By Leonid Schneider, on research integrity, biomedical ethics and academic publishing
German Research Foundation (DFG) terminated the investigation against their Senator and Marburg University professor Roland Lill, after having found no research misconduct. No comments are issued on the integrity of the data in his papers on yeast biochemistry, or on some unusual image manipulations which were already admitted by Lill and his former PhD students
The Paolo Macchiarini investigation was initiated in 2016 by the interim Karolinska Rector Karin Dahlman-Wright, finalised this year by the newly installed Ole Petter Ottersen. The irony is that several Dahlman-Wright papers were now scrutinised data integrity sleuths with the result that one wonders if Dahlman-Wright was the right person to supervise any research misconduct investigations. Also Ottersen himself might be tainted: he is co-author on an old paper with image duplication.
David Latchman, Master of Birkbeck and professor of genetics at UCL was once again cleared of all suspicions of research misconduct, while his two subordinates took all the blame, for just 7 papers. Over 40 flagged for suspected data manipulations were ignored. Latchman is namely also Chair of the over £100 Million-heavy Maurice Wohl Charitable Foundation, which gave Birkbeck over £ 5mn.
On 7 April 2010 the Spanish diabetes researcher Margarita Lorenzo died of metastatic melanoma, aged only 51. Two months after her death, Lorenzo’s colleagues submitted a paper to the journal Diabetes. The paper, which studies the mechanisms of obesity and insulin resistance, seems to be full of manipulated western blot data. While Lorenzo was dying of cancer, her colleagues advanced their careers using her reputation, using their own disreputable Photoshop skills.
The travesty around the data faking regenerative medicine enthusiast Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson is finally over. Her Swedish employer University of Gotheburg announced to sack her as university professor. Retractions of 7 papers were requested
Karolinska Institutet announced its decision on 6 papers by their former professor and surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini. All are to be retracted, 7 scientists were found guilty of research misconduct, including one of the whistleblowers.
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As Le Monde brought into public light the Catherine Jessus affair with its whitewashed data manipulation and the growing academic protest, a counter-revolution put its foot in. A signature list in the worst Stalinist tradition was published, organised by the very elite of French academia (mostly members of Academie de Sciences), and signed by hundreds, mostly professors and CNRS group leaders, including a former CNRS president. Their demands, endorsed in a secret press release by current CNRS president and Sorbonne University president: punishment for 10 anonymous authors of the Jessus counter-report and for a Le Monde journalist.
In the aftermath of the scandal around Paolo Macchiarini, which left many patients dead, his former employer Karolinska Institutet requested a retraction a paper. The Swiss-German medical publisher Karger and its journal Respiration however categorically refused and ordered KI not “to patronize the readers of the journal ‘Respiration’.” The German Editor-in-Chief had namely a huge conflict of interest.
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