Category: News

Salk Gandalf Tony Hunter gets AACR prize for magic western blots

Salk Gandalf Tony Hunter gets AACR prize for magic western blots

Gandalf the Wizard has been awarded €75k in cash and Pezcoller-AACR International Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Cancer Research, for his magical western blots, where gel bands multiply under his spell to summon a bigger impact factor. Well, maybe not that Gandalf, but the bearded gel wizard Tony Hunter, of prestigious Salk Institute for Biological Studies (where impure womenfolk is not welcome) in San Diego, California, USA. On April 15th, Hunter will be giving a lecture at the annual meeting  of American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Chicago, and then go to beautiful Trento in Italy to pick up his award. All because of those western blots of his, which repetitive enchanted beauty was spotted by the image integrity sleuth Clare Francis and then posted on PubPeer. It was in fact Clare Francis who wrote to me to accuse Tony Hunter of being Gandalf The Wizard.

A breathlessly sycophantic article in San Diego Union Tribune described Hunter as “superstar” of 50 years productivity, congratulated him on his new Nature paper and the cash prize, for which the Salk Gandalf can probably buy himself a new BMW broom stick to whiz about, to and fro. That sum of €75k is actually poppycock compared to the $ half a million Tony the Wizard got from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences as Sjöberg Prize for Cancer Research, but that is probably intended as lab investment into more of his magic western blots. Probably as compensation for 2012, when Thomson Reuters, (past keepers of the sacred Impact Factor) requested for Gandalf The Western Blot Wizard the Nobel Prize.

So now, let us see what dashing sorcery the King of Sweden and AACR thought was so astounding to give awards for.

Continue reading “Salk Gandalf Tony Hunter gets AACR prize for magic western blots” →

University of Iceland: no formal legal sanctions against Macchiarini partner Gudbjartsson

University of Iceland: no formal legal sanctions against Macchiarini partner Gudbjartsson

The University of Iceland in Reykjavik previously published an external investigation report into the first ever plastic trachea transplant, performed by Paolo Macchiarini at the hospital of Karolinska Institutet (KI) in Stockholm, Sweden. The patient was Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene, PhD student at University of Iceland, and the Icelandic surgeon who treated Beyene and then delegated him to Macchiarini for that deadly treatment was Tomas Gudbjartsson, professor of surgery at same university (see my report here). One year after the operation, when Beyene already started to suffer from the plastic trachea which eventually killed him, Gudbjartsson organised a conference on regenerative medicine in Reykjavik, featuring Macchiarini as guest of honour and Beyene as a kind of trophy.

The University now announces to investigate the circumstances of that conference, for which it apologises, and to host on June 1st 2018 a new one, on research ethics. Gudbjartsson will not suffer any disciplinary consequences, because he was said to have expressed sufficient level of protest against the attempts by Macchiarini and his acolyte Philipp Jungebluth to twist the patient abuse into a success story which they published in The Lancet,  Jungebluth et al, 2011. A paper which University of Iceland now describes as “objectionable”. Continue reading “University of Iceland: no formal legal sanctions against Macchiarini partner Gudbjartsson” →

Sumitran-Holgersson and Olausson to retract 8 papers for research misconduct

Sumitran-Holgersson and Olausson to retract 8 papers for research misconduct

Bad news for regenerative medicine enthusiasts, the data manipulating biologist Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson and her surgeon partner Michael Olausson, both professors at the University of Gothenburg (GU) in Sweden. They were previously found guilty of breach of medical ethics and patient abuse for their experiments with “regenerated” decellurised veins, which incidentally serve as basis for an EU-funded clinical trial currently prepared by the Gothenburg-based company VeriGraft (founded by Sumitran-Holgersson and her husband Jan Holgersson, also a GU professor, read here). There was even a trachea transplant: that patient died very soon after, the paper later retracted for data manipulation and absent ethics vote. It was a decellurised cadaveric graft by method very similar to that of Paolo Macchiarini. Another tracheal graft was prepared for one of Macchiarini’s patients at Karolinska Institutet (KI) after her plastic trachea failed, but it was sent back unused. Because of such expertise in misconduct and medical ethics breach, Olausson and his GU colleague Hasse Ejnell served as experts who helped Swedish prosecutor drop manslaughter charges against Macchiarini (read all that here).

Now that Sumitran-Holgersson’s research funding was withdrawn, with the new decision by the Expert Group at the Swedish Central Ethical Review Board (CEPN) she becomes even more of a liability for GU: eight out of her ten analysed papers with Olausson are set for retraction, due to data manipulation by the corresponding author Sumitran-Holgersson (while all her co-authors were made co-responsible to various degrees). I reported the evidence before, on my site, after my readers notified me and posted it on PubPeer. The 2012 paper in The Lancet describing a regenerated vein transplant was however not earmarked for retraction, despite that among other things it contained a fake ethics vote (see my earlier reporting), which the journal The Lancet couldn’t care less about.

The original misconduct report was written for GU in September 2017 by the external investigator Ole Didrik Laerum, medicine professor at University of Bergen in Norway, who was appointed exactly one year before that. Sumitran-Holgersson didn’t like his results and demanded from CEPN a revision by the Expert Group on Research Misconduct, in which she was supported by her GU colleague Kristoffer Hellstrand. This now proved to be her big mistake, because what Sumitran-Holgersson et al got now, was findings of research misconduct and instructions for retractions. The Swedish original of CEPN Expert Group report is available here, (Update 21.03.2018: English version here), these are its findings: Continue reading “Sumitran-Holgersson and Olausson to retract 8 papers for research misconduct” →

Jessus investigator identity leaked, CNRS President to expose whistleblowers

Jessus investigator identity leaked, CNRS President to expose whistleblowers

An update to the ongoing cartoon Stalinism propaganda and purge activities at the EU largest research institution, the French CNRS, in the wake of the affair around manipulated data of CNRS chief biologist Catherine Jessus, according to their press release an innocent “victim” of my “slanderous” and “unscientific” blogging.  First of all, a reliable source forwarded to me information from inside CNRS who one of the anonymous investigators was: Francis-André Wollman, CNRS researcher and professor at Jessus’s university UPMC (now Sorbonne University) in Paris. Wollmann is plant cell biologist, specialising in chloroplasts, the technology of western blot is standard in his lab. He did not reply to my emails, also the CNRS and Sorbonne University press speakers chose not to deny his role as anonymous Jessus investigator. The experts namely declared western blot manipulation to be good scientific practice, and lashed out at those who have a problem with copy-pasted gel bands (read here).

Then, the new CNRS President Antoine Petit, who replaced interim president Anne Peyroche (deposed after my reporting about data manipulations in her papers) proved to be not really a reformer, quite the opposite. Petit approved the new definition of what research misconduct in biology is, following cues from Sorbonne University and its president Jean Chambaz (who is cell biologist, specialising on intestinal metabolism and thus also a western blot expert), as well as Wollman and other Jessus investigators. New Sorbonne and CNRS Party doctrine is that data manipulation is definitely not research misconduct, but criticising that data manipulation is.

This is how Petit responded to the Jessus affair in public so far:

  • Called myself and other PubPeer commenters “arseholes” (in French connards) at his first meeting with the section heads of CNRS (one of whom is Jessus)
  • Claimed that PubPeer evidence and my reporting was an accusation of misconduct directed personally at Jessus and Peyroche (a lie, check my articles here and here), in this radio interview.
  • Described documented and now validated data integrity concerns raised against publications by Jessus and Peyroche as equivalent to false accusations of pederasty (then corrected to paedophilia), in same radio interview.
  • Announced to use IT surveillance technology to identify anonymous PubPeer commenters after their evidence was exposed as “wrong” (as it was in case of Jessus), in same radio interview.

Continue reading “Jessus investigator identity leaked, CNRS President to expose whistleblowers” →

Expert witness Macchiarini to help Berlin court sentence criminal journalist

Expert witness Macchiarini to help Berlin court sentence criminal journalist

The stem cell pioneering surgeon Paolo Macchiarini is back in court now. No, he is not the accused this time. He is an unbiased, independent expert witness invited by his student and acolyte Philipp Jungebluth to help him sue me in Berlin. There are two court injunctions against me, one was already partially lifted, while another was upheld in full, and the main issue are Macchiarini’s trachea transplants in Italy described in an unpublished manuscript. I cannot say much more without facing a €250,000 fine or a 6 months prison term.

Macchiarini recently saw the Swedish state prosecutor drop charges against him because another misconduct-tainted Swedish trachea transplanter, Michael Olausson, served as secret expert for prosecution. At least, no journalists faced court sentencing in Sweden for exposing trachea transplant scandals. It is different in Germany, where constitutional press freedom counts little if someone doesn’t like your reporting, which is why medical scandals in Germany are so rare. The ruinous court trials Macchiarini-associates Jungebluth and Heike & Thorsten Walles imposed on me seem to have scared German media into near-complete silence on the trachea transplant affair. What about the central role of Germany, especially Macchiarini’s and Jungebluth’s university Hannover Medical School (MHH) and their recent cover up of the trachea transplants? Definitely no public interest there, even if Macchiarini’s only remaining (adjunct) professor title was bestowed by MHH. My appeal hearing for both Jungebluth injunctions is at the Berlin Kammergericht court on May 24th. It is public, feel free to come. Maybe even Prof Macchiarini pops in?

Continue reading “Expert witness Macchiarini to help Berlin court sentence criminal journalist” →

CNRS: chief biologist Catherine Jessus “victim of slanderous campaign” by blogger

CNRS: chief biologist Catherine Jessus “victim of slanderous campaign” by blogger

UPDATED. My earlier reporting about image irregularities in the papers by CNRS’ chief biologist and director of l’Institut des sciences biologiques (INSB) Catherine Jessus had some interesting effects, including two Corrigenda I discuss below. Evidence of data manipulation in several Jessus’ co-authored papers on cell cycle progression in Xenopus oocytes was collected by my readers, which I then posted on PubPeer. There, it was soon supplemented with additional evidence from other PubPeer users. CNRS now publicly accused me of  “slanderous campaign” against Jessus, declared gel band duplications to be either technical incidents or in fact scientifically well justified and called its scientists to “collective vigilance” against people like myself (see below).

While CNRS, an institution of of 32,000 research employees and annual budget of €3.2 Billion, was busy suppressing the Jessus affair (allegedly on orders from the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation), something even bigger exploded: evidence of data manipulation appeared in the papers of the then-interim President of CNRS, Anne Peyroche, which then led to her removal and institutional investigation which could result in sacking. My own role in reporting data manipulations in Peyroche papers, initially dismissed as so-called compression artefacts by PubPeer moderation, was then acknowledged by Le Monde. The French national newspaper also brought the well-hidden Jessus case into the spotlight:

“It’s also on PubPeer that Catherine Jessus, head of research in biology at CNRS, was incriminated – she did not consider it appropriate to answer on the site”.

Unlike the unlucky CNRS interim president, behind whose devastating PubPeer postings Retraction Watch suspected “political motivations in trying to take Peyroche down“, the powerful CNRS’ chief biologist apparently doesn’t have to answer to anyone. Jessus was whitewashed in a secret investigation by l’Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), which professorship she holds. UPMC experts found only minor errors in 3 Jessus publications, and dismissed all other evidence.

Two Jessus papers have now been corrected, a key co-author on those is Aude Dupre, Jessus former PhD student and presently staff scientist at UPMC. Another coauthor is Olivier Haccard, “Directeur de Recherche” at CNRS I2BC in Paris. These papers from 2017 and 2015 were relatively simple cases, where no gel band duplications were spotted. One could even have explained those away as honest mistakes of negligence. But Jessus’ corrections of these two recent papers are not that straightforward, and do little to dismiss suspicions of her lab’s lack of research integrity.

Continue reading “CNRS: chief biologist Catherine Jessus “victim of slanderous campaign” by blogger” →

Cardiff investigates two cancer research professors for data manipulation

Cardiff investigates two cancer research professors for data manipulation

The Cardiff University in UK is now investigating two cancer researchers, both senior professors, for suspected scientific misconduct. The evidence was submitted by pseudonymous Clare Francis, I publish below the results of preliminary investigations. One of these two professors is Robert Nicholson, specialist in breast cancer, former director of Tenovus Centre for Cancer Research, now professor of Cardiff School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, celebrated on BBC in 2008 for discovering a therapy target for tamoxifen-resistant tumours. The other is Wen Jiang, professor of Surgery and Tumour Biology at Cardiff University School of Medicine specialising in metastatic solid tumours, Fellow of Royal Society of Medicine and chair of Cardiff China Medical Research Collaborative. Jiang also made it into BBC news in 2013, when he announced to have discovered a “formula”, “consisting of 14 herbs” from traditional Chinese medicine, to stop cancer metastasis.

The two great doctors Jiang and Nicholson made great promises to cancer patients. A preliminary investigation by Cardiff University now determined that those promises were based on duplicated images and cloned gel bands. Importantly, the committee also saw irregular splicing of gels as a problem, an issue many tend to dismiss. The traditional excuse goes that gel splicing was allegedly permitted until 2008 or so. In fact, irregular splicing of gels, where bits of different gels are assembled to look as it were one intact physical gel, was never permitted and always considered to be data manipulation. Especially where due to splicing the gel loading controls are proven not to match the analytic gels, the entire figure becomes meaningless. Or worse, it indicates research misconduct. Continue reading “Cardiff investigates two cancer research professors for data manipulation” →