Schneider Shorts 6.02.2026 – A corruptive pact

Schneider Shorts of 6 February 2026 – men of science who loved Epstein, an Italian bust, how to deal with a sleuth, cancer cured in Spain and old age cured in Germany, and why do academics rally to support the worst people…

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Science Elites

“Far right ethnonationalism in Ukraine”

Just recently, I published an article about high-ranking academics organising support letters for a peer under accusations of sexual harassment (now there are also accusations of plagiarism, including from those who signed the letter):

It seems, professors love to rally behind the worst characters doing the worst things, one wonders why.

Meet Marta Havryshko, a Ukrainian native who fled the country when the full scale invasion started, to become guest scientists at University of Basel in Switzerland and then Fellow at US Holocaust Memorial Museum and visiting assistant professor at Clark University in Worcester, USA. Her qualifications for the job: being a self-proclaimed feminist victim of Ukrainian Nazi-nationalist-antisemitic persecution.

As Vatnik Soup informs, Havrishko accuses past and today’s Ukrainians of being evil Nazis who love to murder Jews and wage war against innocent russians. Never mind that President Zelenskyy is ethnically Jewish.

In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce a Ukrainian “scholar” and social media activist, Marta Havryshko. She’s best known for spreading anti-Ukraine and pro-Kremlin narratives online, along with a habit of spotting neo-Nazis everywhere in Ukraine.1/20

— Vatnik Soup (@vatniksoup.bsky.social) 2026-01-29T14:52:17.769Z

The line of argument is: of course it’s bad what russia does, but Ukrainians brought it upon themselves by being an evil bunch of Nazis. Havrishko openly accuses Ukraine of having started the war (sic!), and takes sides with anyone who supports russia: putin-loving far-right “vloggers”, Tulsi Gabbard, German AfD, Polish Confederation party…

And this is the person the academic community decided to defend from criticism. On 22 July 2025, this long open letter was published, and signed by many people -some anonymous, some not really relevant, but also quite some major historians of the Holocaust and of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Excerpts (links theirs):

“We, the undersigned, express deep concern about the mounting restrictions on academic freedom in Ukraine in relation to the complex issues of Ukrainian politics and history. […]

In addition to these tragedies, we are witnessing an alarming rise in harassment, threats, and persecution—often stemming from nationalist activism and public campaigns — targeting scholars who continue their research under these exceptionally difficult wartime conditions. Particularly vulnerable are those working on sensitive, underexamined, and often politically inconvenient topics such as the far right, ethnonationalism, and democratic backsliding in Ukraine.

One such scholar is Ukrainian historian and war refugee Dr. Marta Havryshko […]

Despite this record, Dr. Havryshko has been subjected to sustained antisemitic abuse, as well as death and rape threats targeting her and her child. For over a year, these threats have come from an international far-right network responding to her critical stance on Ukrainian ethnonationalism and her work on the historical and contemporary far right in Ukraine. Many of the threats originate from Ukrainian and Russian far-right actors involved in military activities. Given the network’s connections to far-right terrorism, U.S. law enforcement agencies—including the police and the FBI—have been actively investigating these threats with utmost seriousness.

But in Ukraine, the response has been strikingly different. In the domestic media space, some pro-government bloggers, journalists, public figures, militants, and “concerned citizens” have attacked and stigmatized Dr.Havryshko’s research, accusing her of spreading “pro-Russian propaganda” and labeling her a “Russian asset.” […]

We stand not only with Marta, but with all scholars, journalists, and researchers whose conscience does not align with official narratives.

In today’s Ukraine, the notion of protecting the nation’s reputation—crucial for maintaining international support during wartime—is increasingly used to justify repression and to curtail academic freedom and public debate. As a result, the space for open reflection on the country’s own internal challenges has dramatically narrowed.”

I wonder if this was written by Kremlin. The signatories include a huge number of history professors, the German historian and Clark University professor Thomas Kühne likely invited Havryshko as guest scholar.

Not being a historian, I asked ChatGPT to name the most prominent signatories:

Omer Bartov (Brown University, USA), Jane Burbank (New York University, USA), Doris Bergen (University of Toronto, Canada), David Marples and Paul J. Himka (University of Alberta, Canada), J.P. Daughton and Robert Crews (Stanford University, USA), Havi Dreifuss (Tel Aviv University, Israel), Anna Muller (University of Michigan-Dearborn, USA), Anna Holian (Arizona State University, USA), Kristin Stapleton (University at Buffalo, USA), Mark Levene (University of Southampton, UK), Ivan Katchanovski (University of Ottawa, Canada), Andrew I. Port (Wayne State University, USA), Kristin Stapleton (University at Buffalo, USA), Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe (FU Berlin, Germany), Jacques Sapir (EHESS, France), Anna Hugon (Université Paris 1, France), Sandra Boehringer (University of Strasbourg, France), Thomas Lindenberger (TU Dresden, Germany), Françoise Thébaud (University of Avignon, France), David d’Avray (UCL and University of Oxford), Janice Kulyk Keefer (University of Guelph, Canada), Craig Brandist (University of Sheffield, UK), Chris Read (University of Warwick, UK).

I should explain that portraying Ukrainian as Nazis and antisemites is an old Soviet tradition which started even before World War 2. Jews inside Soviet Union (like myself) were indoctrinated that Ukrainians hate them and only russia protects the Jews from another slaughter by Ukrainians. At the same time, Jewish people outside of USSR were convinced by Soviet propaganda that Ukrainians were the main perpetrator of the Holocaust, worse than Germans even. Germans in turn eagerly accepted this Soviet fiction of Ukrainian responsibility (for obvious reasons), in 2013 German public television even aired a series (“Generation War“), with Wehrmacht soldiers as the good guys and beastly Ukrainians as sadistic mass-murderers of Jews. Not just lay people – generations of academic historians, on left and right, were trained to despise everything Ukrainian. Even after russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine started in 2022, our media was still busy “uncovering” Ukraine’s Nazi activities.

Meanwhile, Havryshko’s employer, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, endorses ICE terror on non-white children, with the argument that it’s only wrong when Jewish children were the target. Seriously.

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Longstanding friendship

Hands up who’s surprised that the creep Dan Ariely used to be friends with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein? So far, Ariely was known as a media celebrity and psychology professor at Duke University whose own research was proven as fraudulent (read August 2021 Shorts) and who used to be a collaborator of the sacked Harvard fraudster Francesca Gino, for one project Ariely even falsified insurance data (read August 2023 Shorts). In 2023, Duke University ended a secret investigation with the decision that the research data was fake, but Ariely did not fake it knowingly.

But so far. Ariely was safe from professional repercussion. Now we know why: he is part of that wealthy and extremely influential white male network of Epstein’s clients. That’s because US Department of Justice, under pressure from Epstein Files Transparency Act, finally released many (but by far not all) Epstein emails. Ariely’s name appears 636 times.

Duke University’s student newspaper The Chronicle brought these news on 31 January 2026:

“Per The Chronicle’s review of the documents, Ariely, Graduate School ’98, and Epstein met at least seven times from 2010 to 2016. Ariely and Epstein appeared to have been friends — in an email dated Sept. 20, 2011, Ariely promised Epstein a ticket to a small TEDtalk gathering, despite the tickets already having sold out.

The first meeting revealed by the released files took place on Nov. 30, 2010 over coffee between Ariely, Epstein and someone referred to as “Poppy.” […]

The released files hint at longstanding friendship. Email correspondences show Ariely and Epstein often got together when they would overlap in New York. Epstein agreed to meet in all the emails The Chronicle has reviewed so far.”

The student newspaper Yale Daily News reported on 2 February 2026 that Sterling professor Nicholas Christakis also communicated with Epstein, “the pair maintained correspondence between 2013 and 2016“, according to Christakis, it was about Epstein’s research funding of his lab.

It is clear why Christakis was intellectually attracted to Epstein: also the former is a eugenicist, in his PNAS paper Christakis & Fowler 2014 he proved that “inter-racial” friendships were against nature: “friends share similar genes (they can be as genetically close as fourth-cousins”.

Another Yale Daily News article named computer science professor David Gelernter, who “invited Jeffrey Epstein to campus and described the appearance of an undergraduate in emails to the convicted sex offender between 2009 and 2015, […] scheduled visits with Epstein in New York City and discussed the scent of women in Paris“. Many other US professors were outed as Epstein’s guests – for example the Nobel laureate Richard Axel, as his university’s student newspaper Columbia Spectator reported.

And then of course there’s the famous linguistics professor Noam Chomsky, who is the living example that those rich old men who love russia are quite often very tolerant to paedophilia. Guardian reported on 3 February 2026 that Chomsky even wrote to Epstein: “I’m really fantasizing about the Caribbean island”. That’s where Epstein raped children and invited his friends to join.

The released files seem to suggest that Epstein was a russian agent: putin’s name is present in 1056 documents released by DOJ, more that 9000 refer to Moscow, with the russian KGB (later FSB) supplying women and girls to Epstein’s sex slave business (see reporting by The Telegraph and by Daily Mail). It likely that the russian secret service worked with the American paedophile to create “kompromat” on the most influential men in the West. Maybe it was the russian secret service who had Epstein killed when he was in US prison. We don’t know whom the russian secret services have on photos and video raping children, but we can imagine the US president Donald Trump is likely one of them, and so are many other politicians, businessmen and academics.

Maybe this even explains why Ukraine is left to fight russia on its own.

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A corruptive pact

News from Italy! Local media reported on 30 January 2026, that “According to the Rome Prosecutor’s Office, Justices of the Peace and Lawyers […] were bribed by receiving champagne, accompanied by large sums of money in cases, expensive jewellery, €4000 Gucci bags, prestigious watches, etc.“.

What does this have to do with Italian science? One of these corrupt Justices of the Peace is a certain Rodosindo Martone, also under investigation are his wife Elvira Merola as well as two doctors: Giuseppe D’Amico and his cousin Michele D’Amico, the latter professor of pharmacology at University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” and President of the Competition Commission. And this is what the gang did, as another local newspaper reported, referring to a “corruptive pact envisaged a mutual subjugation of public functions” (DeepL-translated):

“On the one hand, Professor Michele D’Amico, as chairman of the examination board, allegedly provided the candidate with the list of exam topics prior to the exam, promising her a favourable position in the ranking. On the other hand, Judge Martone allegedly guaranteed Dr Giuseppe D’Amico the systematic assignment of positions as a court-appointed technical consultant in the compensation cases assigned to him. In this way, the appointment of the expert became a bargaining chip to obtain an academic and professional advantage for the benefit of the magistrate’s wife. […]

According to the reconstruction, Judge Rodosindo Martone allegedly attempted to help his partner, Elvira Merola, pass the competition for specialisation in pharmacology and clinical toxicology chaired by Professor Michele D’Amico. The contact between the two was allegedly mediated by the professor’s cousin, Dr Giuseppe D’Amico, a figure already known to the judicial authorities for his frequent appointments as an expert witness. Although wiretaps confirmed circumstantial evidence that the professor did indeed provide the candidate with the exam questions in advance, the attempt to favour her failed spectacularly because, despite the help she received, the woman handed in a blank sheet of paper and failed the test.”

Michele D’Amico has a serious PubPeer record, some of which already featured in January 2026 Shorts. For example, here D’Amico not only steals public money, he also steals images from other people’s papers:

S. Rossi , C. Di Filippo, C. Gesualdo , F. Testa , M. C. Trotta , R. Maisto , B. Ferraro , F. Ferraraccio , M. Accardo , F. Simonelli , M. D’Amico Interplay between Intravitreal RvD1 and Local Endogenous Sirtuin‐1 in the Protection from Endotoxin‐Induced Uveitis in Rats Mediators of Inflammation (2015) doi: 10.1155/2015/126408 

Here is D’Amico the Thief with his colleagues at University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, especially the disastrous Massimiliano Galdiero (who with his sister Stefania Galdiero will get his own article one day), because of the massive PubPeer record of plagiarism and forged science which The Sopranos, pardon, The Galdieros accumulated. Yes, there are more from this clan, and they all are professors at University of Campania!

Massimiliano Galdiero, Michele D’Amico, Fernanda Gorga , Clara Di Filippo , Marina D’Isanto , Mariateresa Vitiello , Anna Longanella , Annalisa Tortora Haemophilus influenzae porin contributes to signaling of the inflammatory cascade in rat brain Infection and Immunity (2001) doi: 10.1128/iai.69.1.221-227.2001 

An Expression of Concern was issued on 29 November 2024 and informed that “the agarose gel for β-actin presented in Fig. 2A and the agarose gel for β-actin presented in Fig. 3A are likely identical“. No retraction – because the Galdieros love to sue their critics, and they also successfully threaten publishers with lawsuits.

This paper by D’Amico with another Galdiero Clan member (Marilena Galdiero) was flagged already in 2020, and swiftly corrected by Frontiers despite clear and outrageous Photoshop forgeries:

Rosa Maisto, Maria Consiglia Trotta, Francesco Petrillo , Sara Izzo , Giovanna Cuomo , Roberto Alfano , Anca Hermenean , Jorge Miquel Barcia , Marilena Galdiero, Chiara Bianca Maria Platania , Claudio Bucolo, Michele D’Amico Resolvin D1 Modulates the Intracellular VEGF-Related miRNAs of Retinal Photoreceptors Challenged With High Glucose Frontiers in Pharmacology (2020)
doi: 10.3389/fphar.2020.00235 

Right after the posts appeared in March 2020, D’Amico proudly announced on PubPeer: “We already provided an errata corrige of the manuscript“. The Corrigendum from June 2020 replaced all these offending figures:

“In the original article, there was a mistake in Figure 2F as published. The wrong image was included due to the incorrect labeling of a file. […]

In addition, there was a mistake in Figure 7. Incorrect panels were included in Figures 7B, C. […]

Finally, there was a mistake in Figure 9 where the first two and last columns were mislabelled. […]

The authors apologize for these errors and state that these do not change the scientific meaning and conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.”

Here is that Galdiero Clan member again, D’Amico announced in May 2025 to “take care of it in due time“:

Maria Consiglia Trotta, Sami Gharbia, Hildegard Herman, Bianca Mladin, Andrei Hermenean, Cornel Balta, Coralia Cotoraci, Victor Eduard Peteu, Carlo Gesualdo, Francesco Petrillo, Marilena Galdiero, Roberto Alfano, Mihaela Gherghiceanu, Michele D’Amico, Settimio Rossi, Anca Hermenean Sex and Age-Related Differences in Neuroinflammation and Apoptosis in Balb/c Mice Retina Involve Resolvin D1 International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2021) doi: 10.3390/ijms22126280 

D’Amico is literally the mafia. Well, the police got him now.

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A set process for dealing with Clare Francis

The pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis tried to reported three problematic papers, and what a reaction our sleuth got from the British authorities!

The issue here are new findings in the papers by Anne Willis, Director of the MRC Toxicology Unit at the University of Cambridge, knighted in 2017 with the Order of the British Empire “for services to biomedical sciences and supporting the careers of women scientists“, and proud carrier of an impressive PubPeer record, some of which is presented here:

This is what the sleuth reported, two partially cloned gel lanes:

Sally A Mitchell , Keith A Spriggs , Martin Bushell, Joanne R Evans , Mark Stoneley , John P C Le Quesne , Ruth V Spriggs , Anne E Willis Identification of a motif that mediates polypyrimidine tract-binding protein-dependent internal ribosome entry Genes & Development (2005) doi: 10.1101/gad.339105 

And a vintage classic, pre-Photoshop period:

F. Paulin , S A Chappell , A E Willis A single nucleotide change in the c-myc internal ribosome entry segment leads to enhanced binding of a group of protein factors Nucleic Acids Research (1998) doi: 10.1093/nar/26.13.3097   

Watch the blue box here:

Sally A. Mitchell , Emma C. Brown , Mark J. Coldwell , Richard J. Jackson , Anne E. Willis Protein factor requirements of the Apaf-1 internal ribosome entry segment: roles of polypyrimidine tract binding protein and upstream of N-ras Molecular and Cellular Biology (2001) doi: 10.1128/mcb.21.10.3364-3374.2001 

The sleuth wrote to Sir Ian Chapman, CEO of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding agency (of which MRC is part), with the request to “acknowledge that you are aware of the problematic data”. A reply came from a Tom Youdale, MRC’s Policy and Governance Programme Manager, who proved to be too inept to forward an email to its desired recipient (Chapman’s assistant), and instead replied to the sleuth:

“Dear Ella,

This is just a courtesy email to let you know that we have a set process for dealing with Clare Francis allegations.

We have this in hand and there is no action required from the CEO office, please do not respond.

Many thanks,
Tom”

That set process at MRC is to delete all Claire Francis emails and then fantasise about being victims of harassment. The amount of tax and charity money which MRC embezzles for fake science and enriching research fraudsters is mind-boggling, but hey. Society gets some cute cancer cure fairy tales in return.

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Science Breakthroughs

A therapy successfully eliminates pancreatic tumours

Pancreatic cancer is now history, a cure was found. All thanks to Mariano Barbacid, one of Spain’s most prominent cancer researchers and founding director of the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO) in Madrid.

All the world media speaks about it, millions of cancer patients worldwide have a new hope, here is the press release by his CNIO from 29 January 2026:

“Mariano Barbacid, head of the Experimental Oncology Group at the National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), has designed a therapy that successfully eliminates pancreatic tumours in mice completely and durably, with no significant side effects. The study is published in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), with Carmen Guerra as co-lead author and Vasiliki Liaki and Sara Barrambana as first authors. […]

The team employed a triple therapy, which combined an experimental KRAS inhibitor (daraxonrasib) with an approved drug for certain lung adenocarcinomas (afatinib) and a protein degrader (SD36).

The treatment was applied to three mouse models of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, and in all of them, a significant and lasting regression of these experimental tumours was induced without causing significant toxicities, state the authors in PNAS.”

The cure is already patented by the authors. For some reason, this PNAS study was published outside the normal peer review process, it was “Contributed by Mariano Barbacid” in his capacity as US National Academy of Science member, and reviewed by three colleagues he chose himself. Sholto David wasn’t yet convinced by the hype, and had a look:

Vasiliki Liaki , Sara Barrambana , Myrto Kostopoulou , Carmen G. Lechuga , Elena Zamorano-Dominguez , Domingo Acosta , Lucia Morales-Cacho , Ruth Álvarez , Pian Sun , Blanca Rosas-Perez , Rebeca Barrero , Silvia Jiménez-Parrado , Alejandra López-García , Marta San Roman , Juan Carlos López-Gil , Matthias Drosten , Bruno Sainz , Monica Musteanu , Eduardo Caleiras , Nelson Dusetti , Valeria Poli, Francisco Sánchez-Bueno, Carmen Guerra, Mariano Barbacid A targeted combination therapy achieves effective pancreatic cancer regression and prevents tumor resistance Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025) doi: 10.1073/pnas.2523039122 

The penultimate author and Barbacid’s staff scientist Carmen Guerra trained in USA with Manuel Benito and C Ronald Kahn, their totally fraudulent paper Guerra et al 2001 received in 2019 an Expression of Concern. It featured prominently in this article:

And here another Barbacid paper Sholto spotted, done with CNIO colleagues:

C Ambrogio, M Barbacid, D Santamaría In vivo oncogenic conflict triggered by co-existing KRAS and EGFR activating mutations in lung adenocarcinoma Oncogene (2017) doi: 10.1038/onc.2016.385 

Here is a paper by Barbacid with coauthors at IFOM-IEO Campus in Milan, Italy, led by Bruno Amati. I used to know several of the coauthors personally, from my own postdoc time there. Now I know what’s the trick to publishing in such fancy journals:

Stefano Campaner , Mirko Doni , Per Hydbring , Alessandro Verrecchia , Lucia Bianchi , Domenico Sardella , Thomas Schleker , Daniele Perna , Susanna Tronnersjö , Matilde Murga , Oscar Fernandez-Capetillo , Mariano Barbacid , Lars-Gunnar Larsson , Bruno Amati Cdk2 suppresses cellular senescence induced by the c-myc oncogene Nature Cell Biology (2010) doi: 10.1038/ncb2004 

By the way, in 2011 Barbacid stepped down as CNIO director to pass on the reins to his protege Maria Blasco, which the science cheater Manel Esteller at that time criticised as “a typical image of hispanic inbreeding“. In January 2025, Blasco was sacked for embezzlement, corruption, workplace harassment and animal abuse (read May 2025 Shorts). Her own science wasn’t kosher either.

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No competing interests

The world is turning to shit, so it is no wonder that German and American scientists are trying to make money with shit. Apparently, it cures old age!

Here a press release from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center from 22 January 2026:

“In research published Jan. 22, 2026, in Stem Cell Reports, a research team from Cincinnati Children’s and Ulm University in Germany demonstrates that transferring young microbiota to the intestines of older mice helps boost the stem cells that make new tissue. This in turn can speed healing when intestines are damaged by causes ranging from surgery and radiation treatments to disease, infections and the natural wear and tear of aging.

“As we age, the constant replacement of intestinal tissue slows down, making us more susceptible to gut-related conditions. Our findings show that younger microbiota can prompt older intestine to heal faster and function more like younger intestine,” says corresponding author Hartmut Geiger, PhD, director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Ulm University and former member of the Division of Experimental Hematology and Cancer Biology at Cincinnati Children’s. […]

co-author Yi Zheng, PhD, director, Division of Experimental Hematology and Cancer Biology at Cincinnati Children’s [said] “However, when older microbiota were replaced with younger microbiota, the stem cells resumed producing new intestine tissue as if the cells were younger.”

This is the paper, which states “The authors declare no competing interests.“:

Kodandaramireddy Nalapareddy, David B. Haslam , Ann-Kathrin Kissmann , Theresa Alenghat , Selina Stahl , Frank Rosenau , Yi Zheng , Hartmut Geiger Microbiota from young mice restore the function of aged ISCs Stem Cell Reports (2026) doi: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2025.102788 

The lie about the absence of COIs is completely mad because in their press release the authors refer to the anti-aging company Mogling Bio, which specialises on stem cell rejuvenation, and which Geiger and Zheng co-founded! Geiger is constantly celebrated all over German media as an anti-aging guru exactly because his Mogling company is about to extend lives. Initially, Geiger and Zheng planned to get rich with their Cdc42 inhibitor CASIN as “a fountain of youth” (see Liu et al 2018 and Florian et al 2020). Apparently that CASIN business led nowhere despite hefty investments into Mogling from the German IT billionaire and anti-aging enthusiast Michael Greve. Hence, it all turned to shit.

The press release also mentions that Geiger and Zheng “stressed that more study is needed to confirm the benefits also occur in humans“. Well, all great scientists experiment on themselves, no?

Geiger only has this on PubPeer:

Novella Guidi , Mehmet Sacma , Ludger Ständker , Karin Soller , Gina Marka , Karina Eiwen , Johannes M Weiss , Frank Kirchhoff , Tanja Weil , Jose A Cancelas , Maria Carolina Florian , Hartmut Geiger Osteopontin attenuates aging-associated phenotypes of hematopoietic stem cells The EMBO Journal (2017) doi: 10.15252/embj.201694969 

The issue was swiftly corrected in May 2017, with the assurance that “The change does not affect the original conclusions presented“.

Geiger’s anti-aging shit must compete hard with the anti-aging shit by John Cryan, about which I wrote in August 2021 Shorts).

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