Science journalism by Leonid Schneider, on research integrity and academic publishing in life sciences and biomedicine
This guest post by Elisabeth Bik will conclude the Fraud Triptych started by Smut Clyde. We shall meet a former mentee of Paul B Fisher, Sujit Bhutia, who is now busy fabricating data at his own lab at National Institute of Technology in India. Our next encounter will be with Fisher’s and Benjamin Bonavida’s past collaborator Devasis Chatterjee, who recently abruptly stopped being a principal investigator at the Brown University.
The new ERC President Mauro Ferrari used to closely collaborate with two very controversial cancer researchers at MD Anderson in Texas: Anil Sood and Gabriel Lopez-Beerestein. Will that experience affect ERC’s already wanting stance on research integrity?
Benjamin Bonavida is a prolific science book author and recently retired as UCLA professor. He previously had to retract some papers as others took the blame. Yet Smut Clyde found so many fraudulent works signed by Bonavida that one wonders if this cancer researcher is a victim or rather the perpetrator here.
Irina Stancheva was investigated in Edinburgh for fraud at least twice, in 2009 and 2017, yet retraction and correction decisions were not implemented. Apparently to protect the reputation of Nobel Prize candidate Sir Adrian Bird and his male mentees, primarily Richard Meehan. One wonders: how much of Bird research in past two decades was actually fabricated by Stancheva?
US cancer research professors Paul B Fisher, Paul Dent and Stephen Grant look like the characters of a Joel and Ethan Coen crime movie, unfortunately never filmed. Smut Clyde will give you a peek into their spree of data manipulation
Dentistry professors at UCLA published manipulated data in top-level journals. When a colleague reported them, the university retaliated against the whistleblower.
A cancer research professor in China runs a paper mill, sources claim he sells first authorships for a bribe. Problem for his customers: the peer-reviewed papers they pay for, contain fake data.
Arturo Casadevall is probably the most recognized expert for research integrity, author of many peer reviewed papers on that topic. But now his own publications on microbiology and immunity are under scrutiny.
Spain is where dishonest research gets rewarded, with awards, grants and media fame. No wonder the New York-based immunologist Andrea Cerutti opened a second lab in Barcelona.
Frédérique Vidal has been professor for molecular genetics and rector of the University of Nice before she became the currently serving cabinet Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation in France. The French government responded with threats of legal action to earlier evidence of data irregularities in her published research, this is why I publish more such evidence here.
