Schneider Shorts 9.01.2026 – A malicious cyberattack reported to the FBI

Schneider Shorts of 9 January 2026 – PubSmear mob tries to suppress the truth about vaccines, a billionaire rescues a damsel in distress, with a new kind of editorial note, a German-Italian cure for cancer, and with another old English tale of corruption and patient abuse.

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Table of Discontent

Science Elites

• The little guy will keep fighting – Francesco Gino and her billionaire hero
• A sea-change in attitude – Peter Wilmshurst on how Britain protected AK Banerjee

Scholarly Publishing

• A malicious cyberattack reported to the FBI – PubSmear Mob tries to silence Oncotarget
• Notification to inform and alert readers – Wiley confused about Allen Gao

Science Breakthroughs

• Direct benefits for cancer patients – TU Dresden solves cancer

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Science Elites

The little guy will keep fighting

Do you remember Francesca Gino, the sacked mega-fraudster of Harvard? Turns out, her failed frivolous lawsuits against her critics and her employer (read September 2024 Shorts) were sponsored by the same billionaire who sponsored some other mega-cheater at the neighbouring MIT, namely the failed frivolous lawsuits against the victim and employer of the sacked sexual harasser David Sabatini!

The student newspaper Harvard Crimson reported on 2 January 2026:

“Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill A. Ackman ’88 said he has been funding the legal defense of Francesca Gino — a former Harvard Business School professor accused of research fraud — since June 2024, challenging his alma mater in yet another high-profile dispute.

In a 4,102-word post on X early Friday morning, Ackman wrote that he began covering Gino’s legal and expert costs after concluding that she was wrongfully accused of research fraud and denied due process by Harvard. […]

Ackman said that Gino first contacted him in late 2023 but did not seek assistance at the time. In May 2024, after she had exhausted nearly all her resources, Ackman agreed to learn more about the case and participated in a Zoom meeting with Gino and Harvard Law School professor L. Lawrence Lessig.

Ackman wrote that Lessig, who has been advising Gino pro bono, made a “powerful case” for her innocence. After reviewing the evidence, Ackman wrote that he and his colleague David Klafter were convinced that Gino was “entirely innocent.””

Gino lost in court, also in her lawsuit against the sleuths of Data Colada, just as Sabatini lost hsi Ackman-sponsored lawsuits. But that only becasue the victims had (or raised) enough money to be able to fight back. While neither Gino nor Sabatini lost a penny from their own pockets. And for the billionaire Ackman, this money is pittance, well invested in fact considering the huge amount of sadistic entertainment he derives from these lawsuits.

In fact, Harvard now sues Gino back, for her falsifying of data and evidence to prevent retractions and her sacking (read September 2025 Shorts). Guess what:

“Ackman said he is prepared to continue funding Gino’s dense through trial, which is scheduled for December. He framed his involvement as personal, citing his own past experience being investigated by powerful institutions that he said “often assume that the little guy will eventually give up and/or run out of resources to keep fighting.” […]

“We will provide whatever resources she needs to clear her name,” he wrote.”

In Trump’s America, it is the billionaires who are the “little guys”, fighting heroically against the horrendous injustice that there are still things they can’t own.

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A sea-change in attitude

The British medical whistleblower Peter Wilmshurst wrote another blog post, this time about the research fraudster and patient abuse Anjan Kumar Banerjee.

The blog post opens with a summary (I added the hyperlinks to the references):

“On 16 December 1989, the Lancet published a letter by Dr Anjan Kumar Banerjee and Professor Tim Peters commenting on a paper by Dr Andrew Wakefield and colleagues, which had been published in the Lancet on 4 November 1989.^1,2 The letter previewed the main claims in a paper by Banerjee and Peters, which was published in the journal Gut in 1990.³ The entire data in the Gut paper were fabricated and the paper has been retracted.⁴ The false Lancet letter has not been retracted.

It is an indication of the malady afflicting medical research that two fraudsters claimed their falsifying data supports research by another infamous fraudster. But in this case the real concerns are the methods used by institutions and the seniority of people involved in the cover up of misconduct for a decade.^5,6 The same false data were published in Banerjee’s University of London Master of Surgery thesis in 1991 though senior officials at the university knew the thesis was false before they awarded the degree.^5,6 Banerjee was allowed to present the same false data during a prestigious named lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1991.^5,6

The Gut paper and another fraudulent publication in Gut were retracted in 2001 after Banerjee and Peters were sanctioned by the General Medical Council (GMC) for publishing the false data.⁴ The GMC failed to consider the full extent of misconduct and the cover-up, which would have been embarrassing to many senior doctors. The University of London was eventually embarrassed into rescinding Banerjee’s Master of Surgery degree in late 2015 when the university was informed that my BMJ article would be published (which was in February 2016).⁶ The Royal College of Surgeon have still not removed Banerjee’s award and other false publications have not been retracted.”

Maybe Banerjee would’ve never been investigated by the GMC had he not supported the antivax fraud by Andrew Wakefield, with his own fake science?

There were the two mentioned Banerjee papers, only the second one was retracted, together with a related abstract in Gut.

• Anjan K Banerjee , Timothy J Peters , Philip B James , David J.D Perrins , Philip F Schofield , N.Y Haboubi , J.F Schved , J.C Gris , A Dubois , A Raffanel , P Aguilar-Martinez PATHOGENESIS OF CROHN’S DISEASE The Lancet (1989) doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(89)92072-2 
• A K Banerjee , T J Peters Experimental non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug-induced enteropathy in the rat: similarities to inflammatory bowel disease and effect of thromboxane synthetase inhibitors Gut (1990) doi: 10.1136/gut.31.12.1358

The first paper, in The Lancet, supported Wakefield’s fraudulent lie that measles vaccines would cause Crohn Disease (Wakefield et al 1989). In fact, the Banerjee et al letter in Lancet was never retracted because the Wakefield paper it supported was never retracted either! That unlike Wakefield’s infamous later Lancet paper (Wakefield et al 1998), which postulated MMR vaccines would cause not just bowel inflammation, but also autism (it took The Lancet Editor-in-Chief Richard Horton 11 years to agree to its retraction).

Wilmshurst writes:

“The retractions followed a complaint I made to the GMC about the Banerjee and Peters in 1998 and the resulting GMC tribunal finding in November 2000 that Banerjee was guilty of serious professional misconduct for falsifying the publications.^4,5 The tribunal suspended Banerjee from the Medical Register for one year.^4,5

At a separate GMC tribunal in February 2001, Professor Peters was also found guilty of serious professional misconduct for agreeing to be an author of research he knew was false and for failing to report Banerjee’s misconduct to the GMC.⁵“

The King’s College London professor Timothy Peters received only a severe reprimand and return to his huge salary and his academic offices, including being member of the research ethics committee.

Right after the GMC tribunal hearing in 2000, Wilmshurst “complained to the GMC that much of Banerjee’s misconduct had not been considered“. After Banerjee’s 12 months suspension ended, a new investigation was formally possible, and Wilmshurst brought in new charged, in September 2002 Banerjee was erased from the Medical Register, for “financially defrauding patients and medical insurers, lying to patients in order to get them to have inappropriate private procedures and operations, and his lack of clinical skills that harmed patients“. 5 years later, Banerjee was able to apply for the restoration of his medical licence, in which he succeeded in 2008, he was attested by GMC to be a “reformed character” and have “undergone ‘a sea-change’ in attitude”.

In 2014, the patient abuser Banerjee was even awarded by the Queen a national honour of MBE “for services to patient safety”, on recommendation of the surgeon Lord Ajay Kakkar, a Baron and then a bigwig at both the King’s College and the GMC. However, two months later, the MBE award was revoked after Wilmshurst’s complaint: “One Member of Parliament told me that they discovered that Banerjee bribed someone to nominate him for the award“.

Banerjee’s secret was not only to mass-produce fraudulent papers (he had 49 of them within 18 months of qualifying as a doctor), he also always invited important men to join him as co-authors. Peters was one of them, and that despite King’s College whistleblowers told him about Banerjee’s fraud: “seven whistle-blowers informed Peters that Banerjee was falsifying data. One researcher in the same laboratory complained that Banerjee had plagiarised his graphs.“. This is completely bizarre:

“In 1990, Banerjee was forced to confess to some research fraud when it was discovered that had submitted an abstract in which he claimed to have used considerably more radio-active isotope in an experiment than was order for use by the entire department.⁵ When challenged, Banerjee claimed that he had “borrowed” the radioactive isotope from another hospital and carried it across London on public transport, which would have been criminal breaches of regulations.”

At some point, King’s College was forced to investigate Banerjee. The investigation was run by Harold Baum, the brother of Michael Baum, another King’s College professor who was training Banerjee to become a surgeon. Wilmshurst obtained the secret H. Baum report, where the latter declared to be “totally satisfied that much of the research data reported by Dr Banerjee since 1988 is at best unreliable, and in many cases spurious.” Banerjee’s lab books seemed not to exist, but that was actually used as a reason not to investigate anything, and, as Wilmshurst found out: “deaths of patients were also covered up“, for this and other damage to patients Banerjee was very quietly taken off clinical duties. Then, a typical academic decision was made, as Wilmshurst writes:

“Finding that they were employing a doctor who was both dishonest and dangerous, senior individuals at King’s decided that Banerjee should move and become someone else’s problem. The move would be easier if Banerjee’s curriculum vitae were beefed up.”

Here, Ajay Kakkar’s daddy, the King’s College professor Vijay Kakkar intervened to make sure Banerjee got certified as a surgeon by the University of London, with a Master of Surgery thesis he himself supervised. Which was of course fraudulent, and everyone knew it. As Wilmhurst writes, “the data in the thesis was largely identical to that which the GMC had determined was falsified“.

Then, King’s College was able to get rid of Banerjee. He was sent to a surgical rotation in the West Midlands, swiftly removed there for being “the worst registrar we had ever had”, and immediately appointed to the Trent surgical rotation, where he was awarded a Doctor of Medicine degree by the University of Nottingham. This university later educated Wilmshurst that Banerjee’s thesis was not “false“, but of “very poor quality“, hence good enough. Banerjee then went to become consultant colorectal surgeon in Halifax in West Yorkshire, where he was investigated by the police for assaulting and mutilating patients.

Banerjee was protected because important men supported him and because institutional reputations had to be protected. King’s College Vice-Principal and University of London’s Pro-Vice Chancellor Sir Graeme Catto was at that time chair of the GMC’s education committee. When Wilmshurst exposed Banerjee’s fraud in The BMJ, King’s College threatened to sue:

“In 2002, senior officials at King’s College threatened legal action when I wrote in the BMJ about Banerjee’s misconduct and the inadequacy of the response of King’s College. […]

After publication of the 2002 BMJ article Prof Catto and other senior officials at King’s College tried to dissuade the BMJ from criticising them and the college over the adequacy of response to Banerjee’s misconduct.⁶ That was coupled with threats of libel action from Professor Roger Williams (a department head at King’s), Harry Musselwhite (secretary of the medical school), and Professor Harold Baum (head of the school of life, basic medical, and health sciences).⁶ Catto’s interventions demonstrated how his role as dean of the medical school, who asked the BMJ not mention the cover up at Kings’ College when reporting the misconduct, conflicting with his role as president of the GMC, who should have wanted the tribunal’s findings reported accurately.

The BMJ eventually gave in, agreeing among other things to remove my 2002 article from its website but not retract it.⁶“

Wilmshurst’s deleted BMJ article “Institutional corruption in medicine” is available on ResearchGate.

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Scholarly Publishing

A malicious cyberattack reported to the FBI

The journal Oncotarget, its publisher Impact Journals, and their Editor-in-Chief are slowly descending into madness.

The Editor-in-Chief is Brown University professor Wafik El-Deiry, he took over the editorial reign as the founder Mikhail Blagosklonny was dying from lung cancer while still trying to rejuvenate himself with an immunosuppressive drug.

El-Deiry has an enormous PubPeer record, over 100 threads with lots of data forgery, it seems that every research paper he ever published contains manipulated data. More recently, El-Deiry started to ingratiate himself with Trump’s homicidal regime and his Secretary of Disease Robert F Kennedy Jr by claiming that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer. Read here:

El-Deiry has been battling his PubPeer critics for some time now, mostly on X where he also directly or via proxies runs the account Science Guardians. Their favourite hate targets are Elisabeth Bik, Kevin Patrick and yours truly. Well, if you go to the Oncotarget website, you will find this message about a cyberattack:

Spoiler: PubPeer users never attacked Oncotarget, in fact most likely nobody did. These people are compulsive liars and manipulators. But so are the people who govern America now, and that’s where El-Deiry seeks support, in fact he keeps pleading with the US “authorities” to have us all arrested, or maybe just killed.

To impress Trump and RFK Jr, El-Deiry just published another paper proclaiming that COVID vaccines cause cancer, together with the Tufts University professor, Charlotte Kuperwasser. They report to the ACIP working group at the new antivax-CDC:

To promote their new study, El-Deiry and Kuperwasser teamed up with the one of the worst covidiot antivaxxers out there: Peter McCullough.

The McCullough Foundation then reported, under the headline “BREAKING: Study Identifies Over 300 Peer-Reviewed COVID-19 “Vaccine” Cancer Cases Across 27 Countries — Journal Hit With Cyberattacks“:

“For several years now, clinicians, pathologists, and independent researchers have been documenting turbo cancers following COVID-19 vaccination: sudden relapses, explosive disease acceleration, rare malignancies appearing out of nowhere, and tumors localizing to injection sites or draining lymph nodes. These signals have been visible for some time — but deliberately fragmented, dismissed as coincidence, or buried under claims that “case reports don’t count.”

That excuse has now completely collapsed.

A newly published peer-reviewed systematic review in Oncotarget — authored by Charlotte Kuperwasser, PhD, and Wafik S. El-Deiry, MD, PhD — is the first to formally assemble and analyze the entire published literature on cancer temporally associated with COVID-19 vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

Yes, El-Deiry had to publish it in his own journal, to avoid rejection from incompetent editors and reviewers. He and Kuperwasser still to correct idiotic mistakes after publication:

Charlotte Kuperwasser, Wafik S. El-Deiry COVID vaccination and post-infection cancer signals: Evaluating patterns and potential biological mechanisms Oncotarget (2026) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.28824 

El-Deiry is not just scientifically illiterate and a pathetic whiny wuss. He is living proof that one doesn’t have to be clever to study medicine and become a professor at an elite university. He proves that as a white male one can be as dumb as two bricks and get ahead by other means.

I mean, look, that dude was caught on massive fraud in his papers countless times, and he just continues, unable to learn to at least better hide those forgeries:

Shengliang Zhang, Lanlan Zhou, Wafik S. El-Deiry Tumor suppressor p73 transcriptionally regulatesc-FLIPto impede its priming of extrinsic apoptosis while a “switcher compound” degrades c-FLIP protein bioRxiv (2024) doi: 10.1101/2024.04.21.590479 

El-Deiry wants to be seen as a hero of research ethics. As Oncotarget‘s Editor-in-Chief, he occasionally retracts papers, by authors outside of USA, just now he mercilessly pulled two ten year old papers, by Martin Gleave from Canada (Li et al 2015, retracted on 31 December 2025 for “image duplications and manipulations“, and by Carmen Garrido from Spain (Thuringer et al 2015, retracted on the same day for “multiple issues of internal and external duplications and overlaps“). But instead of whining about being harassed on PubPeer by the “PubSmear Mob”, El-Deiry should retract his own fraud also:

Jessica Wagner, Christina Leah Kline, Richard S. Pottorf, Bhaskara Rao Nallaganchu, Gary L. Olson, David T. Dicker, Joshua E. Allen, Wafik S. El-Deiry The angular structure of ONC201, a TRAIL pathway-inducing compound, determines its potent anti-cancer activity Oncotarget (2014) doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.2890 

by the way, for some reason, El-Deiry and his “Science Guardians” are obsessed with my Jewish-Ukrainian origins: they now demand that the German state deals with me just as Germany deal with its Jews after the Nazi Machtergreifung: arrest and humiliate them, charge them with immoral and depraved activities, wipe out their traces from German universities, then confiscate all their property, strip them of the citizenship and remove them from the country. See here:

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Notification to inform and alert readers

The Big Publishers, in all their infinite wisdom, invented a new type of an editorial note. Next to “Retraction”, “Correction” and “Expression of Concern”, where a problem is identified, there’s now a “Notification”, to notify sleuths and other readers that they have no clue what they are takingly about.

As Wiley now did for Allen C Gao, Director of Research at the department of urologic surgery at University of California Davis, who featured in February 2025 Shorts.

Yezi Zhu , Chengfei Liu , Ramakumar Tummala , Nagalakshmi Nadiminty , Wei Lou , Allen C. Gao RhoGDIα downregulates androgen receptor signaling in prostate cancer cells The Prostate (2013) doi: 10.1002/pros.22615 

On 5 January 2026, Wiley issued this “Notification” (highlight mine):

“A third party reported that the cytoplasmic Pol II band and nuclear tubulin bands in Figure 4C had been duplicated. An investigation by the publisher also found that the RhoGDIα and Tubulin bands were duplicated between Figure 2D and Figure 2E. The authors responded to an inquiry by the publisher and reported that the authors used the same images in Figure 2D and 2E to show that RhoGDIa expression was knocked down by shGDI, as the same materials were used for Fig. 2E and 2D. The editors agreed with this statement and confirmed that the Pol II and tubulin bands in Figure 4C were intentionally marked with blank images and that the same blank image had been used to illustrate that Pol II and tubulin were used as loading controls for nuclear and cytoplasmic proteins, respectively. As such, the journal’s investigation has determined that there are no concerns regarding the duplicated bands in Figures 2 and 4. This Notification has been agreed to in order to inform and alert readers of the investigation.”

Now, there was indeed another duplication, in Figures 2D and 2E, but those was likely permissible since both panels indeed refer to the same experiment. But the duplication in Fig 4C was everything but OK. These blank blots are meant to prove that the cell fraction separation into a nuclear and a cytosolic fraction worked, and if authors are allowed to just lie about it, the entire experiment is unreliable at best.

By the way, Wiley accidentally labelled this “paper”notification” as a retraction:

Maybe that’s because the publisher just retracted another Guo paper, in the same journal:

Ramakumar Tummala , Nagalakshmi Nadiminty , Wei Lou , Christopher P. Evans , Allen C. Gao Lin28 induces resistance to anti‐androgens via promotion of AR splice variant generation The Prostate (2016) doi: 10.1002/pros.23134 

Here, a proper retraction was issued on 5 January 2026:

“A third party reported that the Lin28 band in Figure 4D had been duplicated and resized as the AR-V7 band in Figure 4E and that one of the AR-V7 images in Figure 4A had been duplicated in one of the hnRNPA1 images in Figure 5C. Further investigation by the publisher confirmed these duplications and also found that bands had been duplicated between Figures 1A and 5A and between Figures 1B and 5C. The investigation also found evidence of image splicing in Figures 3A, 3C, 5B, and 5D. The authors responded to an inquiry by the publisher and provided explanations for some instances of duplicated western blot images. The authors further stated that evidence of image splicing in the mentioned bands could be due to artifacts from image editing software. The authors stated that original data were no longer available.

The editors determined that the re-use of experimental data between Figures 1A and 5C and between Figures 1B and 5C may have been appropriate. However, the re-use of data between Figures 4D and 4E as well as between Figures 4A and 5C, in which the data were used for different experimental conditions, was not considered acceptable. Additionally, the evidence of splicing in Figures 3A, 5B, and 5D added further concerns about the veracity of the data. The retraction has been agreed to because the multiple instances of duplication and potential splicing in some images compromise the editors’ confidence in the conclusions presented in the article. The authors did not respond to our notice regarding the retraction.”

Indeed, the gel band reuse in Figures 1A and 5A and Figures 1B and 5C was probably permissable. But look at those spliced gels:

Those are indeed some crazy forgeries from Guo’s lab…

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Science Breakthroughs

Direct benefits for cancer patients

Cancer cure is near, thanks to scientists in Germany and in Italy! The study was led by Mohamed Elgendy, the ERC-funded group leader at Technische Universität (TU) Dresden, and his former mentor at IEO in Milan, Saverio Minucci, plus colleagues in Czechia.

Here the announcement from TU Dresden:

“A study by the Mildred Scheel Early Career Center group led by Dr. Mohamed Elgendy at the TUD Faculty of Medicine provides fundamental insights into cancer biology. Published in the renowned journal Nature Communications, the study shows for the first time that the protein MCL1 not only inhibits programmed cell death, but also plays a central role in tumor metabolism.

The researchers have succeeded in tracing two classic hallmarks of cancer – the evasion of apoptosis (a form of programmed cell death) and the dysregulation of energy metabolism – back to a common molecular mechanism. […]

“Our findings show that MCL1 is much more than just a survival factor for tumor cells,” says Dr. Mohamed Elgendy. […]

The importance of the work was also recognized by the editors of the journal Nature Communications: The publication was selected as one of the outstanding research papers on cancer on the “Editors’ Highlights” website, which presents the 50 best currently published studies in this field.”

The Dean of Medicine, Esther Troost, described the following paper as “a significant advance in our understanding of the molecular basis of cancer“, while the University Hospital Dresden CMO Uwe Platzbecker described the “the cardiotoxicity problem of MCL1 inhibitors” as solved, thanks to this “outstanding research work” with “direct benefits for our cancer patients“.

Wentao Gui , Petr Paral , Bhavuk Dhamija , Eman Hagag , Martin Dusa , Jana Humajova , Pavla V. Francova , Jan Kucka , Jan Pankrac , Caroline Schütz , Vasileios Armenis , Filippo Ferrucci , Mario Schubert , Kaomei Guan , Franziska Baenke , Daniel E. Stange , Lorenz H. Lehmann , Wolfram Weckwerth , Peter Mirtschink , Sofia Traikov , Belmonte Giuseppe, Clelia Miracco, Martin Bornhäuser, Saverio Minucci, Ludek Sefc, Libor Macurek, Mohamed Elgendy MCL1 modulates mTORC1 signaling to promote bioenergetics and tumorigenesis Nature Communications (2025) doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-66831-4 

I am so happy that Elgendi and Minucci now found a cure for cancer! I hope this study of MCL-1 and mTOR signalling isn’t just as, uhm, how shall I put it… possibly unreliable like its predecessor:

Mohamed Elgendy , Amal Kamal Abdel-Aziz , Salvatore Lorenzo Renne , Viviana Bornaghi , Giuseppe Procopio , Maurizio Colecchia , Ravindran Kanesvaran , Chee Keong Toh , Daniela Bossi , Isabella Pallavicini , Jose Luis Perez-Gracia , Maria Dolores Lozano , Valeria Giandomenico , Ciro Mercurio , Luisa Lanfrancone , Nicola Fazio , Franco Nole , Bin Tean Teh , Giuseppe Renne , Saverio Minucci Dual modulation of MCL-1 and mTOR determines the response to sunitinib Journal of Clinical Investigation (2016) doi: 10.1172/jci84386 

That’s not good, no? But then again, this kind of research earned Elgendy that huge ERC grant in 2019, where losers who don’t know how to science properly were told by ERC to get out and eat dirt.

In another MCL-1 study, Elgendy and Minucci flipped a gel on its head (Elgendy et al 2019). Why? Here a paper from Elgendy’s PhD time in Ireland:

C Sheridan , G Brumatti , M Elgendy , M Brunet , S J Martin An ERK-dependent pathway to Noxa expression regulates apoptosis by platinum-based chemotherapeutic drugs Oncogene (2010) doi: 10.1038/onc.2010.380 

Elgendy’s Milanese postdoctoral mentor Minucci has a longer PubPeer record, with professional cheaters like Kristian Helin (who used to work at IEO Milan), Lucia Altucci, and especially with the current IEO boss Pier Giuseppe Pelicci, for example, this rotting on PubPeer since 2015:

Simona Segalla , Laura Rinaldi , Charlotte Kilstrup-Nielsen , Gianfranco Badaracco , Saverio Minucci , Pier Giuseppe Pelicci, Nicoletta Landsberger Retinoic acid receptor alpha fusion to PML affects its transcriptional and chromatin-remodeling properties Molecular and Cellular Biology (2003) doi: 10.1128/mcb.23.23.8795-8808.2003 

These are too many cloned gels bands even for Italian science standards…

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