 to 2023, but that the papers they accepted accounted for more than 30% of the 702 retractions that the journal issued by early 2024.”

Alexander Magazinov was not impressed by this clever conclusion. He instead proposed a hypothesis “that so many retractions are concentrated with that few editors is because that’s how sleuths work, not because of how papermills work“. Basically, the editorial boards at PLOS One and of other journals are populated by masses of scientific nobodies like Lv whose only talent is papermilling. Pick any one, and you will find problems.

But Nature is certainly not interested in what Magazinov thinks, and here is why.

“Nature’s analysis identified 3 of those 19 editors. […] Another editor flagged in Nature’s analysis is Zhihan Lv (also known as Zhihan Lyu), a researcher in virtual reality, who ranked second in the list of editors who handled high numbers of retracted PLoS ONE papers. Between 2017 and 2021, Lv edited 54 papers, and 43 of these have been retracted, including 31 this year. All notices cited concerns about peer-review integrity and potential manipulation of the publication process.”

Actually, no. Zhihan Lv was identified by Magazinov, reported to PLOS One and the University of Uppsala where Lv worked at that time, and we also notified the Swedish national authority NPOF, and published the outcome on For Better Science. None of that was mentioned in the Nature‘s “Exclusive” reporting.

I clarified this on social media, and received this astounishing message from the Nature journalist, Miryam Naddaf, who eventually admitted to have based her “Exclusive” reporting exclusively on For Better Science material:

“I read the blog when I first started working on this piece months ago, and I read the report that you kindly had available in English in there. Because I read your note on the possibility of Zhihan Lv and Haibin Lv being brothers, I included a question about whether they were blood related in the emails I sent them.

The last few days, basically since I received the embargoed PNAS press release and learned that the paper was coming out on Monday, I just had a million thing to do, the writing, fact checking and making sure everyone involved or mentioned had the right to respond. I can’t pin on anyone else, it’s truly a shortcoming on my end. But I’m thankful that you pointed out to it and that we can make it right for you and Alexander.”

Some time later, Nature added a paragraph crediting Magazinov and For Better Science. No actual reference to the For Better Science article and no editorial note to highlight this change were added. There’s just this:

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