Schneider Shorts 7.11.2025 – No data were falsified or fabricated in any way

Schneider Shorts of 7 November 2025 – an obituary for a rector who published too much, another German professor pestered by sleuths, Canada’s superstar and his mentees, Wiley’s haphazard approach to papermills, and finally, when corner clones are not OK.

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Obituary

A centre of science

In August 2025, the President of the Hannover Medical School Michael P. Manns died. He took over the job in 2019, after his nepotistic predecessor Christoph Baum suddenly resigned (read media reporting from 2018). I wrote about Baum’s toxic MHH before, they used to aggressively defend their then-professor Paolo Macchiarini and their award-winning graduate Philip Jungebluth.

Manns retired as MHH President by the end of 2024, for health reasons. The university published on 15 August 2025 this obituary (translated):

“He ensured that people live longer and better: The former president of the Hannover Medical School (MHH) and world-famous gastroenterologist Prof. Dr. Michael P. Manns died today at the age of 73. He succumbed to a tumor disease that had been affecting him for months but did not prevent him from continuing his research at the MHH until the very end. […]

In April, Stephan Weil, then Minister President of Lower Saxony, awarded Professor Manns the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of Lower Saxony for his achievements and services in medical research and for Lower Saxony as a centre of science. At the award ceremony, Weil said: “Professor Manns ensures that people live longer and better lives.””

Even Manns failed to get the medical doctorate degree of Jungebluth (supervised by Macchiarini) revoked, despite most of his dissertation being already retracted for fraud, and the remainder exposed as, uhm, unreliable. Read here:

In early 2024, Manns unexpectedly wrote to me to inform me that Macchiarini’s adjunct professorship at MHH was terminated in 2018 (read February 2024 Shorts). Soon after, his university’s research integrity officer publicly defended a fraudulent paper by Macchiarini and Jungebluth.

As director of MHH’s Clinic for Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endocrinology for almost two decades, and then as MHH president, Manns published almost 1500 research papers, some of them were flagged on PubPeer by the pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis. In German university medicine, it is the law of the land to always add you clinic director to your papers, unless, that is, the boss says no (a bad sign which means he doesn’t like you). One wonders if Manns actually read all these many hundreds of his research papers.

Manns surely must have read this Lancet paper:

Stefan Heringlake , Sabine Osterkamp , Christian Trautwein, Hans L Tillmann , Klaus Böker , Scott Muerhoff , Isah K Mushahwar , Gerhard Hunsmann , Michael P Manns Association between fulminant hepatic failure and a strain of GBV virus C The Lancet (1996) doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(96)04413-3 

Manns’s doctorate student Christian Trautwein is a special case. In early 2024, the German media reported that an unnamed director of Klinik III at University Hospital Aachen was fired:

“Misconduct relevant to labor law and inappropriate behavior towards employees are the reasons for the immediate termination […] A former employee filed a criminal complaint.”

The sacked clinic director is suing his former employer now, despite his being charged with sexual harassment. A criminal procedure began in February 2025:

“Specifically, this is about the professor’s behavior on a trip to Italy. According to the indictment, the professor is said to have sexually assaulted a female employee there.”

Now, archives show Christian Trautwein was director of this Klinik III in Aachen when the scandal erupted, he now works as the head of liver centre in a public hospital in Stuttgart.

Hey, at least we can celebrate the “Ethics Committee Chairperson” Professor Trautwein for his excellent science on PubPeer, including from MHH:

C Trautwein, T Rakemann , N P Malek, J Plümpe , G Tiegs, M P Manns Concanavalin A-induced liver injury triggers hepatocyte proliferation Journal of Clinical Investigation (1998) doi: 10.1172/jci504 

And more by Manns and Trautwein:

Manns also authored bad papers with questionable international collaborators like Robert Gallo‘s ladyfriend Flossie Wong-Staal (Krüger et al 2001), and at his gastroenterology department at MHH, Manns raised next to Trautwein the legendary cheater, mouse abuser, and now zombie scientist, K Lenhard Rudolph, read about him here:

Here a common paper, it was addressed as part of Rudolph’s research misconduct investigation, and corrected:

Hong Jiang , Eric Schiffer , Zhangfa Song , Jianwei Wang , Petra Zürbig , Kathrin Thedieck , Suzette Moes , Heike Bantel , Nadja Saal , Justyna Jantos , Meiken Brecht , Paul Jenö , Michael N. Hall , Klaus Hager , Michael P. Manns , Hartmut Hecker , Arnold Ganser , Konstanze Döhner , Andrzej Bartke , Christoph Meissner , Harald Mischak, Zhenyu Ju, K. Lenhard Rudolph Proteins induced by telomere dysfunction and DNA damage represent biomarkers of human aging and disease Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2008) doi: 10.1073/pnas.0801457105

After the misconduct findings against Rudolph, the “resolved” case required some action after all, so a very inappropriate Correction was published in April 2018:

“For Figs. 1B, 3B, and 3G and Figs. S2A and S5, the figure legends should have noted that the expression control of GAPDH was run in parallel on separate gels using the same lysates and loading. We apologize for not making this explicit in the figures.”

We will never know which powerful German academic bigwig made sure back in 2017 that Rudolph escaped firing and never had to retract a single paper, even those which were officially declared fraudulent. Your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, here another common paper by Rudolph and Manns which escaped retraction:

A Satyanarayana , R A Greenberg , S Schaetzlein , J Buer , K Masutomi , W C Hahn , S Zimmermann , U Martens , M P Manns , K L Rudolph Mitogen stimulation cooperates with telomere shortening to activate DNA damage responses and senescence signaling Molecular and Cellular Biology (2004) doi: 10.1128/mcb.24.12.5459-5474.2004 

A February 2025 Expression of Concern quoted Rudolph that “the scientific record could not be corrected given the length of time since publication and the absence of original data for these two experiments.“

Here another mentee of Manns’s (and of Rudolph’s!): Ruben Plentz. There are bad papers by Manns and Plentz like Palagani et al 2012 and El Khatib et al 2013, and here is one led by MHH gastroenterologist Nisar Peter Malek (now clinic director at University of Tübingen), it was corrected in 2016 for “duplication of actin blots in Figures 2G, 6F, and S2F“:

Steffen Zender , Irina Nickeleit , Torsten Wuestefeld , Inga Sörensen , Daniel Dauch , Przemyslaw Bozko , Mona El-Khatib , Robert Geffers , Hueseyin Bektas , Michael P. Manns , Achim Gossler , Ludwig Wilkens , Ruben Plentz , Lars Zender , Nisar P. Malek A critical role for notch signaling in the formation of cholangiocellular carcinomas Cancer Cell (2013) doi: 10.1016/j.ccr.2013.04.019 

“While none of these errors affect the results or conclusions of this work, the authors would like to apologize for any confusion this might have caused.”

Correction August 2016

This study, where MHH gastroenterologists led by Heisenberg professor Amar Deep Sharma announced nothing less than a miRNA based cure for liver failure, was criticised right after it was published. The authors immediately announced to issue a correction. Almost a decade passed and nothing happened, because these MHH professors decided not to bother.

Dakai Yang , Qinggong Yuan , Asha Balakrishnan , Heike Bantel , Jan-Henning Klusmann , Michael P. Manns , Michael Ott , Tobias Cantz , Amar Deep Sharma MicroRNA-125b-5p mimic inhibits acute liver failure Nature Communications (2016) doi: 10.1038/ncomms11916 

Let me close this obituary with a paper Manns coauthored with MHH’s professorial duo Florian Kühnel and Stefan Kubicka (with whom Manns and Rudolph corrected in 2018 the study Wirth et al 2003 for image irregularities):

Florian Kühnel , Engin Gürlevik , Thomas C Wirth , Nina Strüver , Nisar P Malek , Martina Müller-Schilling , Michael P Manns , Amancio Carnero , Lars Zender , Stefan Kubicka Targeting of p53-transcriptional dysfunction by conditionally replicating adenovirus is not limited by p53-homologues Molecular Therapy (2010) doi: 10.1038/mt.2009.298 

I want to share with you an amazing reply to the sleuth regarding this paper, from the Team Scientific Integrity of the national investigative body, the German Research Council (DFG). These DFG experts replied to the veteran sleuth in German, although Claire Francis is not German and their original notification was in English. Translated:

“According to the DFG Rules of Procedure for Dealing with Scientific Misconduct (§ 14), the DFG can only initiate proceedings if the reported suspicion is sufficiently concrete.

The content of the notification must clearly indicate which specific actions or which specific findings constitute scientific misconduct. The notification of automatically identified similarities (“much more similar than expected”) generally does not meet this requirement. Such similarities initially only represent a formal agreement, but they do not contain any scientific justification or analysis as to why the agreement could constitute scientific misconduct.”

I believe DFG’s arrogance and incompetence are intentional. Maybe their goal is to discourage us?

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Science Elites

No data were falsified or fabricated in any way

Meet the German biology professor Michael Brunner, Director of the Heidelberg University Biochemistry Center (BZH), Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and Editor-in-Chief of the society journal FEBS Letters.

A paper of his was criticised on PubPeer by Sholto David, to which Brunner eventually replied with raw data. Well, with some raw data.

Linda Lauinger, Axel Diernfellner, Sebastian Falk, Michael Brunner The RNA helicase FRH is an ATP-dependent regulator of CK1a in the circadian clock of Neurospora crassa Nature Communications (2014) doi: 10.1038/ncomms4598 

The evidence was posted already in January 2025, but Brunner replied only in November 2025:

“We would like to thank David Sholto for his observations concerning Lauinger et al., 2014. At the outset, we would like to note that we would have greatly preferred if these concerns had been raised closer to the time of publication, rather than more than eleven years later. This delay matters for two reasons:

1. If any data manipulation had indeed occurred, the scientific impact/damage would have already been realized long ago.
2. Research records are only required to be retained for ten years. It was purely by chance – and admittedly due to our procrastination in discarding old materials – that we were still able to locate the original data. However, the student involved has since left the lab, and retrieving and reviewing the historical data has been both difficult and extremely time-consuming.

Below, we provide our detailed response to each of the points raised, together with the relevant original data from that period. All experiments reported in the paper were performed in several biological replicates with consistent results. For figure preparation, the most representative blots were chosen. We regret the confusion caused by human errors during figure assembly over a decade ago. Importantly, these errors do not affect the scientific findings of the study. No data were falsified or fabricated in any way.“

Sholto immediately felt ashamed and sorry for wasting his time 11 years ago as a young undergraduate student at university, instead of studying Brunner’s papers so he could report problems on time. Luckily, Brunner found all the raw data, and posted it.

What Brunner shared for Figure 3f, did indeed match the gels for the WT and Walker A Mutants in the published figure, but he shared nothing for the published DEAD Box panel, where the duplication was suspected. For Figures 3d and 3e, Brunner’s raw data contained some bands which seem to match those in the published figures, while other bands clearly didn’t match, in particular those two bands suspected as duplicated. And what Brunner provided for Figures 3a and 3e – none of the bands he highlighted on the raw data blots seemed to match the bands highlighted by Sholto with red arrows.

Then, more duplications were found in this paper:

Maybe Brunner should talk to his own Image Integrity Analyst at FEBS, Jana Christopher. She is the world-famous expert for image integrity and used to credited (together with Jennifer Byrne) with the 2020 papermill investigation by Smut Clyde et al, read here:

There is more for Brunner to look into. This paper in the elite journal Cell:

Tobias Schafmeier, Andrea Haase, Krisztina Káldi, Johanna Scholz , Marc Fuchs, Michael Brunner Transcriptional Feedback of Neurospora Circadian Clock Gene by Phosphorylation-Dependent Inactivation of Its Transcription Factor Cell (2005) doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2005.05.032 

Again in Cell, again with Brunner’s Hungarian mentee Krisztina Káldi:

Erik Malzahn , Stilianos Ciprianidis , Krisztina Káldi , Tobias Schafmeier , Michael Brunner Photoadaptation in Neurospora by Competitive Interaction of Activating and Inhibitory LOV Domains Cell (2010) doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2010.08.010 

One could say, maybe in 2010 the discussion about gel splicing was still relatively young and Brunner didn’t subscribe to it, in fact the above shows he decided to troll the anti-splicers. But how could the same happen in 2023, and in eLife on top, a non-profit journal which normally puts research integrity first? The last author Kaldi is now back in Hungary as professor at Semmelweis University in Budapest:

Anita Szőke , Orsolya Sárkány , Géza Schermann , Orsolya Kapuy , Axel C R Diernfellner , Michael Brunner, Norbert Gyöngyösi , Krisztina Káldi Adaptation to glucose starvation is associated with molecular reorganization of the circadian clock in Neurospora crassa eLife (2023) doi: 10.7554/elife.79765 

I contacted runner about those issues with raw data, but he never replied.

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Contributed by Tak W. Mak

The 79 year old professor of the University of Toronto Tak Mak is probably Canada’s biggest cancer researcher. In a field plagued with fraud, it is almost expected to end up as coauthor of dodgy papers due to dishonest collaborators, an indeed Mak kas a serious PubPeer record, which dates back many years.

His questionable collaborators include Gerry Melino, C. Ronald Kahn, Stephen Elledge, Richard Flavell, Atan Gross, Heiko Hermeking and Bert Vogelstein, that is why Mak’s name as coauthor of fudged studies kept popping up on For Better Science, for example here:

Moreover, Mak used to work with his then-colleague in Toronto, Joseph Penninger, whom Mak then accused of “cheating”, read here:

In fairness, Mak largely addressed the old PubPeer issues and published some corrections. This, with the Austrian researcher Andreas Villunger (read October 2025 Shorts) got corrected:

Han You , Marc Pellegrini, Katsuya Tsuchihara , Kazuo Yamamoto , Georg Hacker , Miriam Erlacher , Andreas Villunger , Tak W. Mak FOXO3a-dependent regulation of Puma in response to cytokine/growth factor withdrawal Journal of Experimental Medicine (2006) doi: 10.1084/jem.20060353 

Tak promised a correction, which was swiftly published in January 2021, explaining that “a reference related to Fig. 2 A was missing […] Data in Fig. 2 A were previously published in a 2006 PNAS article“.

Also this Mak-contributed PNAS paper with Elledge was corrected:

Kathrin Zaugg , Yu-Wen Su , Patrick T Reilly , Yasmin Moolani , Carol C Cheung , Razquallah Hakem , Atsushi Hirao , Qinghua Liu , Stephen J Elledge , Tak W Mak Cross-talk between Chk1 and Chk2 in double-mutant thymocytes Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2007) doi: 10.1073/pnas.0611584104 

In cases difficult to explain with honest mistakes though, Mak decides against corrections. Here again with his former mentee from Switzerland, Kathrin Zaugg (now at University Hospital Zürich):

Han You , YingJu Jang , Annick Itie You-Ten , Hitoshi Okada , Jennifer Liepa , Andrew Wakeham , Kathrin Zaugg , Tak W. Mak p53-dependent inhibition of FKHRL1 in response to DNA damage through protein kinase SGK1 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2004) doi: 10.1073/pnas.0406286101 

Already in January 2021, the authors declared raw data as unavailable, and anyway, “splices in some panels may occur due to random reasons“. Mak offered in September 2025 instead of a correction: “We will be very cautious“. Here Mak however never replied on PubPeer:

Almut Dufner, Gordon S. Duncan , Andrew Wakeham , Alisha R. Elford , Håkan T. Hall , Pamela S. Ohashi , Tak W. Mak CARD6 Is Interferon Inducible but Not Involved in Nucleotide-Binding Oligomerization Domain Protein Signaling Leading to NF-κB Activation Molecular and Cellular Biology (2008) doi: 10.1128/mcb.01359-07 

Time to meet another mentee of Mak’s – Filio (Phyllis) Billia, now associate professor at University of Toronto. Here another PNAS paper, “Contributed by Tak W. Mak“:

Filio Billia , Ludger Hauck , Daniela Grothe , Filip Konecny , Vivek Rao , Raymond H. Kim , Tak W. Mak Parkinson-susceptibility gene DJ-1/PARK7 protects the murine heart from oxidative damage in vivo Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2013) doi: 10.1073/pnas.1303444110

Again “Contributed by Tak W. Mak” to PNAS as US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) member:

Filio Billia , Ludger Hauck , Filip Konecny , Vivek Rao , Jie Shen , Tak Wah Mak PTEN-inducible kinase 1 (PINK1)/Park6 is indispensable for normal heart function Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2011) doi: 10.1073/pnas.1106291108 

This contributed track at PNAS bypasses peer review, the NAS member simly asks two of their friends to write an endorsement.

Again, “Contributed by Tak Wah Mak“:

Tak W. Mak , Ludger Hauck , Daniela Grothe , Filio Billia p53 regulates the cardiac transcriptome Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017) doi: 10.1073/pnas.1621436114 

Here is that SciReps paper, it has an obviously fake figure:

Keith Dadson , Ludger Hauck , Zhenyue Hao , Daniela Grothe , Vivek Rao , Tak W. Mak , Filio Billia The E3 ligase Mule protects the heart against oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction through Myc-dependent inactivation of Pgc-1α and Pink1 Scientific Reports (2017) doi: 10.1038/srep41490 

More bad cardiology by Billia and Mak:

Ludger Hauck , Shanna Stanley-Hasnain , Amelia Fung , Daniela Grothe , Vivek Rao , Tak W. Mak , Filio Billia Cardiac-specific ablation of the E3 ubiquitin ligase Mdm2 leads to oxidative stress, broad mitochondrial deficiency and early death PLOS One (2017) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0189861 

Neither Mak nor Billia replied to my emails. No journal would every dare to demand a correction from Mak anyway, never mind a retraction.

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Scholarly Publishing

All fall within what is acceptable

Wiley as you know, is United2Act against papermills. And this means they have to occasionally retract a paper. While the fake rest by the same papermill fraudsters remains standing because without papermills there will be no scholarly publishing business. United2Act is basically the virtue-signalling equivalent of “Drink Responsibly” campaigns by the alcohol industry.

The central fraudster of this story is Essam R. Shaaban, Head of Department of Physics at Al-Azhan University in Egypt, and possibly brother of another Egyptian papermiller, Kh. Shabaan, about whom I wrote in January 2025 Shorts), and also mentioned here:

So this was retracted, flagged by Mu Yang aka Dysdera arabisenen:

Safwat A. Mahmoud , Ahmed F. Al‐Hossainy , Essam R. Shaaban Effect of implanted copper into 1 μm cadmium telluride thick film by heat treatment for optoelectronics: Structural, optical, and electrical properties International Journal of Energy Research (2021) doi: 10.1002/er.7110 

Also reused in the same paper were Figures 4,7,8,11 and 14. The other paper was published by Elsevier in April 2021 (“© 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved”), the Wiley paper appeared later, in August 2021. Even if one doesn’t care about research integrity, this is a clear case of copyright infringement which Wiley legally had to address.

The retraction appeared on 22 October 2025:

“Concerns were raised by a third party of a high level of similarity between this article’s figures and those of an article by the same author group [Mahmoud et al. (2021); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molstruc.2021.130411] published on 12 April 2021. The editorial office compared the figures from both articles and found that Figures 2 through 8 and their captions were reused from the previous article without proper credit, permission, or explanation within the text. The authors were unable to provide a satisfactory explanation, and therefore the article must be retracted.”

In late 2024, Mu Yang shared posted Essam Shabaan’s fraud on PubPeer (20 threads presently), then made a dossier and shared it with the publishers. In October 2025, Wiley’s Research Integrity Auditor Sara Belkin thanked Mu “for identifying and sharing important concerns regarding several articles authored by Essam R. Shaaban” and announced the outcome of Wiley’s investigation of four of his Wiley papers. The current retracted paper was Nr 3. For the other three, Belkin informed the sleuth:

“After a detailed analysis of the concerns for each remaining article, we did not find anything to require further action on these articles. Our experts found that the noise baseline in the individual tracings all fall within what is acceptable. As such, we are now closing our investigation.”

This was Nr 1:

Essam R. Shaaban , Mohamed M. Mahasen , Mohmoud M. Soraya , El Sayed Yousef , Safwat A. Mahmoud , Gomaa A. M. Ali , Haroun A. Elshaikh Dilute magnetic semiconductor of ZnCoSe thin films: Structural, optical, and magnetic characteristics Journal of the American Ceramic Society (2019) doi: 10.1111/jace.16260 

Nr 2 is much worse:

Magdy El‐Hagary , Said H. Moustafa , Hany Hashem , Essam R. Shaaban , Mohamed Emam‐Ismail Influences of Mn doping on the microstructural, semiconducting, and optoelectronic properties of HgO nanostructure films Journal of the American Ceramic Society (2019) doi: 10.1111/jace.16355 

Maarten Van Kampen confirmed Mu’s analysis, but then again who are these seluths against Wiley’s own “experts”. Nr 4 also falls within what is acceptable at Wiley:

Moustafa Ahmed , Ahmed Bakry , Essam R. Shaaban Impact of composition on microstructural, electrical and optical properties of ZnO thin films incorporation by In ₂ O ₃ for solar cells International Journal of Energy Research (2022) doi: 10.1002/er.8074 

See, Wiley will only retract when other publishers’ copyright is infringed. Every other kind of fraud falls within what is acceptable.

In case you wonder if Shabaan is the real culprit, this Elsevier paper has only one author:

Essam R. Shaaban Comparative study of thermal stability and crystallization kinetics of 70B2O3–30Bi2O3 and 70B2O3–30PbO glasses Physica B: Condensed Matter (2011) doi: 10.1016/j.physb.2010.10.087 

Here is Shabaan at Elsevier, papermilling with some Portuguese friends. The spectra are hand-drawn by a drunk idiot:

Ashutosh Goel, Essam R. Shaaban , J.B. Oliveira , M.A. Sá , Maria J. Pascual , José M.F. Ferreira Sintering behavior and devitrification kinetics of iron containing clinopyroxene based magnetic glass-ceramics Solid State Ionics (2011) doi: 10.1016/j.ssi.2011.01.009 

José Ferreira is associate professor at University of Aveiro in Portugal, the papermill mistyped his name, poor “Joés”:

Essam R. Shaaban , Ishu Kansal , S.H. Mohamed , Joés M.F. Ferreira Microstructural parameters and optical constants of ZnTe thin films with various thicknesses Physica B: Condensed Matter (2009) doi: 10.1016/j.physb.2009.06.002

  Obviously Elsevier cares even less.

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Retraction Watchdogging

Expert reassessment

Wiley however does read For Better Science. This article had an effect:

The author of that guest post acted as reviewer of this paper:

Md Kamaruzzaman , Lijun Zheng , Shun Zhou , Wenhua Ye , Yongqiang Yuan , Qiu Qi , Yongfeng Gao , Jiajin Tan , Yan Wang , Bingjia Chen , Zhiguang Li , Songsong Liu , Renjun Mi , Ke Zhang , Chen Zhao , Waqar Ahmed , Xinrong Wang Evaluation of the novel endophytic fungus Chaetomium ascotrichoides 1‐24‐2 from Pinus massoniana as a biocontrol agent against pine wilt disease caused by Bursaphelenchus xylophilus Pest Management Science (2024) doi: 10.1002/ps.8205  issn: 1526-4998

From the peer review which recommended rejection (read full version in the article above):

“Cutting things short I think this is a fraudulent paper, with all hallmarks of a paper mill product.[…] I really think Journal should have a better way to filter out fraudulent research before sending it to reviewers. “

There were two other reviewers, one was very positive, the other raised serious concerns. The editor decided for “major revisions” and the paper was published. Afterwards, my guest author found image fraud:

The retraction from 9 October 2025 seems to be based on the peer reviewer’s rejected rejection:

“The retraction has been agreed upon following an investigation into concerns raised by a third party regarding inconsistencies in the homology modeling described in the article. A subsequent review and expert reassessment confirmed serious concerns regarding the integrity and reliability of the data presented. Key issues include:

• Use of the native crystal structure (PDB 6WLF) while claiming to use a homology model, with no evidence of comparative modeling or validation (Figure 7).
• Methodological flaws in molecular docking results, including unrealistic binding interactions, with ligands still present, contradicting the described methods (Figure 8).
• Chemically implausible compound identifications, with several reported compounds unlikely to be biogenic or too reactive under the reported conditions (Table 2).
• Inconsistencies in data presentation and statistical reporting (Figure 3).
• Unambiguous image section duplication (Figure 1C).

While the authors cooperated with the investigation, their response did not resolve the concerns and, in some cases, further undermined confidence in the work. Given the extent and nature of the issues, the editors no longer consider the article’s conclusions to be reliable and have therefore decided to retract the publication. The authors disagree with this retraction.”

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No visual similarities can be observed

A corner clone retraction! The so-called “corner clones” arise when somebody has to reformat the labels on their images to fit the journal’s standards. In this situation, a section of the image is cloned to mask the wrong label, so a correctly formatted label can be added.

There is a lot of debate about who does such things, the manuscript’s authors or publisher’s staff, and if corner clones constitute research misconduct at all. As if not having access to the original reserach data behind the figures which you are about to publish is something perfectly normal and acceptable. In several cases, the journals and publishers took the blame of corner clone editing upon themselves, see the Macchiarini case discussed in Manns’s obituary above (Go et al 2010), several other cases were mentioned here:

It seems however, where the authors are not importnant enough, corner clones suddenly can constitute research fraud. Even in a 14 year old paper from Romania, published in a Wiley journal:

S. L. Iconaru , F. Ungureanu , A. Costescu , M. Costache , A. Dinischiotu , D. Predoi Characterization of Sucrose Thin Films for Biomedical Applications Journal of Nanomaterials (2011) doi: 10.1155/2011/291512 

The retraction appeared on 5 November 2025:

“The retraction has been agreed following an investigation of the concerns raised by Archasia belfragei on PubPeer [1], which identified concerns related to Figure 5a where a region is unexpectedly repeated.

As a result of the investigation, the data and conclusions of this article are considered unreliable.

The authors disagree with this retraction.

References

• [1] Archasia belfragei, Characterization of Sucrose Thin Films for Biomedical Applications, PubPeer, May 2025, https://pubpeer.com/publications/FB236011A936D1C181CEE53E13E183.”

More recent by the same Daniela Predoi and Simona Liliana Iconaru of National Institute of Materials Physics in Bucharest:

Steluta Carmen Ciobanu, Daniela Predoi, Mariana Carmen Chifiriuc, Simona Liliana Iconaru, Mihai Valentin Predoi, Marcela Popa, Krzysztof Rokosz, Steinar Raaen, Ioana Cristina Marinas Salvia officinalis–Hydroxyapatite Nanocomposites with Antibacterial Properties Polymers (2023) doi: 10.3390/polym15234484 

Iconaru replied on PubPeer in May 2025 with images of long texts, here about the first issue:

“The two images are completely different. Moreover, no visual similarities can be observed.”

And about the second issue, an even longer text:

“One of the images has a higher contrast and appears darker overall, while the other is brighter […]
More than that, by performing a Structural Similarity Index analysis of the two images the results revealed an SSIM index of 0.2303. This value is significantly lower than 1.0. Any value lower than 0.95 clearly demonstrate that the images are different. […]
All of these results demonstrate that while the images might look similar, they are not the same and contain substantial structural and intensity differences”

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Crudely edited

A funny papermill retraction now! The paper was previously reported to Elsevier by Mu Yang, and its last author Rajasree Shanmuganathan featured in this article:

So here is another retraction form the papermill-infested Environmental Research, about biodiesel from poison nut:

Ezhaveni Sathiyamoorthi , Jintae Lee , Sandhanasamy Devanesan , S D Priya , Rajasree Shanmuganathan Catalytic biodiesel production from Jatropha curcas oil: A comparative analysis of microchannel, fixed bed, and microwave reactor systems with recycled ZSM-5 catalyst Environmental Research (2024) doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2024.119474 

The recent and yet undated retraction went (Highlights mine):

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

The authors failed to respond to the journal’s enquiries seeking an explanation for the concerns recorded on PubPeer at https://pubpeer.com/publications/475F0FCC7DCDF8338AFD9D9891B2CE. In absence of a response, the editor evaluated the available information and concluded that:

• The XRD patterns in figure 2 show signs of editing as reported on PubPeer. The peak position has shifted significantly from that of the fresh zeolite, which is unusual and suggests that the line may have been copied and pasted into the plot. This observation, coupled with the poor editing traces, indicates that the data are not reliable.
• SEM image (figure 4b) appears to be a single SEM image with the right side being a duplication of the left. However, the bottom scale and mode of operation indicate that it should actually be one continuous SEM image.
• In the revised version of the manuscript, the reviewer asked the authors to provide real time images of reactors and mixers. The authors responded by saying they provided the real time images of reactors and mixers in the supplementary material section. However, there is no supplementary materials section in the final version, and the photographs of this apparatus that were supplied in response to the reviewer comments were actually taken from https://www.blogs.uni-mainz.de/fb09akloewe/files/2014/06/mikroglas_mrt_catalogue_060825.pdf and https://www.seprex.co.in/bed-reactors.html, both of which appear to have no connection with the authors. In the latter case, the image that the authors supplied for the reviewers was crudely edited by the addition of some panels in the lower left quadrant that obscured background details visible in the original image.
• An unauthorised authorship change was made when the revised version of this paper was submitted, following suggestions for relatively minor revisions from the reviewers and editor, with authors Ezhaveni Sathiyamoorthi and Jintae Lee added at first revision without declaration or explanation. The CRediT authorship contribution statement indicates “Ezhaveni Sathiyamoorthi: Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Jintae Lee: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Supervision” which are contributions that appear to be inconsistent with the addition of these two individuals as authors at first revision. This authorship change therefore breaches the policies of the journal.

As a result of all of the above observations, the editor no longer has confidence either the contributions purportedly made by the authors to this paper or the reliability of the science contained therein, and is retracting it. The journal apologises for not having identified the problematic authorship change during the review process and for any resulting inconvenience.”

I think the journal should apologise for never even looking at the fake and stolen rubbish they publish, I don’t even bother suggesting any attempts at peer review.

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