USERN-friendly Nobelists

This is a For Better Science contribution to the Nobel Prize season.

A predatory conference business called USERN was discovered by Alexander Magazinov. It is run by some Iranian cheater and his Italian friend. On board are almost 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and one of them is going to speak at the event in November 2025.

The easiest way to run a successful predatory conference is to get Nobelists on board. Recruit one Nobel laureate as a bait, and others will follow, and then everyone will pay to come and see them, especially if there are cheap awards and medals to be collected to show at home.

The German Nobelist Harald zur Hausen used to honour predatory conferences until his death, simply because nobody else wanted to hear his embarrassing theories on dairy products being an infectuous source of cancer:

As it happens, the same predatory conference featured other Nobelists next to zur Hausen, including Kostya Novoselov whom we will meet again.

Why Nobel laureates go to predatory conferences is something psychologists might want to study. It’s certainly not because these men are naive bumbling nerds who just can’t say no. Go ahead, invite one of them to visit your university for a lecture, good luck. Thus, it must be something else which does the trick.

If you read For Better Science, you are well aware of the scamference organiser Ashutosh Tiwari and his fictional society, the International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM). Even after my reporting warned many people off participating, Tiwari still manages to make money with scamferences on cheap and boring locations (Baltic ferries, anyone?), and without any Nobels or other celebrities for bait. The closest Tiwari ever got to Nobels even in his IAAM’s heydays, was hosting the chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee for Physics.

Maybe that’s because Tiwari is not white. Other scamference owners have it easier luring old white male Nobelists to their events. In the CODA, you will read about the most successful Nobel herder, Florian Kongoli and his FLOGEN conferences.

But here is another predatory conference scam, pointed out to me by Alexander Magazinov. The front-man is some Italian dude and the owner is an Iranian papermiller.

USERN Nobelists

Behold, the Universal Scientific Education and Research Network (USERN) , which describes itself as “nonprofit, non-governmental organization committed to advancing science for the benefit of humanity […] with a strong focus on ethics“, announced for 8-10 November 2025 to hold its “10th International USERN Congress and Prize Awarding Festival” in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

To avoid confusion: USERN’s Nobelists only lend their names for advertising and do not actually participate in those conferences. Well, one does participate. We are informed that Kurt Wüthrich, the 86 years old 2002 Nobel Laureate, professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and at Scripps in California, “will deliver a distinguished keynote” at the Sao Paolo scamference next month.

I contacted Wüthrich and his ETH, and nobody replied. ETH however silently indicated that they have no problem with their professor’s participation.

The USERN Board of scientists has no other purpose but to advertise to paying customers. It has a crazy mixture: Nobel laureates and other academic elites are listed next to the worst of papermill fraudsters. Officially, these board members then confer to make shortlists and bestow USERN Prizes to young scientists.

USERN features no less than 20 Nobelists on its board, some are already dead:

1. Robert Huber, 1988 Nobel Laureate, 88 years old
2. Drew Weissman, 2023 Nobel Laureate, 66 years old
3. John Michael Kosterlitz, 2016 Nobel Laureate, 82 years old
4. John Gurdon, 2012 Nobel Laureate, dead since October 2025
5. Roald Hoffmann, 1981 Nobel Laureate, 88 years old
6. Giorgio Parisi, 2021 Nobel Laureate, 77 years old
7. Akira Suzuki, 2010 Nobel Laureate, 95 years old
8. Erwin Neher, 1991 Nobel Laureate , 81 years old
9. Paul Greengard, 2000 Nobel Laureate, dead since 2019
10. Eric Maskin, 2007 Nobel Laureate, 74 years old
11. Stanley Prusiner, 1997 Nobel Laureate, 83 years old
12. Roger Kornberg, 2006 Nobel Laureate , 78 years old
13. Jean Lehn, 1987 Nobel Laureate , 86 years old
14. Martin Karplus, 2013 Nobel Laureate , dead since December 2024
15. Yuan Lee, 1986 Nobel Laureate, 89 years old
16. Peter Ratcliffe, 2017 Nobel Laureate, 71 years old
17. Oliver Williamson, 2009 Nobel Laureate, dead since 2020
18. Jules Hoffmann, 2011 Nobel Laureate , 84 years old
19. Anthony Leggett, 2001 Nobel Laureate, 87 years old

There are also two Abel Prize Laureates, the mathematicians Michael Atiyah and Louis Nirenberg. The former died in 2019 and the latter died in 2020.

There is however no reason to assume those Nobel laureates and other esteemed scholars never agreed to join the USERN board years ago. Because two of them confirmed to me that they did agree.

The Oxford professor and 2019 Nobel Laureate of Peter Ratcliffe previously communicated with me before regarding his problematic papers with Adrian Harris (see October 2024 Shorts). Now Ratcliffe replied to me about his USERN engagement:

“we have been though my e-mail log and I did accept to be an advisor (in 2020). There has been no follow up“

Also the 1982 Nobel laureate (and my Ukrainian compatriot) Roald Hoffmann replied:

“Indeed, I joined their Board of Advisors on the basis of a letter from a young Iranian student who seems to be working for USERN. I have now resigned from that Advisory function.”

And indeed, his name was then swiftly removed from the USERN website:

I wrote to other Nobelists on the USERN board, at least to those still alive and below 90 years old. Nobody else replied, except for Jules Hoffmann, who merely wrote back after a reminder:

“NO WAY !
Jules Hoffmann“

Whatever.

USERN elites

The USERN scamferences run since 2016, having started in Iran, then in Ukraine, Italy, Hungary, Turkey, Oman, Armenia and most recently, Bulgaria.

The current congress in Sao Paolo is co-organised by the Brazilian mega-cheater Licio Velloso, a close associate of Mario Saad.

USERN’s current President is an Italian gentleman named Tommaso Dorigo, who claims on his website to work “as a hired professor” at Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Padova. He seems to be the white frontman of USERN, which apparently helps with recruiting Nobelists and other important white men.

The USERN advisory board (archived here) lists many other scholars, not just Nobelists. One peculiar celebrity is Hendrik Streeck, German virology professor who became famous with his somewhat confusing advice during the COVID-19 pandemic, Member of Bundestag for the Christian Democrats (CDU) and since recently, Government’s Commissioner for drug addiction. Like almost everyone else, he never replied.

Other board members I wish to mention:

• Rudolf Jaenisch, US bigwig of stem cell research
• Daniel Klionsky and Russel Reiter, US professors who worked with Iranian papermillers (read July 2024 Shorts)
• Serge Brand, Swiss professor who worked with Mohammed Taheri (read May 2024 Shorts)
• Elias Aifantis, Greek professor, currently presumed in prison for fraud and extortion (read September 2024 Shorts)
• Domenico Praticò, US mega-cheater struck with retractions and failed lawsuits (read here)
• Saadi Khochbin, a member of a cheater gang in Grendoble, France (read March 2023 Shorts)
• Stefano Pluchino, Italian and British professor with dodgy papers, read August 2024 Shorts
• Eric Chevet, coauthor of papers by Claudio Hetz
• Jörg Kleeff, German professor and coauthor of bad papers (read here)
• Francesco Stellacci, Italian professor who once almost cured COVID with stripy nanoparticles (read here)
• Peter Barnes, professor in London and author of fake science, read here
• Nikolaus Rajewsky, German professor and son of the famous Klaus Rajewski
• Anthony Atala, regemed quack in USA and former buddy of Paolo Macchiarini
• Wolfgang Parak, German professor and former collaborator of Paolo Macchiarini, now hero of research ethics
• Ali Khademhosseini, Iranian mega-cheater in USA, read about him below, Parak is also mentioned:

Klionsky replied to me:

“All I can say is that they asked me to join right when my wife was diagnosed with cancer (she died last year). I had a lot on my mind at that time and did not look into it carefully enough.”

The University of Michigan professor also told me “I have already asked to be removed from USERN. I will ask them again“. And, Klionsky told me who invited him to the USERN board – Niloufar Yazdanpanah and the USERN current president Tommaso Dorigo, he also agreed to share the original invitation he received:

“Dear Professor Klionsky,

I hope this email finds you well and healthy during this strange time.

This is Niloufar, manager of Advisory Board Affairs of USERN.

I am reaching out from the Universal Scientific Education and Research Network (USERN). USERN is established as the solution to bring together true inheritances of the scientific world, scientists, from the top 1% leading experts to the junior researchers, worldwide. USERN is honored to be governed and lead by an Advisory board of more than 400 members of the world top scientists according to the ESI, including 18 Nobel and Abel Laureates: http://usern.tums.ac.ir/Info/Board

USERN has been active since early 2016, established by Prof. Nima Rezaei (CV: https://usern.tums.ac.ir/User/CV/rezaei_nima ), with the main goal of “Science without Borders”. USERN is proud to have more than 15,000 members from more than 70 countries worldwide, whose endeavors, with the guidance and under the supervision of USERN Advisors, have brought an H-index of 42 and more than 1000 published documents within only five years of scientific activity, according to the Scopus. USERN is committed to deal with science in the most humane and scientific way possible. The Advisory board members of USERN have been the leaders of its international scientific activities and we could not, undoubtedly, reach these without their invaluable support. We are proud to have realized the true spirit of international scientific collaborations, establishing 75 memorandums of agreement and inaugurating 49 USERN offices worldwide, focused on academic exchanges and training of young researchers, to tackling the invisible border between countries and academia.

It gives us great honor to be able to reach out and invite you to join USERN Advisory Board. Your reputation and passion for your specialism are recognized globally and we would be delighted to be able to benefit from your expertise and guidance and have your wisdom by our side. 

Here is the link to USERN website: https://usern.tums.ac.ir/

It would be greatly our honor to hearing from you and have you joining the USERN Advisory Board.

In case of any questions, please feel free to contact me.”

You met the Nobelists, you met other elites, now meet their fellow mmebers of the USERN board – a bunch of known papermillers. I highlight some of them, follow the links to learn about their activities:

• Michael Hamblin, a Brit in South Africa and a regular customer of Iranian papermills
• Seeram Ramakrishna, the grand papermiller of Singapore
• Masoud Salavati-Niasari, the Iranian rubbish papermiller
• Mohsen Sheikholeslami, Iranian papermiller and citation scammer
• Dumitru Baleanu, the legendary Romanian papermiller in Turkey
• Ali Chamkha, Lebanese papermiller in Qatar, read below
• Mohammad Reza Ganjali, Iranian papermiller, read February 2025 Shorts
• Behnam Mohammadi-Ivatloo, an Iranian papermiller in Finland, read here
• Davood Domiri Ganji, Iranian papermiller, read August 2023 Shorts
• Amirhossein Sahebkar, Iranian papermiller who once worked in Poland (read January 2025 Shorts)
• Amir Avan, Iranian papermiller who once worked in UK, read below:

USERN Boss

It is time to meet the owner, former president, and self-proclaimed “mastermind” of USERN – the Iranian papermiller Nima Rezaie, who claims to be the Vice Dean of Research at Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran. He also claims to be presently working as visiting scientist at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and at University of Southampton in UK.

Alexander Magazinov contacted Karolinska, and they told him they never heard of Rezaie. The man is attracted to Sweden’s Nobel appeal: in his recent Springer book “Oral Immunology“, Rezaie placed the seat of USERN in Göteborg, while his coauthor, the PhD student Heliya Ziaei, declared affiliation with USERN in Los Angeles, USA. Basically, wherever Rezaie or his team members set foot, there is a USERN office.

Rezaie is a very important scientist, you must know. He is author of “more than 1,500 scientific papers“, and has a Wikipedia page which he wrote all by himself, and a PubPeer record. Why yes, he is also a papermiller.

The authorships for this study were offered on sale on internet:

Safa Tahmasebi , Elnaz Khosh , Samaneh Rostami , Nima Rezaei Recent Innovative Approaches to Intensify the Efficacy and Safety of CAR-T Cell Therapy in Cancers Interdisciplinary Cancer Research (2022) doi: 10.1007/16833_2022_64 

These studies of Rezaie’s were struck by The Vickers Curse, where a certain editorial about moth pheromones gets erroneously cited due to a papermill-related bug in doi resolution:

• Saman Sargazi , Roghayeh Sheervalilou , Mohsen Rokni , Milad Shirvaliloo , Omolbanin Shahraki , Nima Rezaei The role of autophagy in controlling SARS‐CoV‐2 infection: An overview on virophagy‐mediated molecular drug targets Cell Biology International (2021) doi: 10.1002/cbin.11609 
• Nima Javanmehr , Kiarash Saleki , Parsa Alijanizadeh , Nima Rezaei Microglia dynamics in aging-related neurobehavioral and neuroinflammatory diseases Journal of Neuroinflammation (2022) doi: 10.1186/s12974-022-02637-1 
• Elham Zokaei , Farzaneh Darbeheshti , Nima Rezaei Prospect of exosomal circular RNAs in breast Cancer: presents and future Molecular Biology Reports (2022) doi: 10.1007/s11033-022-07472-4 

“Thus, CSC-TEXs can influence existing cancer cells and the TME, including fibroblasts and immune cells, to alter the tumor niche, leading to local tumor growth [39, 40].”

40. Vickers NJ (2017) Animal communication: when i’m calling you, will you answer too? Curr Biol 27(14):R713–R5

Read about the Vickers Curse here:

Other papers by Rezaei had other problems with references. Some cited retracted papermill products (Arabpour et al 2021, Momtazmanesh & Rezaei 2021), while Razavi et al 2023 cited “!!! INVALID CITATION !!!”, twice.

USERN Laureates

Like every scamference, USERN lures paying participants by offering them worthless awards, and who can say no to 20 Nobelists wishing to recognise your scientific genius?

The USERN Prize is awarded every year since 2016, here is the list of all awardees (and archived version). There are many scientists from Europe and USA, here are some public announcements:

• Columbia University in USA, USERN Prize 2022 for Jianing Fu
• University of Catania in Italy, USERN Prize 2024 for Rosalia Emma
• Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona in Spain, USERN Prize 2022 nomination for Ivan Savin

In 2024, Mohammed Taheri was nominated. Such a pity he didn’t win.

Here is the Technical University of Dresden in Germany, congratulating “Dr. Minghao Yu for the honor to be selected as the 2021 USERN Laureate“. The claim is that the prize winners get money, $5,000 even, which I presonally doubt. This is not how scamferences operate, quite the opposite. I rather suspect that the laureates had to pay the trip and some hefty USERN participation fees, while they never get their promised award money because, uhm, sanctions against Iran or whatever other unfortunate reasons.

Now, let’s meet some of these young role models.

Tiziana Cappello

Here is the disastrous University of Messina (their rector used to be the infamous Salvatore Cuzzocrea), celebrating the USERN Prize 2024 in Biological Sciences for their professor Tiziana Cappello:

Capello’s qualifications for this award can be seen on PubPeer.

Aasma Noureen, Giuseppe De Marco, Nagina Rehman , Farhat Jabeen , Tiziana Cappello Ameliorative Hematological and Histomorphological Effects of Dietary Trigonella foenum-graecum Seeds in Common Carp (Cyprinus carpio) Exposed to Copper Oxide Nanoparticles International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2022) doi: 10.3390/ijerph192013462 

Another one:

Aasma Noureen, Farhat Jabeen, Abdul Wajid , Muhammad Zafarullah Kazim , Nafeesa Safdar , Tiziana Cappello Natural Bioactive Phytocompounds to Reduce Toxicity in Common Carp Cyprinus carpio: A Challenge to Environmental Risk Assessment of Nanomaterials Water (2023) doi: 10.3390/w15061152 

Capello’s colleague from Pakistan, Aasma Noureen, explained that the overlap “is negligible” because these two fishes share “the same fish species, sharing identical sex, size, and age characteristics.” But Sicilian scholars don’t need lessons from Pakistan in faking data:

Alessia Giannetto, Maria Maisano, Tiziana Cappello, Sabrina Oliva, Vincenzo Parrino, Antonino Natalotto , Giuseppe De Marco, Salvatore Fasulo Effects of Oxygen Availability on Oxidative Stress Biomarkers in the Mediterranean Mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis Marine biotechnology (2017) doi: 10.1007/s10126-017-9780-6 

Mohammad-Ali Shahbazi

Maybe you expected nothing good from Messina, but here is the 2020 announcement by the University of Helsinki in Finland, congratulating their then-postdoc Mohammad-Ali Shahbazi:

“Prof. Santos’ comment he is very proud, pleased and delighted to announce that his postdoc, Dr. Mohammad-Ali Shahbazi, was selected as the USERN Laureate 2020 among over 14,000 eligible candidates nominated for this prize. Many congrats Ali, we are super proud of you and very well deserved prize!”

Shahbazi’s then boss, professor Hélder A. Santos was himself a USERN Prize nominee in 2017, the University of Helsinki duly celebrated that also.

Shahbazi has some seriously fake stuff on PubPeer, he also used to be editorial board member at Navid Rabiee‘s papermill-only journal Green Biomaterials, the board was however swiftly dissolved by Taylor & Francis in response to our reporting (read April 2024 Shorts).

Hand-drawn spectra, anyone?

Niki Pouyanfar , Golrokh Farnam , Mahnaz Ahmadi , Reyhane Masoudifar , Kamran Banan , Elham Asadian , Soraya Shahhosseini , Mohammad-Ali Shahbazi , Farshad H. Shirazi , Fatemeh Ghorbani-Bidkorpeh Synthesis, modification, characterization, and in vitro evaluation of chitosan-hyaluronic acid coated MIL-100 (Fe) nanoparticles for methotrexate delivery in rheumatoid arthritis International Journal of Biological Macromolecules (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2024.137715 

More fake stuff by this Northern Star of Helsinki:

Negin Mozafari , Ali Dehshahri , Hajar Ashrafi , Soliman Mohammadi-Samani , Mohammad-Ali Shahbazi , Reza Heidari , Negar Azarpira , Amir Azadi Vesicles of yeast cell wall-sitagliptin to alleviate neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s disease Nanomedicine (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.nano.2022.102575 

It all passes peer review no matter how nonsensical:

Ellahe Nouruzi , Seyed Mostafa Hosseini, Babak Asghari , Reza Mahjoub , Ehsan Nazarzadeh Zare , Mohammad-Ali Shahbazi , Fereshte Kalhori , Mohammad Reza Arabestani Effect of poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) polymer nanoparticles loaded with vancomycin against Staphylococcus aureus biofilm BMC Biotechnology (2023) doi: 10.1186/s12896-023-00811-8 

Ajeet Kaushik

Here is another editorial board member at Navid Rabiee‘s papermill-only journal Green Biomaterials, Ajeet Kaushik, he also has a serious PubPeer record. Kaushik received his USERN Prize in 2019, and here is his US-American employer Florida Polytechnic University celebrating:

“He was named a laureate in the field of biological sciences during the group’s fourth annual congress on Nov. 8 in Budapest, Hungary.
USERN, a non-governmental, non-profit organization and network dedicated to non-military scientific advances, is committed to exploring science beyond international borders.
“I was speechless for a while,” said Kaushik, who is an assistant professor of chemistry at Florida Polytechnic University.”

By now Kaushik rose to become associate professor in Florida and Fulbright Specialist. This is aptly named “fabrication”:

Seyedeh Nooshin Banitaba, Dariush Semnani, Elahe Heydari-Soureshjani, Waqas Ul Arifeen, Tae Jo Ko, Behzad Rezaei, Ali A. Ensafi, Masoud Latifi, Ebrahim Mostafavi , Ajeet Kaushik Fabrication and performance evaluation of CuO, NiO, and Co3O4-embedded electrospun electrolytes: Suitable for lithium polymer solvent-free batteries Journal of Alloys and Compounds (2022) doi: 10.1016/j.jallcom.2022.166482 

Kaushik also works with the papermillers Christian Sonne and Jörg Rinklebe, see for example Nehra et al 2020. Retraction Watch connected him via Benival et al 2023 to yet another papermiller, Dionisio Lorenzo Lorenzo Villegas.

One of Kaushik’s papers was already retracted, Kumar et al 2021, “following an investigation by North Carolina State University” which “found that some of the published content had been used without proper permission or attribution.“

More cloned spectra:

Diksha Pathania , Mamta Sharma, Pankaj Thakur , Vishal Chaudhary, Ajeet Kaushik , Hidemitsu Furukawa , Ajit Khosla Exploring phytochemical composition, photocatalytic, antibacterial, and antifungal efficacies of Au NPs supported by Cymbopogon flexuosus essential oil Scientific Reports (2022) doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-15899-9 

Kaushik doesn’t really care what topic his research is on, it can be also COVID-19 or neuroscience. A problematic paper by Kaushik with the Indian fraudster Rahul Dev Jayant and Temple University’s Kamel Khalili (PubPeer record), where they experimented on monkeys (Kaushik et al 2019), was discussed in March 2023 Shorts. 

Prashant Kesharwani

The 2023 USERN laureate, the Indian assistant professor Prashant Kesharwani, is a professional papermiller, with an impressive PubPeer record of fake data, phrase torturing, nonsense citations etc, including the Vickers Curse – the moth pheromone reference in Kakoty et al 2023.

His coauthors include known papermill fraudsters like Amirhossein Sahebkar, or the Saudi duo Nabil Alhakamy and Usama Fahmy (read about them in November 2022 Shorts). Like here:

Geeta S. Bhagwat, Rajani B. Athawale, Rajeev P. Gude , Shadab Md , Nabil A. Alhakamy, Usama A. Fahmy, Prashant Kesharwani Formulation and Development of Transferrin Targeted Solid Lipid Nanoparticles for Breast Cancer Therapy Frontiers in Pharmacology (2020) doi: 10.3389/fphar.2020.614290 

In their January 2023 Correction, the authors admitted that their “figure erroneously contained two duplicate images“, yet they replaced every single image there. Now, some cloned nanoparticles:

Durga Pandey , Prashant Kesharwani, Deepti Jain Entrapment of drug-sorbate complex in submicron emulsion: A potential approach to improve antimicrobial activity in bacterial corneal infection Journal of Drug Delivery Science and Technology (2019) doi: 10.1016/j.jddst.2018.12.006 

Look at these ridiculous hand-drawn cartoons, I suspect alcoholic intoxication:

Alok Mahor, Sunil Kumar Prajapati , Amita Verma, Rishikesh Gupta , Thakur Raghu Raj Singh , Prashant Kesharwani Development, in-vitro and in-vivo characterization of gelatin nanoparticles for delivery of an anti-inflammatory drug Journal of Drug Delivery Science and Technology (2016) doi: 10.1016/j.jddst.2016.09.007 

This guy was officially awarded by the USERN committee of 20 Nobel laureates, you know:

Alok Mahor, Sunil Kumar Prajapati , Amita Verma, Rishikesh Gupta , Arun K. Iyer , Prashant Kesharwani Moxifloxacin loaded gelatin nanoparticles for ocular delivery: Formulation and in – vitro , in – vivo evaluation Journal of Colloid and Interface Science (2016) doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2016.08.018 

Here one Kesharwani cartoon was also cloned:

Sima Singh , Majed M Alrobaian , Nagashekhara Molugulu , Nikhil Agrawal , Arshid Numan , Prashant Kesharwani Pyramid-Shaped PEG-PCL-PEG Polymeric-Based Model Systems for Site-Specific Drug Delivery of Vancomycin with Enhance Antibacterial Efficacy ACS Omega (2020) doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b04064 

This paper also contains hand-drawn spectra, which Kesharwani and his fraudster buddy Jigna Shah (PubPeer record) published twice:

NITIN DWIVEDI , DUSHYANT KUMAR PARMAR , PRASHANT KESHARWANI , JIGNA SHAH ACUTE TOXICOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION OF POLYETHYLENE GLYCOL DERIVATIZED FOURTH AND FIFTH GENERATION POLY (PROPYLENEIMINE) DENDRIMERS International Journal of Applied Pharmaceutics (2019) doi: 10.22159/ijap.2019v11i5.34203 

Here that other paper:

Nitin Dwivedi , Balak Das Kurmi , Prashant Kesharwani , Jigna Shah GENERATION DEPENDENT TARGETING POTENTIAL OF DONEPEZIL LOADED POLY (PROPYLENEIMINE) DENDRIMER THROUGH GOAT NASAL MUCOSA International Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (2018) doi: 10.22159/ijpps.2018v10i12.29912 

Jamshid Aghaei

Finally, some bottom-feeding papermiller, Jamshid Aghaei, professor at the Central Queensland University in Australia, with an additional affiliation in Iran. An Iranian announcement from 2019 congratulated Aghaei and mentioned:

“The Congress will be held in Kharkiv National Medical University (KNMU), Ukraine, in 2017 and in Vienna, Austria, in 2018. France has applied for hosting the event in 2019.”

Well, this is so sad and miserable:

Marziyeh Hoseinpour , Rahim Karami , Mohammad Rasul, Jamshid Aghaei, Nur Hassan, Mohammad Masud Kamal Khan, Mohamed A. Trabelsi Green Hydrogen as a Sustainable Future Energy: Technologies and Challenges Encyclopedia of Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment (2024) doi: 10.1016/b978-0-323-93940-9.00277-2 

“This chapter appears to be fully polarized [plagiarised] from the previously published work, Green Hydrogen: A Pathway to a Sustainable Energy Future (DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2023.08.321). The authors have polarized the work in a very poor manner, with minimal originality. The figures, tables, structure, and references appear to be superficially altered rather than meaningfully developed. The rewording throughout the text suggests the possible use of AI tools such as ChatGPT or other paraphrasing software.”

Arum cylindraceum

This is not just plagiairsm. This paper is a carbon-copy of another ridiculously bad papermill product, Hassan et al 2024, which was already retracted for “late-stage authorship changes“. The authors were the Polish professor Marek Jaszczur and his Iraqi PhD student Qusay Hassan, customers of a trashy Iraqi papermill which specialises on stealing.

And here is Aghaie with the papermiller and citation extortionist Gaurav Dhiman (read above):

Zeinab Montazeri , Taher Niknam, Jamshid Aghaei, Om Parkash Malik, Mohammad Dehghani , Gaurav Dhiman Golf Optimization Algorithm: A New Game-Based Metaheuristic Algorithm and Its Application to Energy Commitment Problem Considering Resilience Biomimetics (2023) doi: 10.3390/biomimetics8050386 

“This paper belongs to a set of highly similar papers with Mohammad Dehghani as their common author. All threads on PubPeer for this issue will be linked to the following one: https://pubpeer.com/publications/D47357D409AE273F9E03C7CBE30EB7.”

Alexander Magazinov

Why so many Nobel laureates and other allegedly respectable scientists want to be associated with papermills is a mystery to me. They just keep doing it, read here:

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Coda about FLOGEN

USERN Nobel circus is nothing compared to what Florian Kongoli‘s FLOGEN conference series pull off (originally discovered by Pepijn van Erp). This scamference business doesn’t have fancy website, but somehow it attracted many Nobelists, and not just to sit on its virtual board. No, they personally come, hold speeches, and sit on Kongoli’s chairs in front of FLOGEN advertisements.

Must have been Kongoli’s personal charm, plus the free food and booze.

After they let Kongoli feed and film them, some Nobelists are even eager to have worthless awards named after them, which are then sold to scamference customers. These FLOGEN Nobelists are listed on the scamference website (here and here), with photos and videos of them on a stage and with Kongoli, so no denials possible:

• Fraser Stoddart, 2016 Nobel Prize, read my obituary in January 2025 Shorts
• Andre Geim, 2010 Nobel Prize
• Konstantin Novoselov, 2010 Nobel Prize (FLOGEN video), read September 2025 Shorts
• Ferid Murad, 1998 Nobel Prize, read about him in my April 2021 article
• Dan Shechtman, 2011 Nobel Prize, repeat visitor to FLOGEN
• Randy Schekman, 2013 Nobel Prize
• Rudolph A. Marcus, 1992 Nobel Prize
• Klaus von Klitzing, 1985 Nobel Prize
• Yuan T. Lee, 1986 Nobel Prize
• Richard Roberts, 1993 Nobel Prize
• Joachim Frank, 2017 Nobel Prize
• Stanley Whittingham, 2019 Nobel Prize
• Didier Queloz, 2019 Nobel Prize
• Avram Hershko, 2004 Nobel Prize (remote lecture for FLOGEN)
• Aaron Ciechanover, 2004 Nobel Prize (remote lecture for FLOGEN)
• Kurt Wüthrich, 2002 Nobel Prize (also speaker at USERN 2025!)

It seems, unlike all these greedy old men, the Nobel laureate Frances Arnold never went to FLOGEN events, but Kongoli caught her off-guard elsewhere else, and now she is his property to advertise for his scamferences:

But some other FLOGEN celebrities are outright frauds, like the antisemite Ruggiero Santilli or the creepy Elias Aifantis (who is also on USERN board), and his wunderkind daughter Katerina Aifantis (read below). Katarina was once honoured at FLOGEN with the Stoddart Award, more recently her dear Papa Aifantis was sentenced in Greek court to a prison term for extorting money from his lab members (read September 2024 Shorts).

FLOGEN’s most recent Nobel acquisition was Gregg Semenza, laureate of the 2019 Nobel Prize and Johns Hopkins University professor. He may or may not have been found guilty of research misconduct, in any case Semenza earned currently 15 retractions, and is therefore an embarrassing zombie scientist.

Nobody serious wants to invite Semenza to give a talk or to give him an award. But unserious people do, thus Semenza made a total pillock of himself at a FLOGEN scamference. Ta-da:

In October 2024, Semenza was awarded the usual worthless crap called “Fray Award” for his sustainably retracted research, at the 2024 FLOGEN SIPS scamference in Out of the Blue Resort in Crete, Greece (“Featuring 10 Nobel Laureates, an internationally renowned law judge, and many distinguished guests“). The award is named after Derek J. Fray who in 2011 was the first major scientist to fall into Kongoli’s honey trap. Kongoli gives the Fray Sustainability Award either to his celebrity guests (i.e., Nobelists, or Santilli, or Aifantis), or to anyone apparently paying for it.

Wait, that’s not all. Semenza’s FLOGEN embarrassment is even deeper. At the same October 2024 FLOGEN SIPS in Crete, Semenza personally presented the “Semenza International Cell Engineering in Medicine Award” to… Kongoli’s son, Davis Joseph! Here is the ceremony where Joseph (on the right) thanks his father (middle, with Semenza):

As Kongoli proudly announced on X, he had Semenza award his son for some unhinged trash which Joseph published in an MDPI special issue edited by Daddy’s friends and grateful FLOGEN awardees Haruhiko Inufusa, Shigeru Hirano and Koji Abe:

Davis Joseph The Fundamental Neurobiological Mechanism of Oxidative Stress-Related 4E-BP2 Protein Deamidation International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2024) doi: 10.3390/ijms252212268 

In his follow-up MDPI paper edited by the same FLOGEN awardees (Joseph 2025), Kongoli’s deranged wunderkind presented “My Unified Theory of neurodegeneration pathogenesis,” and announced the arrival of the “Davis-Joseph principle“.

La Presse reported on 6 October 2025 that Joseph is suing his former employer, the McGill University in Canada, plus “seven of his professors and the Langlois law firm for misfire, fraud and harassment” for HALF A BILLION dollars Kongoli then explained that his son’s discovery is “worthy of a Nobel” and accused La Presse of running a “coordinated campaign of defamation, harassment and economic sabotage“.

Imagine how much money Kongoli makes with his scamferences so that he can sponsor his son’s frivolous lawsuits. All thanks to these Nobel Prize laureates.

If you are now undecided whether to go to USERN or FLOGEN (they take place almost in parallel and far apart), here a brainrot FLOGEN press release from May 2025:

“The 21st edition of Sustainability Through Science and Technology Summit 2025 (SIPS 2025), dedicated to Prof. Aaron Ciechanover, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, to be held in Cebu, Philippines, from 17-20 November 2025, has confirmed the participation of Davis Joseph as an invited summit plenary lecturer for his recent ground-breaking discovery of the common master switch for numerous brain-related diseases.”

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