Schneider Shorts 31.10.2025 – Who hasn’t had a biopsy?

Schneider Shorts of 30 October 2025 – torturing students for science in Chile, a professor in Taiwan shaves his legs, with Scottish sustainability, universities taking distance, retractions for papermilling, insignificance and plagiarism, clogged proper channels, and finally, how AI can be used for science.

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Science Elites

Sustainability and Climate Action

In Scotland, UK, an innocent man was defended from vile accusations on PubPeer. The University of Dundee has already lots to do, what with saving the reputations of Sir Philip Cohen, founder of the MRC-PPU institute, and his mentee and throne successor Dario Alessi. At least some of their worst papers were retracted on university’s orders.

Meet Karim Labib, former PhD student of the Nobelist Sir Paul Nurse, group leader at MRC-PPU, professor and ‘Head of Sustainability and Climate Action’ for the School of Life Sciences at University of Dundee. We are informed that he also chairs the EMBO Lab Sustainability Award Advisory Board.

Apaprently someone was so concerned about sustainability that he misunderstood the concept of recycling. AS the result, Labib has currently 7 problematic papers on PubPeer. Here is one:

Marija Maric , Progya Mukherjee , Michael H. Tatham , Ronald Hay, Karim Labib Ufd1-Npl4 Recruit Cdc48 for Disassembly of Ubiquitylated CMG Helicase at the End of Chromosome Replication Cell Reports (2017) doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2017.03.020 

Now a more serious case, in Science even. Back in 2014, it was celebrated in Scottish media because “Professor Karim Labib and Marija Maric from the College of Life Sciences at Dundee described[…] one the fundamental areas of biology that goes wrong in cancer.” Soon after, Marija Maric was awarded with the 2014 Howard Elder Prize for Cancer Research, followed by the 2014 CRUK Pontecorvo prize. Maric now works at The Crick in London.

Marija Maric, Timurs Maculins, Giacomo De Piccoli, Karim Labib Cdc48 and a ubiquitin ligase drive disassembly of the CMG helicase at the end of DNA replication Science (2014) doi: 10.1126/science.1253596 

Concerns about both papers were raised by Sholto David in August 2025. In September, the University of Dundee informed on PubPeer that “the University of Dundee School of Life Sciences Research Integrity Group are examining the points raised“. Now, in late October 2025, the university posted its findings for both above threads (highlights mine):

“Update: The Research Integrity Group in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee has examined the issues raised. Analysing original data from experiments used to generate the figures presented in the publication supports the published findings and we found that the reported concerns are the result of errors that occurred during figure construction. The findings and conclusions of the publication are not affected. The authors have shared the details of our findings with the journal, together with the original data and corrected versions of the affected figures.”

It is perfectly clear that the University of Dundee will decide the same about this old Nature paper:

Masato Kanemaki, Alberto Sanchez-Diaz, Agnieszka Gambus , Karim Labib Functional proteomic identification of DNA replication proteins by induced proteolysis in vivo Nature (2003) doi: 10.1038/nature01692 

This Nature paper was already fixed by Labib:

Aline C Simon , Jin C Zhou , Rajika L Perera , Frederick Van Deursen , Cecile Evrin , Marina E Ivanova , Mairi L Kilkenny , Ludovic Renault , Svend Kjaer , Dijana Matak-Vinković , Karim Labib, Alessandro Costa, Luca Pellegrini A Ctf4 trimer couples the CMG helicase to DNA polymerase α in the eukaryotic replisome Nature (2014) doi: 10.1038/nature13234 

A Correction was published on 18 September 2025:

“In the version of this article initially published, due to a figure preparation error, in the lower panel of Extended Data Fig. 6b, the Mcm5 IP sample was inserted twice (once as the IP and again as the extract), rather than the relevant Mcm5 extract sample. Due to the age of the article, Extended Data Fig. 6 cannot be replaced directly; the Supplementary information published with the online version of this amendment serves to update the figure.”

Here another mentee of Labib’s, Giacomo De Piccoli, you already met him above:

Magdalena Foltman , Cecile Evrin , Giacomo De Piccoli , Richard C. Jones , Rick D. Edmondson , Yuki Katou , Ryuichiro Nakato , Katsuhiko Shirahige , Karim Labib Eukaryotic replisome components cooperate to process histones during chromosome replication Cell Reports (2013) doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2013.02.028 

De Piccoli was last seen as group leader at the University of Warwick, also in UK, it is not clear where he is now. Another recycled blot:

Frederick Van Deursen , Sugopa Sengupta , Giacomo De Piccoli , Alberto Sanchez-Diaz , Karim Labib Mcm10 associates with the loaded DNA helicase at replication origins and defines a novel step in its activation The EMBO Journal (2012) doi: 10.1038/emboj.2012.69 

And here is De Piccoli in Warwick, recycling:

Alicja Winczura , Rowin Appanah , Michael H Tatham , Ronald T Hay , Giacomo De Piccoli The S phase checkpoint promotes the Smc5/6 complex dependent SUMOylation of Pol2, the catalytic subunit of DNA polymerase ε PLoS Genetics (2019) doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1008427 

If the University of Dundee were really be concerned about sustainability, they would close down that MRC-PPU institute, because it is a massive waste. and a source of pollution. Both literally and figuratively.

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Who hasn’t had a biopsy?

News from Chile, where Hermann Zbinden Foncea, professor of Physical Education and director of postgraduate studies and research at Finis Terrae University, was torturing students to literally extract their flesh, as muscle biopsies. Without having any medical qualifications, and without ethics approval or proper consent from his victims. A former doctoral student lodged a complaint against Zbinden, as reported by T13 on 23 October 2025 (Google-translated):

“The complainant relates that in May 2024 the teacher made the request for biopsies: “He simply said, ‘Now, who hasn’t had a biopsy?'” And there he would choose the participants.

• The biopsies were performed in a university gymnasium, and not in a medical setting, according to what was stated in the complaint.
• Witnesses affirm that participating was not really voluntary: a refusal could have affected the progress of the doctorate or even the retention of a scholarship.
• One of the audios obtained by the Prosecutor’s Office consists of the victim complaining of pain, at the moment the instrument “reached the bone . At that moment, the teacher responds: “No, no, no… I didn’t feel it hard.”
• After the procedure, the student fainted and, according to witnesses, the professor reacted in a disconcerting way: “It’s good that it happened to this one and not to someone outside the university…”.”

[…] The Finis Terrae University has confirmed that it is carrying out an internal investigation and has separated the academic from his supervisory function. In a statement, they maintained that “the participants were volunteers” and that the procedures were part of academic activities.””

No, Zbinden was not arrested and put on trial. The biopsies were used for Zbinden’s peer-reviewed research, where he simply lied about ethics approvals and informed consent. Here an example:

Mauricio Castro-Sepulveda, Mauro Tuñón-Suárez, Giovanni Rosales-Soto, Ronald Vargas-Foitzick, Louise Deldicque, Hermann Zbinden-Foncea Regulation of mitochondrial morphology and cristae architecture by the TLR4 pathway in human skeletal muscle Front Cell Dev Biol (2023) doi: 10.3389/fcell.2023.1212779

“Twelve nondiabetic, nonsmoker men (mean [standard deviation], age, 24.7 [1.5] y; […] Volunteers were recruited through posters placed at the Finis Terrae University and on massive social media. [….] Biopsies from the vastus lateralis of the dominant leg were obtained at the middle point between the anterior superior iliac spine and the patella. […] All subjects signed a written informed consent form in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, and it was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the Universidad Finis Terrae (22-077)-Accredited by SEREMI of Health Exempt Resolution No. 002681/2021”

Now, the ethics approval “No. 002681/2021” was apparently issued by other researchers of Universidad Finis Terrae (Finsterbusch et al 2025), and was about students filling out questionnaires about “emotional intelligence and authentic leadership“.

Another example:

Mauricio Castro-Sepulveda , Rodrigo Fernández-Verdejo, Mauro Tuñón-Suárez , Jorge Morales-Zúñiga, Mayarling Troncoso, Sebastian Jannas-Vela, Hermann Zbinden-Foncea Low abundance of Mfn2 protein correlates with reduced mitochondria-SR juxtaposition and mitochondrial cristae density in human men skeletal muscle: Examining organelle measurements from TEM images FASEB J (2021) doi: 10.1096/fj.202002615RR

“We analyzed a new subset of data from a previous study of our group. ¹¹ […] Twelve nondiabetic, nonsmoking men, without history of cardiovascular, respiratory, or thyroid disease, were included. After a 12-h fast, subjects underwent a biopsy from the Vastus Lateralis muscle of the dominant leg. […] All subjects signed a written informed consent approved by the Institutional Review Board at the Universidad Finis Terrae and adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki”

The reference goes to the clinical study, where we are told the 12 young men were 24.7 years old on average, i.e. Zbinden’s students:

Mauricio Castro-Sepulveda , Sebastian Jannas-Vela , Rodrigo Fernández-Verdejo , Daniela Avalos , German Tapia , Claudio Villagrán , Nicolas Quezada , Hermann Zbinden-Foncea Relative lipid oxidation associates directly with mitochondrial fusion phenotype­ and mitochondria-sarcoplasmic reticulum interactions in human skeletal muscle AJP Endocrinology and Metabolism (2020) doi: 10.1152/ajpendo.00025.2020 

And another recent case:

Francisco Díaz-Castro, Mauro Tuñón-Suárez, Patricia Rivera, Javier Botella, Jorge Cancino, Ana María Figueroa, Juan Gutiérrez, Claudette Cantin, Louise Deldicque, Hermann Zbinden-Foncea, Joachim Nielsen, Carlos Henríquez-Olguín, Eugenia Morselli, Mauricio Castro-Sepúlveda A single bout of resistance exercise triggers mitophagy, potentially involving the ejection of mitochondria in human skeletal muscle Acta Physiol (2024) doi: 10.1111/apha.14203

“Eight non-diabetics, non-smoking men without any history of cardiovascular, respiratory, or thyroid disease were included (see characteristics of the volunteers in Table 1). All subjects signed a written informed consent approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Universidad Finis Terrae (Comité ético científico Universidad Finis Terrae, Santiago, Chile, IDP:22-020), and the study adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki. […] One hour after exercise, a biopsy was taken from the vastus lateralis SkM of the non-exercised (Rest-leg) and exercised leg (Ex-leg).”

And another recently published clinical study:

A M Figueroa-Toledo, J Gutiérrez-Pino, A Carriel-Nesvara, M Marchese-Bittencourt , H Zbinden-Foncea, M Castro-Sepúlveda BMAL1 and CLOCK proteins exhibit differential association with mitochondrial dynamics, protein synthesis pathways and muscle strength in human muscle J Physiol (2024) doi: 10.1113/JP285955.

“This study was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki, except for registration in a database. All experiments were approved by the local ethics committee (Comité ético científico Universidad Finis Terrae, Santiago, Chile, IDP:23-011). All participants gave written informed consent. [….] a biopsy was obtained from the vastus lateralis muscle.”

Zbinden reports on his publications a second affiliation with UC Louvain in Belgium, like here:

Mayalen Valero-Breton, Geoffrey Warnier, Mauricio Castro-Sepulveda, Louise Deldicque, Hermann Zbinden-Foncea, Acute and Chronic Effects of High Frequency Electric Pulse Stimulation on the Akt/mTOR Pathway in Human Primary Myotubes, Front Bioeng Biotechnol (2020) doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2020.565679

“Human muscle biopsies of the vastus lateralis muscle were obtained from young, healthy, and sedentary men (n = 3) as previously described (Gnimassou et al., 2018). […] The study was approved by the ethical committee of Saint-Luc Hospital/UCLouvain (Belgium). The safety procedures of the UCLouvain were applied whenever needed. The study was performed according to the Declaration of Helsinki.”

Knowing what we know now, this must be a lie, the muscle biopsies most likely came from Zbinden’s torture victims in Chile. Maybe this is what endeared Zbinden to his Belgian friends: he was able to produce human tissue samples which are very, very difficult to obtain in Europe legally.

But then again, here is University of Louvain inviting to Zbinden’s practical courses and internships. Do these Belgian students also “voluntarily” donate muscle biopsies to Zbinden?

If the suspicions are true, all those papers must be retracted.

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Scholarly Publishing

Counts of voyeurism

From the Department of Proper Channels. Once again, the pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis was educated by the editor how to think like a real scientist.

The sleuth reported this paper on 26 September 2025 to the official journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology:

Toran Sanli , Ayesha Rashid , Caiqiong Liu , Shane Harding , Robert G. Bristow , Jean-Claude Cutz , Gurmit Singh , James Wright , Theodoros Tsakiridis Ionizing Radiation Activates AMP-Activated Kinase (AMPK): A Target for Radiosensitization of Human Cancer Cells International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics (2010) doi: 10.1016/j.ijrobp.2010.03.005 

The Editor-in-Chief Sue Yom, professor at University of California San Francisco in USA, immediately announced an investigation. She announced its outcome on 26 October 2025:

“This is to notify you that we have investigated this and found that the scientific response and close examination of the data do not support a conclusion of fraud.
We are concluding the investigation.“

Oh really? The gel bands are clearly identical, but I guess Yom meant it is not fraud to copy-paste them to fabricate results. The last author of this paper is a white man in Canada – Theodoros Tsakiridis , associate professor at the McMaster University, who of course has more bad stuff on PubPeer. The penultimate author James Wright is another associate professor, while Gurmit Singh is full professor at McMaster. Here another joint paper by these gentlemen and their mentees:

Ayesha Rashid , Caiqiong Liu , Toran Sanli , Evangelia Tsiani , Gurmit Singh , Robert G Bristow, Ian Dayes , Himu Lukka , James Wright , Theodoros Tsakiridis Resveratrol enhances prostate cancer cell response to ionizing radiation. Modulation of the AMPK, Akt and mTOR pathways Radiation oncology (2011) doi: 10.1186/1748-717x-6-144 

Another Tsakiridis study in the same journal:

Yaryna Storozhuk , Toran Sanli , Sarah N Hopmans , Carrie Schultz , Tom Farrell , Jean-Claude Cutz , Gregory R Steinberg , James Wright , Gurmit Singh , Theodoros Tsakiridis Chronic modulation of AMP-Kinase, Akt and mTOR pathways by ionizing radiation in human lung cancer xenografts Radiation oncology (2012) doi: 10.1186/1748-717x-7-71 

Other bad papers by this team:

Maybe you noticed a recurrent name on those fake papers – Toran Sanli, Tsakiridis’s former PhD student, who graduated in 2012 and then stayed on as postdoc. Well, CBS reported in 2014:

“Ontario Provincial Police have charged a McMaster University researcher with voyeurism after an alleged incident in Algonquin Park over the Thanksgiving weekend last fall. […]

Const. Darcy Nicol, of the OPP’s Killaloe detachment confirmed to CBC Hamilton that a recording device was placed in a communal shower stall at the campground.

“Somebody made a complaint that they’d gone to use shower and found a camera in it,” she said, adding that police are still investigating how long the device had been in place. […]

Toran Sanli, 30, of Grimsby is now facing two counts of voyeurism. “

I pointed all this out to Yom, but she refused communication.

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Authentic histopathological micrographs

Fraudsters and papermillers now use AI to generate research papers, not just text, but also figures. The academic community is in panic: how will we be able to detect AI fabrications??? They look just like the real stuff!!!

In reality, the problem lies rather with the utterly broken peer review.

Look at this, in a Springer Nature journal:

Ruchi Tiwari, Gaurav Tiwari, Bhupesh Chander Semwal, S. Amudha, Shankar Lal Soni, Shashi Ravi Suman Rudrangi , Hanish Singh Jayasingh Chellammal , Pankaj Sharma Luteolin-Encapsulated Polymeric Micelles for Anti-inflammatory and Neuroprotective Applications: An In Vivo Study BioNanoScience (2025) doi: 10.1007/s12668-025-02062-7 

The author Pankaj Sharma went to PubPeer to explain the numerical nonsense with “formatting compression” and assured about those silly “brain” cartoons:

“We would like to clarify that all four images presented in Figure 8 are authentic histopathological micrographs obtained from rat brain sections (hippocampal region) collected after the respective experimental treatments.”

Another AI fabrication by the same gang, in another Springer Nature journal:

Gaurav Tiwari , Satyajit Panda , A. Salomy Monica Diyya , Noel Vinay Thomas , Trinayan Deka , Shashi Ravi Suman Rudrangi , Gaurav Patel , Pankaj Sharma Design and optimization of PLGA-based gemcitabine nanocapsule for enhanced pancreatic cancer efficacy Investigational New Drugs (2025) doi: 10.1007/s10637-025-01567-y 

Sharma explained that there was merely a “typographical placement error”, and:

“We respectfully disagree with the assertions. The area highlighted by ImageTwin is not a cloned region but reflects the naturally repeating lobular architecture of hepatic tissue around the central vein.“

You laugh, but the journal editors will probably take Sharma’s side. The real problem is not AI.

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Retraction Watchdogging

A lack of scientific ethic

Another retraction for the infamous papermill fraudster and rascist Rafael Luque, who was sacked in Spain and found a new warm home in Moscow, at the Russian University of People’s Friendship (RUDN). Luque’s coauthor is his mentee Thomas Len, prodigy son of Luque’s best friend and fellow papermiller Christophe Len, who is professor at Chimie ParisTech in France. Mentioned here:

I wrote about Len Junior and this specific paper already in April 2024 Shorts:

Misbah Malik , Thomas Len, Rafael Luque, Sameh M. Osman , Emilia Paone, Muhammad Imran Khan , Muhammad Ahmad Wattoo , Muhammad Jamshaid , Aqsa Anum , Aziz Ur Rehman Investigation on synthesis of ternary g-C3N4/ZnO–W/M nanocomposites integrated heterojunction II as efficient photocatalyst for environmental applications Environmental Research (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2022.114621 

Upon criticism, an author shared “original EDS spectra”, which PubPeer user Simnia avena proved as having “absolutely no relationship between the screenshots posted (which are not raw data files) and the original graphs” and having “clear traces of editing“. Len Jr replied on PubPeer accusing his critic of “a lack of scientific ethic” because they publicly shared the fake image he sent to the editor, and which the editor forwarded to the critic. The figure is “still confidential“, as Len Jr insisted and raised other accusations, which got moderated. Alexander Magazinov and another PubPeer user found more evidence of data fabrication:

In early 2025, an Expression of Concern was issued, announcing an investigation by the journal. The retraction was published in October 2025:

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

The authors replied on multiple occasions to comments posted over a period of time on PubPeer at https://pubpeer.com/publications/A2398D91F4AED0294B9B43849B7B7A#. These responses were aggregated and, together with the original submission and first and second revisions, were considered by the assessing editor. The EDX spectra of the original version are different compared to the ones provided with the first revision. Both the original and first revised versions contain clear signs of image editing, most notably a colour contrast which may be due to the apparent deletion of a peak in the g-C3N4/ZnO-W/Yb spectrum of the first revision. Instances of inaccurate peak labelling are also observed.

These spectra were redrawn for the second revision, which are also the spectra that appear in the published version. Placement of these peaks are scientifically inaccurate and it is unclear how the y-axis values were derived. It was also observed that the EDX spectra provided in response to the journal’s enquiries were different again to all of the aforementioned spectra.

The editor has lost confidence in the reliability of the EDX spectra presented, and in this article as a whole, and is therefore retracting it.”

Len Jr now left Spain and works with two russians in France (Andrei Khodakov and Vitaly Ordomsky in Lille). Both his biological daddy in Paris and academic patron Luque in Moscow are surely very proud. This retraction will never prevent Len Jr from becoming professor in France.

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Never affiliated with Sapienza University

Another team of papermillers was struck with a retraction, specially the Iranian fraudsters with Italian affiliation, Arash Karimipour, accompanied (among other papermill fraudsters) by Zhixiong Li of Opole Polytechnic in Poland.

It was a massive citation delivery vehicle to the authors and anyone who paid. Most likely Karimipour used his alter ego sock-puppet “Aliakbar Karimipour” to peer review his own paper:

Yang Xu , Quyen Nguyen , Omid Malekahmadi , Ramin Hadi , Zahra Jokar , Ali Mardani , Arash Karimipour , Ramin Ranjbarzadeh , Zhixiong Li , Quang‐Vu Bach Synthesis and characterization of additive graphene oxide nanoparticles dispersed in water: Experimental and theoretical viscosity prediction of non‐Newtonian nanofluid Mathematical Methods in the Applied Sciences (2020) doi: 10.1002/mma.6381 

The retraction appeared on 19 October 2025 (highlights mine):

“The article was submitted as part of a guest-edited special issue. As part of an investigation, the journal discovered that the article was accepted solely on the basis of compromised editorial handling and what appears to be a manipulated peer review process. When informed of the decision to retract the article, the institution which was listed as the affiliation for five of the authors noted that four of them were never affiliated with the institution, and that the department noted in the affiliations (the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Rome, Sapienza, Italy) does not exist. As a result, the data and conclusions are considered unreliable, and the accountability of the authorship is considered compromised. Therefore the article must be retracted. Author R. Ranjbarzadeh has been informed of the retraction and stated that his involvement with the research was limited to part of the experimental measurements, and that he was not involved in the data analysis, writing, or submission of the manuscript. The corresponding author has agreed that author R. Ranjbarzadeh’s role in the production of the data and article was limited to taking basic laboratory measurements.”

Now, these are the Sapienza authors and the affiliations they listed, the university admits to have hosted only the first one:

• Ramin Ranjbarzadeh – Department of Civil, Constructional and Environmental Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy (presently listed as PhD student)
• Arash Karimipour -Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Rome, Sapienza, Italy
• Ali Mardani -Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Rome, Sapienza, Italy
• Zahra Jokar – Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Rome, Sapienza, Italy
• Ramin Hadi – Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Rome, Sapienza, Italy

Indeed, the last 3 authors in the list are (presently!) not affiliated with the Sapienza University. But what about Karimipour who is even today listed as associate professor at the Department of Astronautical, Electrical and Energy Engineering?

Well, the venerated Italian university will apply Karimipour’s affiliation on a case by case basis. For his not yet retracted papers, Karimipour is Sapienza’s esteemed professor and the highly cited asset of their faculty. For retracted papers however, Sapienza never heard of Karimipour and whoever says otherwise will be reported to the Italian police.

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Did not meet authorship threshold

Actually, this happens not only in Italy. Also in Australia.

Gilles Guillemin, the sacked Macquarie University professor of neuroscience and his mentee Nady Braidy, the still-not-sacked fellow at University New South Wales (UNSW), had another retraction. Read about them here:

The affair is already 4 years old, this paper was flagged by Elisabeth Bik in September 2021. No, eating pomegrenates does not cure Alzheimer’s, sorry:

Nady Braidy, Musthafa Mohamed Essa, Anne Poljak , Subash Selvaraju , Samir Al-Adawi , Thamilarasan Manivasagm , Arokiasamy Justin Thenmozhi , Lezanne Ooi , Perminder Sachdev, Gilles J. Guillemin Consumption of pomegranates improves synaptic function in a transgenic mice model of Alzheimer’s disease Oncotarget (2016) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.10905 

In June 2023, Actinopolyspora biskrensis noted that the journal issued a note: “This article is currently undergoing investigation. We strongly recommend that this article is not cited until the investigation is completed.”

The note was now removed and a retraction appeared instead, dated 16 October 2025 (highlights mine)

“Our Image Forensics analysis ​revealed Western blot image duplications in Figures 1A, 3A, 4A, and 5A. Specifically, some bands in different Western blots in Figure 1A ​appear to be the same, Synaptophysin blot is duplicated as Bcl1 blot in Figure 3A, b-actin blot is duplicated in Figure 4A as Akt blot and p-CaMKIIα bands are duplicated in APP blot in Figure 5A. In Figure 4A the b-actin bands were found in b-actin blot in Figure 5A. ​We also identified an external duplication where the SNAP25 blot in Figure 1A was reproduced as the GAPDH blot in Figure 5B of an unrelated paper published later [1]. The corresponding author Professor Guillemin has acknowledged these duplications and requested the retraction ​if the first author, Dr. Braidy, who performed all the Western blots in his laboratory at UNSW, could not provide supporting materials.​ ​Furthermore, both universities, where the research was conducted, initiated their own investigations. Macquarie University concluded that Professor Guillemin’s contributions ​to the paper​ did not meet their authorship threshold ​according to the Macquarie University Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research and requested his name be removed. ​The second request to withdraw authorship was received from Professor Perminder Sachdev, who stated that his “involvement in this paper was restricted to commenting on a near final version of the draft from a clinical perspective, upon request by Dr Braidy, first author.” The UNSW ​Conduct & Integrity Office also began an investigation but has not yet provided an update or responded to the journal’s inquiries. Consequently, based on the findings of multiple WB duplications, ​the absence of supporting data from the first author, Dr Braidy, and issues with authorships, the editorial decision has been made to retract this paper. The corresponding author Dr. Guillemin agreed with the retraction, but the rest of the authors either did not respond directly or could not be reached.”

There are several points to make. First, Oncotarget‘s manager Zoya Demidenko (the widow of founding EiC Mikhail Blagosklonny) claims for herself the full credit for Elisabeth Bik’s and others’ sleuthing. Not nice.

Second, Brady (who now joined a Vietnamese entity called McKaizer Institute) is made the sole responsible for all the fraud, which is unfair. In this regard, thirdly, that innocent bystander, the UNSW’s Scientia Professor Perminder Sachdev, actually used to be a close collaborator of Guillemin and Braidy, they already had an earlier retraction in 2023, for Braidy et al 2014.

And fourth: funny how Macquarie University used to celebrate Guillemin, added this exact fake paper to their research output, and now they claim he never had anything to do with any of it.

Note that Guillemin (who left Macquarie Uni in 2023) was corresponding author. I am sure Macquarie University was fine with that, but now that the paper contained concerns, they suddenly want his name removed?No, his name was on it, you swallow the consequences.

— Elisabeth Bik – Perpetrator 5, a fraudulent microbiologist (@elisabethbik.bsky.social) 2025-10-24T17:26:51.959Z

Oh, and fifth. Maybe it wasn’t even Braidy who faked the figures. The pomegrenate paper may be a product of an Asian papermill, there are indeed known papermillers among authors. Specifically, the gang of Arokiasamy Justin Thenmozhi (PubPeer record), Musthafa Mohamed Essa (PubPeer record) and the mistyped Thamilarasan Manivasagam (PubPeer record). Here one of their fake common papers:

Arokiasamy Justin Thenmozhi , Mathiyazahan Dhivyabharathi , Tharsius Raja William Raja , Thamilarasan Manivasagam , Musthafa Mohamed Essa Tannoid principles of Emblica officinalis renovate cognitive deficits and attenuate amyloid pathologies against aluminum chloride induced rat model of Alzheimer’s disease Nutritional Neuroscience (2016) doi: 10.1179/1476830515y.0000000016 

In September 2019, Justin-Thenmozhi announced on PubPeer to “seriously check all of the raw data” and “try to fix this problem by contacting the publishers“. In Septmeber 2021 he informed to be “in the process of erratum publication“. Yet the publisher Taylor & Francis apparently chose to do nothing.

Thing is, Justin-Thenmozhi made exactly same PubPeer promises in 2019 and 2021 on this other paper, which reuses the gels from the above study. Obviously Justin-Thenmozhi did contact the publishers, because this Springer paper was corrected (then retracted:

Arokiasamy Justin Thenmozhi , Tharsius Raja William Raja , Udaiyappan Janakiraman , Thamilarasan Manivasagam Neuroprotective effect of hesperidin on aluminium chloride induced Alzheimer’s disease in Wistar rats Neurochemical Research (2015) doi: 10.1007/s11064-015-1525-1 

A Correction appeared in May 2022 to address the “unfortunately” discovered “errors in Figs. 4 and 7.” Then a sleuth found more:

On 23 August 2024, the retraction arrived:

“Following previous image concerns with overlapping features in multiple panels of Fig. 4 and two similar panels in Fig. 7A, the authors have published a correction [1]. Further concerns were raised more recently regarding multiple overlapping panels in Fig. 7aa and Fig. 6 of an article under consideration within a close time frame [2]. It was determined during the course of the second investigation that the image concerns in Fig. 4 constituted a level III image aberration according to STM guidelines [3].

Taking these issues together, the Editor in Chief has lost the confidence in the integrity of the data in this article.

Author Justin Thenmozhi did not respond to correspondence from the Publisher about this retraction.”

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Anticarcinogens from chicken feed

Another papermill retraction, where a Belgian professor, Nadia Everaert of KU Leuven, hopefully learned her lesson. Her coauthors are Chinese, some affiliated with the agriculture faculty of the University of Liège, also in Belgium. Everaert’s scientific specialisation lies normally in chicken and pig feed, but it of course perfectly makes sense to draw from there to cancer cures if those are made from soybeans:

Yingying Zhu, Yang Yao, Zhenxing Shi, Nadia Everaert, Guixing Ren Synergistic Effect of Bioactive Anticarcinogens from Soybean on Anti-Proliferative Activity in MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7 Human Breast Cancer Cells In Vitro Molecules (2018) doi: 10.3390/molecules23071557 

The retraction from 27 October 2025 went:

“Following publication, concerns were brought to the attention of the Editorial Office regarding the integrity of Figure 6 presented in this article [1].

Adhering to our standard procedure, an investigation was conducted by the Editorial Office and Editorial Board that identified indications of inappropriate editing and duplication within Figure 6 presented in this article [1]. While the authors cooperated during this process, complete raw material that met the journals requirements (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/molecules/instructions#oriimages) could not be provided for Editorial Board Evaluation. Consequently, the Editorial Board has lost confidence in the reliability of the findings and decided to retract this publication [1], as per MDPI’s retraction policy (https://www.mdpi.com/ethics#_bookmark30).

This retraction was approved by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Molecules.

The authors agreed to this retraction.”

Everaert will probably request her Chinese friends to invite her as the nominaly whitey only to papers with direct connection to lifestock nutrition.

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Considered plagiarism

The ex-rector of University of Kiel Simone Fulda and her former mentor at the University of Ulm, Klaus Michael Debatin, earn a second retraction. Again by Bentham, again for self-plagiarism, for the same review they published several times (read September 2025 Shorts).

The irony is that all those fake cancer research studies which the German Research Council (DFG) investigated and found Fulda and Debatin guilty of research misconduct for (read July 2025 Shorts) are so far safe from retractions. And the other irony is that while the “serious” publishers do nothing or allow dishonest corrections, the bottom-feeding Bentham retracted her second paper now:

Simone Fulda, Klaus-Michael Debatin Genes Involved in Apoptosis Regulation: Implications for Cancer Therapy Current Genomics (2005) doi: 10.2174/138920205775811407 

This cancer review was a near identical copy of a review published another bentham journal in 2023, and there are at least two more incarnations, one of them previosuly retracted by Bentham’s Paradigm Publishing:

• Simone Fulda, Klaus-Michael Debatin Apoptosis in Drug Response Current Pharmacogenomics (2003) doi: 10.2174/1570160033378358 
• Simone Fulda, Klaus-Michael Debatin Apoptosis Signaling in Tumor Therapy Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2004) doi: 10.1196/annals.1322.016 
• Simone Fulda, Klaus-Michael Debatin Modulation of apoptosis signaling for cancer therapy Archivum Immunologiae et Therapiae Experimentalis (2006) doi: 10.1007/s00005-006-0019-x  RETRACTED 6 August 2025

Here is the Bentham retraction for the 2005 paper from 10 September 2025:

“Following a formal complaint and subsequent investigation, it was determined that a significant portion of the content in this review closely resembles an earlier article published online in 2003 (DOI: 10.2174/1570160033378358) authored by the same individuals. This constitutes substantial text recycling or self-plagiarism and violates the journal’s publication ethics.

Such duplication constitutes a serious breach of publishing ethics and is considered plagiarism. In accordance with our policies, this article is hereby retracted from the journal record.

We apologize to our readers and to the original author for any inconvenience caused.”

Another irony: Fulda was previously defended by her past employers, the Universities of Ulm and Frankfurt, and by the German media like Spiegel (read (read January 2025 Shorts and May 2025 Shorts), exactly because she was allegedly innocent of all accusations of “plagiarism“.

And now Bentham retracted hers and Debatin’s paper for just this a second time, and now even spelled the word: plagiarism.

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No longer statistically significant

An unexpected retraction in Nature for Ashani Weeraratna, distinguished professor at Johns Hopkins University in USA. The study was discussed in this article:

The paper has many, many authors, who sure did all possible important contributions but it seems nobody bothered to check the actual data.

Amanpreet Kaur , Marie R. Webster , Katie Marchbank , Reeti Behera , Abibatou Ndoye , Curtis H. Kugel , Vanessa M. Dang , Jessica Appleton , Michael P. O’Connell , Phil Cheng , Alexander A. Valiga , Rachel Morissette , Nazli B. McDonnell , Luigi Ferrucci , Andrew V. Kossenkov , Katrina Meeth , Hsin-Yao Tang , Xiangfan Yin , William H. Wood , Elin Lehrmann , Kevin G. Becker, Keith T. Flaherty, Dennie T. Frederick, Jennifer A. Wargo, Zachary A. Cooper, Michael T. Tetzlaff, Courtney Hudgens, Katherine M. Aird, Rugang Zhang, Xiaowei Xu, Qin Liu, Edmund Bartlett, Giorgos Karakousis, Zeynep Eroglu, Roger S. Lo, Matthew Chan, Alexander M. Menzies, Georgina V. Long, Douglas B. Johnson, Jeffrey Sosman, Bastian Schilling, Dirk Schadendorf, David W. Speicher, Marcus Bosenberg, Antoni Ribas, Ashani T. Weeraratna sFRP2 in the aged microenvironment drives melanoma metastasis and therapy resistance Nature (2016) doi: 10.1038/nature17392 

There were many problems with that paper, judging from the uploaded raw data in supplementary material. Lots of it simply didn’t match the published figures. Where it matched, it becames clear the authors did not provide the correct loading controls for their western blot experiments. Like here:

But there are even much bigger problems. It seems, datasets were manipulated and inconvenient experimental results were removed to produce “significance” where there was none.

It seems, the asterisks were labels for data points to be removed. Like in this case:

And here:

It also seems that “inconvenient” mice were removed from experiments while elsewhere “convenient” extra human patients were added to achieve the desired clinical results:

The retraction from 29 October 2025 went:

“The Editors are retracting this article. After being alerted of several issues with the data presented, an editorial investigation revealed that some results in Extended Data Fig. 9e are no longer statistically significant, which affects the conclusions about therapy resistance as presented in the published study.

In addition, several errors in image and source data consistency as well as stated sample numbers were identified in Figs. 1, 3a, 5, Extended Data Figs. 4b, 5c and 9c.

Luigi Ferrucci, Hsin-Yao Tang, Rugang Zhang and Roger S. Lo, agree with this retraction.”

Weeraratna and other couathors did not agree with the retraction.

Strange: after Weeraratna deleted her X profile in late 2024 and moved to Bluesky, her old X account @AshaniTW was assigned to some male economy professor from Brazil, who was on Twitter since 2012.

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Science Breakthroughs

I personally applied these fatty acids on my thighs

The Holy Grail of Medicine has finally been solved. There is a cure for hair loss!

Various international news reported, here Daily Mail and The Sun or even Newsweek, and if that is not serious enough for you, here is New Scientist, from 22 October 2025:

“Sung-Jan Lin at National Taiwan University and his colleagues became intrigued by the role of fat tissue in hair growth several years ago during an experiment on mice. “We unexpectedly discovered that, after skin irritation, the size of skin adipocytes [fat cells] quickly shrinks before hair starts to regrow,” says Lin. “We speculated that adipocytes might release fatty acids via a process called lipolysis to fuel hair regrowth.”

To understand the process better, they have repeated the experiment, taking a closer look at the cells involved. First, they induced eczema on shaved mice by applying an irritating compound to parts of their back. Within 10 days, the team observed the mice’s hair follicles were in an active growth phase, and these areas had visible hair growth.”

But you can’t sell eczema, so it of course turned out that the serum also works without:

““We found that only monounsaturated fatty acids rich in adipose tissues, such as oleic acids and palmitoleic acids, are effective in promoting hair regeneration when topically applied to skin,” says Lin.
He says that the researchers, who have patented the serum, have also seen promising results when applying it to human hair follicles in the lab”

As every great scientist, Lin tested it on himself:

“I personally applied these fatty acids, dissolved in alcohol, on my thighs for three weeks and I found it promoted hair regrowth.””

Sholto David suspects the shaved mice were simply painted with a felt tip pen. Smut Clyde remembered that the infamous dermatology fraudster William Summerlin did this before. This is the paper, of course it contains fudged data:

Kang-Yu Tai , Chih-Lung Chen , Sabrina Mai-Yi Fan , Chen-Hsiang Kuan , Chun-Kai Lin , Hsin-Wen Huang , Hao-Wei Lee , Shiou-Han Wang , Nai-Wen Chang , Jian-Da Lin , Che-Feng Chang , Kai-Chien Yang , Maksim V. Plikus , Sung-Jan Lin Adipocyte lipolysis activates epithelial stem cells for hair regeneration through fatty acid metabolic signaling Cell Metabolism (2025) doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2025.09.012 

The only non-Chinese author is Maksim Plikus, professorat the University of California Irvine, who specialises on discovering cures for hair loss and whose Latvian name means “naked” or “bald”.

If you can’t get enough, from 10 October 2025 New Scientist had a related breakthrough, also from Taiwan. This time from a business – Schweitzer Biotech Company in Taipei:

“A serum designed to reverse hair loss has shown promising results in less than two months. Based on plant extracts and cell-stimulating proteins, the topical treatment led to visible improvements in hair density compared with a placebo formula. […]

Looking for another approach, researchers at Schweitzer Biotech Company in Taiwan have developed a serum that includes caffeine – a common ingredient in hair loss-preventing shampoos – and two proteins that stimulate cell growth: insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and fibroblast growth factor-7 (FGF-7), which have shown promise for hair follicle regeneration. It also has extracts from Centella asiatica, a herbaceous tropical plant commonly used in skincare”

The clinical trial with 60 adult men between 16 and 60 (median age apparently secret), and without any actual hair loss, was a resounding success, presumably because they didn’t lose any hair. The breakthrough didn’t fully hit global news yet because it is a preprint:

Tsong-Min Chang, Chung-Chin Wu, Huey-Chun Huang, Ji-Ying Lu, Ching-Hua Chuang, Pei-Lun Kao, Wei-Hsuan Tang, Wang-Ju Hsieh, Luke Tzu-Chi Liu, Wei-Yin Qiu, Ivona Percec, Charles Chen, Tsun-Yung Kuo A 56-Day Randomized, Double-Blinded, and Placebo-Controlled Clinical Assessment of Scalp Health and Hair Growth Parameters with a Centella asiatica Extracellular Vesicle and Growth Factor-Based Essence bioRxiv (2025) doi: 10.1101/2025.09.10.25335404

That one even has before and after pictures!

Both New Scientist‘s articles about these two Taiwanese papers featured an obligatory white man as expert: Christos Tziotzios at King’s College London, who commented about the preprint: “This plant has been used for anti-ageing and restorative, anti-inflammatory uses“, and about the Cell Metabolism paper: “It may also explain why some people experience hair growth after microneedling“.

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