Schneider Shorts 26.09.2025 – We will take serious clown action against you

Schneider Shorts of 26 September 2025 – Why papermilling is good: perspectives from university’s legal counsel in Denmark, Nobel laureate and his mentee in UK, Pakistani scholars in Poland, with a cure for Huntington’s and resurrected dodo, and finally, why all hope is lost for US immunology.

---

---

Science Elites

The use of Professor Sonnes’s image

You probably already heard of Christian Sonne, professor of wildlife ecology at Aarhus University in Denmark and polymath papermiller. An entire article was dedicated to him and his closest associates in early 2024:

Back then, Aarhus University informed Alexander Magazinov that they will never investigate Sonne or any other faculty, no matter what evidence Magazinov might try to submit. Thus, the sleuths continued posting about Sonne’s papers on PubPeer (125 threads now, mostly about peer review conflicts of interests), I continued reporting. and we never heard from him or his university.

Until now.

On 19 September 2025, I received this message from the Danish Centre for Environment and Energy (DCE) at Aarhus University, subject: “Unauthorised use of a photograph – j.nr. 2025-089687“

“Att. Leonid Schneider

It has come to our attention that Professor Christian Sonnes’s personal photograph has been published on your site without his prior consent.

Please be advised that:

1. The use of Professor Sonnes’s image constitutes a violation of his personal rights and data protection laws (including GDPR).
2. Such use is not covered by any “fair use” or citation exception, as a portrait photograph does not fall within the scope of scholarly citation.
3. Continued publication of the image without authorization exposes you to liability, including but not limited to:

• Formal complaints to data protection authorities,
• Civil claims for damages and injunctive relief,
• Possible reputational consequences within the academic publishing community.

We therefore demand that you immediately remove Professor Sonnes’s photograph from all online platforms and any printed versions.

In addition, please note that we are currently reviewing our position with regard to the manner in which Professor Sonne has otherwise been cited and subjected to what we consider to be intimidatory treatment on your site. We reserve all rights in this respect.

Regards,

Gry Bagger
Chief legal advisor
Cand. Jur.

I replied in the most polite fashion, as I always do when dealing with such people. Now, the possibly relevant aspect is that in our article about Sonne we never used any portrait photo of his. Also because this would be mean – Sonne is not a conventional beauty, judge for yourself:

Instead, we used a more discreet profile screenshot, from ResearchGate:

We did however use a portrait photo of Sonne’s close associate Jörg Rinklebe, professor at the University of Wuppertal in Germany. Most of Sonne’s PubPeer entries are about manipulated peer review process, Rinklebe often plays a role, the two men are members of a large gang of Asian papermillers led by Pau Loke Show, where they edit and peer review each other’s papers.

We also used a portrait photo of another Aarhus professor – Mika Sillanpää, the sexual harasser. I suggested to Gry Bagger to threaten me on behalf of Mika instead.

As the cover image for our article, I used a still from the Danish horror comedy “Men and Chicken“. Maybe Sonne recognised himself there? I start suspecting that the inspiration for that movie came from Aarhus University.

By the way, Nature must have read our article, and invited Sonne to contribute his portrait photo of questionable aesthetics, and an article about how papermillers must unite to save the world:

In July 2025 Shorts, I wrote about Sonne’s first retraction, maybe more are expected, hence Gry Bagger’s pathetic attempt?

By the way, the papermiller and peer-review manipulator Sonne has a weird sense of humour. As editor of the Elsevier journal The Science of the total environment (STOTEN), he once published an editorial in defence of peer review quality. At that time, his journal was publishing little else but papermill fraud.

Christian Sonne , Aage K O Alstrup Discussion: Peer-review under siege The Science of the total environment (2019) doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.09.297 

STOTEN‘s Editor-in-Chief Damia Barcelo excessed in papermilling and sabotaging peer review so badly (he even edited his own papers) that he was kicked out and then went complaining to Science Guardians.

---

We will take serious clown action against you

More silly threats!

Meet the Pakistani scholar Balal Yousaf, professor at the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice, Poland, where international papermillers keep finding a welcoming home. Yousaf’s arrival was celebrated by the university in August 2023, this “a leading expert in waste management and environmental engineering” was scheduled to stay for 2 years. Of course Yousaf is an expert papermiller himself, certified by his PubPeer record.

It seems, Yousaf was so unhappy about having to leave Poland, that he blamed my reporting and sent his friends to complain. In August 2025, just as Yousaf’s stay at Silesian Polytechnic ended, some Seeed Q Abbass complained in a comment:

“I am a dedicated follower of Esteemed Professor Dr. Eng. Balal Yousaf‘s scientific work. He is an idol in the scientific community for many scientists worldwide, especially in Pakistan. We MUST clarify that Professor Balal Yousaf is not associated with Dr. Muhammad Bilal, whose retracted papers led to his expulsion from Gdansk University. Esteemed Professor Dr. Eng. Balal Yousaf is a distinguished scientist with significant funding and academic achievements. He has secured over 5 million euros in funding from NCN, China, and EU-Horizon, etc. establishing his untouchable reputation. Be assured that no one pays attention to your BASELESS comments on PubPeer. Publishers and journals do not take such BASELESS comments seriously, just as they have ignored the thousands of comments you posted about Esteemed Professor Jörg Rinklebe’s papers.“

Seed Q Abbas is most obviously Qumber Abbas, who also works at Silesian Polytechnic. Here a common paper by Abbas, Yousaf and the German professor Jörg Rinklebe, its handling editor was Rinklebe’s close associate Christian Sonne, the one who just threatened me in the Shorts above!

Qumber Abbas , Balal Yousaf, Mehr Ahmed Mujtaba Munir , Ayesha Imtiyaz Cheema , Imran Hussain , Jörg Rinklebe Biochar-mediated transformation of titanium dioxide nanoparticles concerning TiO2NPs-biochar interactions, plant traits and tissue accumulation to cell translocation Environmental pollution (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2020.116077 

In parallel, Rinklebe acted as handling editor for Yousaf’s papers El-Naggar et al 2022, Rashid et al 2022, El-Naggar et al 2021, and prior to that, for Abbas et al 2019. Here another papermill product by Yousaf and Rinklebe, edited by their friend Muhammad Zia-ur-Rehman, and featuring hand-drawn spectra:

Xueping Wang , Xiaojie Liu , Xiao Yang , Lingqing Wang, Jun Yang , Xiulan Yan , Tao Liang , Hans Chr. Bruun Hansen , Balal Yousaf, Sabry M. Shaheen , Nanthi Bolan, Jörg Rinklebe In vivo phytotoxic effect of yttrium-oxide nanoparticles on the growth, uptake and translocation of tomato seedlings (Lycopersicon esculentum) Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2022.113939 

Here a paper by Yousaf and Ur Rehman:

Muhammad Arif , Guijian Liu, Muhammad Zia Ur Rehman , Md Manik Mian , Aniqa Ashraf , Balal Yousaf, Muhammad Saqib Rashid , Rafay Ahmed , Muhammad Imran , Mehr Ahmed Mujtaba Munir Impregnation of biochar with montmorillonite and its activation for the removal of azithromycin from aqueous media Environmental science and pollution research international (2023) doi: 10.1007/s11356-023-27908-z 

Ur Rehman and Yousaf were also seen manipulating peer review process with the papermill fraudsters Shafaqat Ali and Parvaiz Ahmad in Ali et al 2019. Here are Yousaf and Ur Rehman again:

Muhammad Arif , Guijian Liu , Muhammad Zia Ur Rehman , Balal Yousaf , Rafay Ahmed , Md Manik Mian , Aniqa Ashraf , Mehr Ahmed Mujtaba Munir , Muhammad Saqib Rashid , Asif Naeem Carbon dioxide activated biochar-clay mineral composite efficiently removes ciprofloxacin from contaminated water – Reveals an incubation study Journal of Cleaner Production (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.130079 

This Yousaf masterpiece must have made Silesian Polytechnic very proud:

Maria Ameen , Mushtaq Ahmad, Muhammad Zafar, Balal Yousaf, Muhammad Faisal Amin, Iftikhar Ahmed , Shabir Ahmad Sustainable biodiesel production from non-food biomass of Cucumis prophetarum via waste peel-based phyto-nanocomposite in membrane reactor: An innovative outlay for waste management and circular bioeconomy Biomass and Bioenergy (2025) doi: 10.1016/j.biombioe.2025.108149 

On 19 September 2025, I received this message from Yousaf’s associate Muhammad Ubaid Ali, who, as the IP address suggested, is also located in Poland:

“Mr. Leonid
We know you are behind this scenario against Esteemed Professor Dr. Eng. Balal Yousaf. Esteemed Professor Dr. Eng. Balal Yousaf is an outstanding professor in the world; no one can challenge him. He has gained a huge amount of funding for SUT. If you continue this clown action, we will take serious action against you under Polish law.
Regarding your wrong accusations, regarding his field of research, “BIOCHAR is a sodding biomarker for papermill fraudsters in chemical engineering like ncRNA in biomedicine.” It is not your business what he is working on. He is the top scientist in the field of biochar and biology worldwide. I do recommend that you stop such clown action. Good luck“

Here is a joint paper by Ubaid Ali and Yousaf, guess who the handling editor was:

Muhammad Ubaid Ali, Yangmei Yu, Balal Yousaf, Mehr Ahmed Mujtaba Munir , Sami Ullah, Chunmiao Zheng, Xingxing Kuang, Ming Hung Wong Health impacts of indoor air pollution from household solid fuel on children and women Journal of Hazardous Materials (2021) doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.126127 

You probably guessed the editor correctly – Rinklebe. His University of Wuppertal some time ago grudgingly informed me that they will have open an investigation of their professor, after allcasal.

Youssaf deleted his LinkedIn profile.

---

The highest standards of scientific accuracy and ethics

On 18 September 2025, Retraction Watch brought another Sexclusive Exclusive, apparently a publisher is investigating a recently published paper – some antivax rubbish COVID-19 vaccines – so basically this is Taylor & Francis against RFK Jr. These days such antivax papers are particularly dangerous for US national healthcare policies, for obvious reasons.

A detail in the Retraction Watch‘s article caught the attention of the pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis:

“Paolo Casali, editor-in-chief of Autoimmunity, did not respond to our request for comment. “

As it happens, in spring 2019 I reported the Italian native Paolo Casali for suspected research misconduct to his University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA), I also pleaded with the society publisher, American Association of Immunologists (AAI), and the editors of their Journal of Immunology to act upon Casali’s falsified papers with his former mentee and Italian compatriot Andrea Cerutti. Read here:

Nobody ever replied to me. UTSA Vice President for Research Andrea Giuffrida remained silent and took side of his fellow Italian Casali. Also Cerutti’s employers, Icahn School of Medicine in USA and ICREA in Spain, remained silent. AAI also stayed mum and did absolutely nothing – after all Cerutti used to be the associate editor of Journal of Immunology. Not even corrections were issued. Ranks were closed, waggons were circled, internal whistleblowers probably hung on trees. Nobody except this website aver said a word about Casali’s or Cerutti’s fake science.

Imagine if things were different. Imagine if academic medicine wasn’t run by greedy mafia-like structures, but by people with a basic minimum on ethics and decency. Instead of that rotten Casali, a decent, ethical and knowledgeable person would have been the Editor of Autoimmunity, and that antivax rubbish would have never been waved through.

Anyway, Claire Francis studied more Casali papers now, and found even more fraud. The PubPeer record now stands at around 20 fake papers. Here is one with Cerutti:

Mikhail B. Litinskiy , Bernardetta Nardelli , David M. Hilbert , Bing He , Andras Schaffer , Paolo Casali, Andrea Cerutti DCs induce CD40-independent immunoglobulin class switching through BLyS and APRIL Nature Immunology (2002) doi: 10.1038/ni829 

Again with Cerutti, and Casali’s protege Hong Zan, who rose to associate professor at UTSA:

Hong Zan , Atsumasa Komori , Zongdong Li , Andrea Cerutti , András Schaffer , Martin F. Flajnik , Marilyn Diaz , Paolo Casali The translesion DNA polymerase zeta plays a major role in Ig and bcl-6 somatic hypermutation Immunity (2001) doi: 10.1016/s1074-7613(01)00142-x 

A set of two papers (one of them in Cerutti’s AAI journal), sharing same FACS plot (with different quantifications). Casali and Zan are the only common authors:

• Clayton A. White , Egest J. Pone , Tonika Lam , Connie Tat , Ken L. Hayama , Guideng Li , Hong Zan , Paolo Casali Histone deacetylase inhibitors upregulate B cell microRNAs that silence AID and Blimp-1 expression for epigenetic modulation of antibody and autoantibody responses Journal of immunology (2014) doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.1401702 
• Tian Shen , Helia N. Sanchez , Hong Zan , Paolo Casali Genome-Wide Analysis Reveals Selective Modulation of microRNAs and mRNAs by Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor in B Cells Induced to Undergo Class-Switch DNA Recombination and Plasma Cell Differentiation Frontiers in Immunology (2015) doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2015.00627 

Zan and Casali again:

Yijiang Xu , Hang Zhou , Ginell Post , Hong Zan , Paolo Casali Rad52 mediates class-switch DNA recombination to IgD Nature Communications (2022) doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28576-2 

A year ago, UTSA celebrated their emeritus professor Casali and his team for their “breakthrough for biomedical research” specifically for having “created a humanized mouse model with a human immune system and a human-like gut microbiome”, which was published in Nature Immunology (Chupp et al 2024). The authors of that paper were Casali and his mentees Daniel Chupp, Yijiang Xu (both in pharma industry now), and the two UTSA associate professors Zhenming Xu and Hong Zan. What do you think, can we trust those claims, judging from this one:

Paolo Casali , Tian Shen , Yijiang Xu , Zhifang Qiu , Daniel P Chupp , John Im , Zhenming Xu , Hong Zan Estrogen Reverses HDAC Inhibitor-Mediated Repression of and Class-Switching in Antibody and Autoantibody Responses by Downregulation of miR-26a Frontiers in Immunology (2020) doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2020.00491 

How to defecate into Nature Immunology, Casali-style:

Seok-Rae Park , Hong Zan , Zsuzsanna Pal , Jinsong Zhang , Ahmed Al-Qahtani , Egest J Pone , Zhenming Xu , Thach Mai , Paolo Casali HoxC4 binds to the promoter of the cytidine deaminase AID gene to induce AID expression, class-switch DNA recombination and somatic hypermutation Nature Immunology (2009) doi: 10.1038/ni.1725 

Casali with Cerutti, and no, Nature Immunology doesn’t mind being defecated into:

Andrea Cerutti, Edmund C. Kim , Shefali Shah , Elaine J. Schattner , Hong Zan , András Schaffer , Paolo Casali Dysregulation of CD30+ T cells by leukemia impairs isotype switching in normal B cells Nature Immunology (2001) doi: 10.1038/84254 

Other sleuths also had a fresh look at Casali’s papers:

Thach Mai , Hong Zan , Jinsong Zhang , J. Seth Hawkins , Zhenming Xu , Paolo Casali Estrogen receptors bind to and activate the HOXC4/HoxC4 promoter to potentiate HoxC4-mediated activation-induced cytosine deaminase induction, immunoglobulin class switch DNA recombination, and somatic hypermutation Journal of Biological Chemistry (2010) doi: 10.1074/jbc.m110.169086 

Casali and Cerutti are bad guys, and I don’t just mean their fake science. Former colleagues allege much worse. But just so you know how outright evil the US immunology community is, see what happened when sleuths reported these two papers to the academic editors of Journal of Immunology:

Andrea Cerutti, Hong Zan , Edmund C. Kim , Shefali Shah , Elaine J. Schattner , András Schaffer , Paolo Casali Ongoing in vivo immunoglobulin class switch DNA recombination in chronic lymphocytic leukemia B cells Journal of immunology (2002) doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.169.11.6594

And the second paper:

H Zan , A Cerutti , P Dramitinos , A Schaffer , P Casali CD40 engagement triggers switching to IgA1 and IgA2 in human B cells through induction of endogenous TGF-beta: evidence for TGF-beta but not IL-10-dependent direct S mu–>S alpha and sequential S mu–>S gamma, S gamma–>S alpha DNA recombination Journal of immunology (1998) Nov 15;161(10):5217–5225.

On 22 September 2025, the sleuth received this reply from Gail Bishop, the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Immunology and professor at the University of Iowa:

“Thank you for bringing the potential image manipulation in the published papers to our attention. The Journal of Immunology is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). We take such matters very seriously and appreciate your vigilance in maintaining the integrity of science research. We have examined the issue to ensure that the highest standards of scientific accuracy and ethics are maintained and will not be taking any action at this time. “

Yes, Bishop really says that Casali’s is the right way to do science, “the highest standard” in fact.

Top medical scholars like Bishop, Casali and Cerutti are expected to protect American patients from Trump and his sociopathic quacks like Robert F Kennedy Jr, Dr Oz and the rest. Who just announced paracetamol and vaccines as the causes of autism, which FDA will now cure with the B9-vitamin Leucovorin, sold by Dr Oz’s company iHerb. It is based on the “research” by the autism quack Richard Frye (read about him here).

Good luck, America.

---

Scholarly Publishing

Unable to identify any apparent anomalies

Learn how academic elites correct dodgy science in their papers,

The graphene researcher Rahul Raveendran Nair is a former protege of the Nobel Prize laureates Kostya Novoselov and Andre Geim (both originally from russia). Nair is since 2016 professor at National Graphene Institute of the University of Manchester in UK, which was founded by Novoselov and Geim. He is also winner of the prestigious Moseley medal. Nair also somehow co-authored a bad paper, which could have happened to anyone, but it is the way how Nair resolved the problem which is telling.

A reader notified me of this paper from the Khalifa University in United Arab Emirates:

Ahmed Mamdouh Aboulella , Abdelhamid Ads , Adetunji Alabi , Maryam R. Al Shehhi , Kin Liao , Rahul Raveendran Nair, Linda Zou Fertilizer-infused novel GO-alginate-polyacrylic acid hydrogels for groundwater extraction in irrigation applications Desalination (2025) doi: 10.1016/j.desal.2025.118727 

In May 2025, I wrote to Nair. Who replied:

“I have contacted the corresponding author, Prof. Linda Zou, and the first author, Ahmed Mamdouh Aboulella, for the raw data and to initiate a careful review of the issue.
It appears there may be a genuine error in the SEM image selection that needs to be corrected. We will also investigate the potential noise reproduction observed in Figure 6K, and if any evidence of misconduct is identified, we will follow up accordingly”
“

Nair wrote to me again about the duplicated spectra:

“Regarding the FTIR data for H1, H2, and H3 […] I’ve reviewed the raw data for these samples and was unable to identify any apparent anomalies in that region, but I’d appreciate your insight on what you intend to show.
As for the spectra of HG1 and HG2, we’ve now confirmed that there was indeed an error in the data handling process. The same dataset for HG1 appears to have been inadvertently used for HG2, likely due to their very similar spectral profiles. This similarity led to the oversight. The lead authors have acknowledged this mistake and will proceed with submitting a formal correction to the journal.“

A Corrigendum future-dated 15 October 2025 was now published:

“The authors regret that the original version of this article contained errors in Fig. 6, specifically in the SEM images and FTIR spectra. We have corrected these inaccuracies in the revised figure. We would like to clarify that these corrections do not affect the results, discussions, or conclusions of the paper.

• 1.SEM Image Mislabelling (Fig. 6c–h)Panels 6c and 6d were intended to represent SEM images of sample H2, panels 6e and 6f those of H3, and panels 6g and 6h those of HG1. However, these images were mistakenly taken from sample H1. This error occurred due to the storage of visually similar SEM images in a shared folder without standardized naming, combined with the use of draft figure versions during compilation. The corrected SEM images for H2 H3 and HG1 have now been retrieved and are included below. These images are verified by embedded metadata, including capture dates, to ensure accuracy and traceability.
• 2.FTIR Spectrum Error In the original figure, the FTIR spectrum for HG2 was inadvertently duplicated from HG1 due to a manual selection error during export from the instrument software. The similarity in spectral profiles (owing to similar chemical compositions) led to confusion during file naming and export. Upon re-examination of the original raw data, we confirmed that HG1 and HG2 are distinct, as reflected by differences in noise and baseline patterns. The corrected FTIR spectra have been replotted and included in the revised figure below.

The authors would like to apologize for these oversights and thank the editor and readers for their understanding.”

Here the original issues of Fig 6e and its corrected version:

The images In Fig 6e are just as fake as before. If not even faker:

Also the fake spectra in Fig 5k remained the same:

Yes, they are taking the piss. Becasue nobody can touch them.

In this regard, as I wrote in March 2023 Shorts, also Nair’s Nobel mentor Novoselov sometimes works with known papermillers, including Awais Ahmad and Seeram Ramakrishna. Here another nice paper by the Nobelist, with Iftikhar Ali (PubPeer record) and other papermill fraudsters:

Marzia Dulal , Md Rashedul Islam , Saptarshi Maiti , Mohammad Hamidul Islam , Iftikhar Ali , Amr M. Abdelkader , Kostya S. Novoselov, Shaila Afroj, Nazmul Karim Smart and Multifunctional Fiber‐Reinforced Composites of 2D Heterostructure‐Based Textiles Advanced Functional Materials (2023) doi: 10.1002/adfm.202305901 

Another one with same collaborators, featuring next to Novoselov another University of Manchester profesosr, Alex Casson:

Md Rashedul Islam , Shaila Afroj, Christopher Beach , Mohammad Hamidul Islam , Carinna Parraman, Amr Abdelkader , Alexander J Casson , Kostya S Novoselov , Nazmul Karim Fully printed and multifunctional graphene-based wearable e-textiles for personalized healthcare applications iScience (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.103945 

Another study by Novoselov with Md Rashedul Islam, Shaila Afroj and Nazmul Karim (Islam et al 2025) was criticised on PubPeer for “several critical inconsistencies and unexplained claims that raise concerns regarding scientific reproducibility and physical plausibility.”

As already indicated above, both Novoselov and Geim hang out in predatory conferences, specifically at FLOGEN:

---

Support for the adoption of technology

A peculiar Expression of Concern for former Bristol University professors Paolo Madeddu (retired) and his ex-wife Costanza Emanueli (at Imperial College).

This paper features Madeddu’s and Emanueli’s Italian mentee Marco Meloni, now team leader at Sanofi, and their German mentee Nicolle Kränkel, now group leader at Friede Springer Center at Charité Berlin. It was published in a Wiley journal owned by the British Pharmacological Society:

C Emanueli, A Monopoli , N Kraenkel , M Meloni , S Gadau , I Campesi , E Ongini , P Madeddu Nitropravastatin stimulates reparative neovascularisation and improves recovery from limb Ischaemia in type-1 diabetic mice British Journal of Pharmacology (2007) doi: 10.1038/sj.bjp.0707142 

On 4 September 2025, this Expression of Concern was issued (highlights mine):

“The publisher received a report from a third party which indicated that two of the actin bands in Figure 5A showed evidence of splicing and duplication. An investigation by the publisher also detected these same concerns. The authors responded to an inquiry by the publisher and confirmed this duplication, as well as an additional error in Figure 6 where the Akt panels for pravastatin and NCX6550 had been swapped. The authors provided examples of the original western blot data and the densitometry data for the representative western blot images. They also requested a correction, to replace the erroneous images in Figures 5A and 6 with corrected representative western blots.

A review of these data by the journal editors found that, while the provided western blot data corresponded with the results presented in the article, the error bar of the published Statin graph in Figure 5B appeared to not match the quantification presented in the article. Additional concerns were raised that other data were included in the summary bar graph in addition to what was shown by the two representative immunoblots, but this was not clear based on the data provided. In response, the authors stated that the quantification shown in the graph should not be expected to derive from the densitometry data extracted from two samples based on other studies conducted at the author’s institution during this period. However, original experimental records and data which would support this claim were no longer available due to the age of the article.

The parties have agreed that, based on the available data, they were not able to validate the data in Figure 5. Publishing a correction to replace the immunoblots in Figures 5A and 6 with corrected data was therefore not considered appropriate. The journal decided to issue this Expression of Concern to inform and alert the readers of the results of the investigation.

Author C. Emanueli disagrees with the Expression of Concern and stated that the densitometry performed on the provided bands was consistent with the published data, even though statistical significance was not achieved. Author P. Madeddu stated that the error had a minor impact on the main message considering that the key scientific data were confirmed later by other independent publications and that he has taken note of the exchange of correspondence regarding the case and stated his appreciation for the attempts of Prof. Emanueli and Dr. Meloni in searching for available data and trying to amend any possible error many years after publication. P. Madeddu further stated his support for the adoption of technology, not available to the authors at the time of publication of the article, which could help authors and reviewers in detecting errors of this kind during the revision stage. Authors N. Kraenkel, M. Meloni, S. Gadau, and I. Campesi were informed of the Expression of Concern. All other authors either could not be contacted or had passed away prior to the publication of the Expression of Concern.”

Madeddu and his team admitted to have outright forged data and to claim significance which was never there. But it is not their fault: they didn’t have fraud-detecton software to catch themselves back then, you see.

---

Industry Giants

A game-changer for HD patients

BBC announced on 24 September 2025 that the incurable, devastating brain disorder called Huntington’s Disease (HD), has been successfully cured, with a viral miRNA gene therapy:

“An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients.

It means the decline you would normally expect in one year would take four years after treatment, giving patients decades of “good quality life”, Prof Sarah Tabrizi told BBC News.

[…] Treatment is likely to be very expensive. […] It starts with a safe virus that has been altered to contain a specially designed sequence of DNA. This is infused deep into the brain using real-time MRI scanning to guide a microcatheter to two brain regions – the caudate nucleus and the putamen. This takes 12 to 18 hours of neurosurgery. […]

Results from the trial – which involved 29 patients – have been released in a statement by the company uniQure, but have not yet been published in full for review by other specialists. […] UniQure says it will apply for a licence in the US in the first quarter of 2026 with the aim of launching the drug later that year. Conversations with authorities in the UK and Europe will start next year, but the initial focus is on the US.

Dr Walid Abi-Saab, the chief medical officer at uniQure, said he was “incredibly excited” about what the results mean for families, and added that the treatment had “the potential to fundamentally transform” Huntington’s disease.”

Maybe the therapy really works. But some other studies by the Amsterdam-based Dutch company uniQure raise concerns, as posted on PubPeer. The common author is the native Bulgarian Pavlina Konstantinova, who in 2017 was interviewed as “research scientist at uniQure” in charge of the “company’s program to develop a gene therapy treatment for HD, using micro RNAs expressed from a DNA cassette delivered via an adeno-associated viral vector.” Konstantinova announced to “make HD gene therapy a reality in the near future“, whcih would “really be a game-changer for HD patients“.

Here all authors (save for retired Radboud University professor Gerard Martens) are affiliated with uniQure. The last author Bas Blits was until 2018 Head of Neurobiology, then left for other industry and academia stints, and is now postdoc in Utrecht:

K. L. Pietersz , R. M. Martier , M. S. Baatje , J. M. Liefhebber , C. C. Brouwers , S. M. Pouw , L. Fokkert , J. Lubelski , H. Petry , G. J. M. Martens, S. J. Van Deventer, P. Konstantinova , B. Blits Transduction patterns in the CNS following various routes of AAV-5-mediated gene delivery Gene Therapy (2021) doi: 10.1038/s41434-020-0178-0 

The issue was flagged in March 2022, two years later, in February 2024, Kimberly Pietersz, who did her PhD studies at uniQure, provided replacement images for Figure 5 and added: “Please be kind to me as a crazy person who loves science and stayed despite everything“. As for Figure 6, Pietersz eventually admitted: “it should be white bar 200 um brown 50“.

Another bar issue with the similar team, everyone except Martens was affiliated for uniQure. Konstantinova and Blits again last authors, their coauthor Sander van Deventer is uniQure’s co-founder and former CEO and CSO:

Kimberly L. Pietersz , Francois Du Plessis , Stephan M. Pouw , Jolanda M. Liefhebber , Sander J. Van Deventer , Gerard J. M. Martens , Pavlina S. Konstantinova, Bas Blits PhP.B Enhanced Adeno-Associated Virus Mediated-Expression Following Systemic Delivery or Direct Brain Administration Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology (2021) doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2021.679483 

No reply there. By the way, an old paper Afshari et al 2010 coauthored by Blits before he came to uniQure, with the German professor Andreas Faissner, was discussed in March 2024 Shorts. It has a forged figure.

In January 2019, Konstantinova became uniQure’s Vice President for Research, but in October 2020 she left the company after 12 years there, to work at VectorY, a new biotech founded by van Deventer. In 2024, Konstantinova left there also, she now works as part-time CEO at another company.

Now, a problematic paper of by Konstantinova and van Deventer with further uniQure colleagues and some Czech collaborators led by Jan Motlik. Konstantinova described this study on minipigs in her interview as “showing substantial total huntingtin knock-down, as well as very good vector distribution and miRNA expression“:

Melvin M. Evers , Jana Miniarikova , Stefan Juhas , Astrid Vallès , Bozena Bohuslavova, Jana Juhasova , Helena Kupcova Skalnikova, Petr Vodicka, Ivona Valekova , Cynthia Brouwers , Bas Blits , Jacek Lubelski , Hana Kovarova , Zdenka Ellederova , Sander J. Van Deventer , Harald Petry , Jan Motlik , Pavlina Konstantinov AAV5-miHTT Gene Therapy Demonstrates Broad Distribution and Strong Human Mutant Huntingtin Lowering in a Huntington’s Disease Minipig Model Molecular therapy (2018) doi: 10.1016/j.ymthe.2018.06.021 

Another paper by Konstantinova and her uniQure colleague Melvin Evers, who took over from her as Vice President for Research, but left the company in Septmeber 2024. This was their collaboration with Italian researchers:

Irving Donadon , Erica Bussani , Federico Riccardi , Danilo Licastro , Giulia Romano , Giulia Pianigiani , Mirko Pinotti , Pavlina Konstantinova , Melvin Evers , Shuo Lin , Markus A Rüegg , Franco Pagani Rescue of spinal muscular atrophy mouse models with AAV9-Exon-specific U1 snRNA Nucleic Acids Research (2019) doi: 10.1093/nar/gkz469 

Now, another older paper by the Konstantinova, Evers, van Deventer, other uniQure employees, and Swiss collaborators led by Nicole Déglon. Konstantinova described described this study on HD rat models as “proof-of-concept experiment“:

J Miniarikova , V Zimmer , R Martier , C C Brouwers , C Pythoud , K Richetin , M Rey , J Lubelski , M M Evers , S J Van Deventer , H Petry , N Déglon , P Konstantinova AAV5-miHTT gene therapy demonstrates suppression of mutant huntingtin aggregation and neuronal dysfunction in a rat model of Huntington’s disease Gene Therapy (2017) doi: 10.1038/gt.2017.71 

No action there also. Shouldn’t these issues be addressed before the very expensive brain injection therapy is approved and applied to patients?

---

Thousands of dodos

As you know, the US biotech Colossal (founded by tech bro Ben Lamm and MIT’s eugenicist George Church) keeps regularly being celebrated by the media for having made the decisive step to de-extincting yet another extinct animal: the Mammoth, the Thylacine, the Moa, and the Dodo. Never mind they made an utter laughing stock of themselves with their allegedly de-extinct “dire wolves”:

As for the Dodo, it is almost there, according to the media. The Guardian informed on 17 September 2025 that “Thousands of dodos could return within a decade“:

“Colossal Biosciences said on Wednesday it has succeeded in growing pigeon primordial germ cells, precursor cells to sperm and eggs, for the first time. This is a “pivotal step” in bringing back the dodo, which was a type of pigeon, for the first time in more than 300 years, according to Colossal. […]

Beth Shapiro, Colossal’s scientific chief who has a tattoo of a dodo on her arm, said the “super exciting” breakthrough came following a year of work to gene-edit birds, which are more complex to work on in this way than mammals.

“This isn’t a process where we’re going to one day just throw thousands of dodos into Mauritius. Obviously it will be a slow and careful and deliberate process,” said Shapiro.

“If we can put back a large ground-dwelling fruit-eating bird, we don’t know all of the consequences of putting them back on this landscape, but we anticipate that we will have some happy surprises.””

Here the Colossal press release from 17 September 2025 on which the international news coverage is based:

“Colossal Biosciences, the world’s de-extinction company, today announces several milestones in avian cellular science, bringing the dodo revival one step closer. The Colossal Avian Genetics Group has successfully grown pigeon primordial germ cells (PGCs) for the first time in history, a pivotal step in bringing back the dodo. In addition to this breakthrough, Colossal has also announced an additional expansion of $120M in new funding with participation from USIT, Bob Nelsen, and Peter Jackson adding to its $200M Series C, bringing this round of capital to $320M. Since launching in September 2021, Colossal has raised just over $555M in total funding. This latest round of capital places the company at a $10.32 billion valuation.

On the heels of the Moa de-extinction announcement, the funding allows for the expansion of Colossal’s Avian Genetics Group who also have established a flock of gene-edited chickens that will serve as potential surrogates for dodos and other endangered bird species…”

Ronan Taylor also found the relevant preprint. For some reason Beth Shapiro, whose lab at University of California Santa Cruz sequenced the dodo genome in 2022, and who was specifically recruited to Colossal in 2024 to de-extinct the dodo, is not a coauthor:

Martin W Nicholson, Lucas Moreira, Emily A Boyle, Evan McCabe, Adrianna Soriano, Malcolm McSwain,William N Feist, Samantha K Nguyen, Kaitlin Steiger, Nicolas Alexandre, Savannah J Hoyt, Nicole M Tillquist, Rachel J O’Neill, Kennosuke Ichikawa, Mike McGrew, Olivier Fedrigo, Anna Keyte Long-Term Rock Dove (Columba livia) Primordial Germ Cell Culture: A Tool for Avian Conservation bioRxiv (2025) doi: 10.1101/2025.09.17.676777

Now, Shapiro was studying dodo evolution for decades, in 2002 she published this paper, the last author is the bully and harasser Alan Cooper (read above):

Beth Shapiro, Dean Sibthorpe, Andrew Rambaut, Jeremy Austin, Graham M. Wragg, Olaf R. P. Bininda-Emonds, Patricia L. M. Lee, and Alan Cooper Flight of the Dodo Science (2002) DOI: 10.1126/science.295.5560.1683

“The analyses indicate that the dodo/solitaire and Caloenas diverged in the mid/late Eocene, around 42.6 million years ago (Ma) (95% confidence interval= 31.9 to 56.1 Ma), whereas the dodo and the solitaire separated in the late Oligocene, about 25.6 Ma (17.6 to 35.9 Ma)”

One should not confuse linguistic descriptions with evolutionary genetics. Just because something is called a pigeon: 43 million years of evolution is nothing to snuff at, that’s roughly what separates Shapiro, Lamm and Church from pigmy marmoset, red-faced uakari and howler monkey. Dodo and its only extant relative, the Nicobar pigeon, are separated by 26 million years of evolution, roughly when Shapiro, Lamm and Church diverged from yellow baboon, pig-tailed macaque and proboscis monkey. Even if Donald Trump sends the US Army to confiscate every single surviving Nicobar pigeon in US zoos for Colossal experiments, these Colossal wankers still wouldn’t succeed in culturing these primordial germ cells. And even if they would, there would be never a dodo. But no more Nicobar pigeon.

Shapiro and her psychopath colleague Cooper stated in Pern et al 2021 that the dire wolf split from other canids merely “5.7 million years ago“. You saw how that de-extinction panned out: with silly white dogs. In fact, Colossal even fails de-extincting animals which aren’t even extinct, here American red wolves:

---