Science journalism by Leonid Schneider, on research integrity and academic publishing in life sciences and biomedicine
Patricia Murray uncovers the business secrets of the Nobelist Martin Evans and his partner Ajan Reginald. It seems the magic iMP cells used to treat patients in Greece were drawn from the blood of patients in Swansea, for the purpose of a secret PhD thesis. There is no serious science behind it, only serious investor money and a fraudulent patent.
The emails published here prove that EU Special Envoy for OA, Robert Jan Smits, received constant counselling from Frontiers CEO Kamila Markram when designing Plan S. It seems, Frontiers and Smits share exactly same vision for the future of scholarly publishing.
Cancer researcher Giorgio Zauli publicly declared himself exonerated because he simply forbids his University of Ferrara to publish the investigative report. The ultra-right connected rector used the occasion to equal his critics to Nazis and to announce defamation lawsuits.
In the David Latchman affair, UCL denied me access to investigative reports. The university however did give same files to proper journalists now. The censored documents still do not reveal fraudulent papers, but at least we know the Master of Birkbeck was found guilty of misconduct by recklessness. Trice.
After her lawyers threatened Linköping whistleblower Jaywant Phopase, accusing him of slander and demanding money, regmed researcher May Griffith wrote to me. She sent me a whole dossier: all misconduct findings against her were overruled, even in court. Turns out, ethics dumping is good and anyway, she is not responsible for her own publications.
Yehuda Shoenfield is either a genius or a quack of autoimmunity research, depending on which side you stand in the antivax debate. He is also apparently a plagiarist, even Wikipedia is not safe. And this is why he is now a Member of Israel Academy of Sciences.
If you thought you already saw the worst research fraud from China, here comes the next level. Anything goes to please the Communist Party and to advance own academic career under the oppressive regime.
The University of Manchester found out that someone has secretly manipulated data in the papers of their star cancer researcher, Richard Marais. Who might that be?
Li Jia is Chinese cancer researcher apparently training for Fraud Olympics. She fabricates data at speed and excess, and in several disciplines.
Lynn Kamerlin, Bas de Bruin and their colleagues have been the most vocal critics of Plan S from the very beginning, braving continuous opposition from certain OA leaders. Now that final Plan S guidelines were released, the chemists publish this Open Letter expressing their worry about a possible dystopian OA future.
