Anatomy of a Retraction
From “analysis and conclusion of our paper remain valid” via drafted correction to “the authors retract this publication”. A guest post by Maarten van Kampen.
Category: Research Reproducibility
How Sampaolesi and Cossu cured Muscular Dystrophy with stem cells
Gather round children, and hear a fairy tale from the golden age of degenerative medicine.
The Island of Dr Izpisua Belmonte
Human-monkey chimeras arrive to solve the problem of organ shortage. Thank Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, who is ready to cure all possible diseases and even the old age. With chutzpah and Cell on his side.
Fusion is a dish best served cold
“…there are no longer any batches of the palladium used by Fleischmann and Pons (because the supplier now uses a different manufacturing process)…” -FuF wisdom
Cold Fusion by EU Commission: a Fleischmann-Pons revival
Cold Fusion is back, and EU Commission now funds it with €10 million. One project specifically builds on Fleischmann and Pons, the other is run by Italy’s most notorious Cold Fusion loon, Francesco Celani.
mTOR: conclusions not affected?
David Sabatini, remember that story? Well, it seems the conclusions were not affected. I take an ill-informed look at the mTOR signalling research field, to understand how photoshopped data gets to be independently verified by other labs.
Fixing science: with climate denial, misogyny and white supremacism?
A conservative think tank organises a research integrity conference to prove climate change is not real. It is a white men-only academic event, and there are good reasons for that.
Lopez-Otin and Daley retract Nature Cell Biology paper
The 2015 Nature Cell Biology paper by the Spanish cancer researcher Carlos Lopez-Otin and his US partner George Q Daley, stem cell titan and dean of Harvard Medical School, is being retracted. First author and Lopez-Otin’s student Clara Soria-Valles caused Daley even more trouble: her next groundbreaking paper was meant to be already published, but it is not even submitted and might never be.
Lopez-Otin and Kroemer: birds of a feather flock together
Following my reporting, the cancer researcher Carlos López-Otín abandoned his ERC-funded 36-member-strong “Degradome” lab at the University of Oviedo in Spain and moved in with his collaborator in Paris, France, Guido Kroemer. Yet Lopez-Otin’s data integrity issues seem as poppycock compared to what Kroemer and his life partner Laurence Zitvogel dished out to the scientific community.
Janine Erler dossiers which ERC does not want
Janine Erler is a star of Danish cancer research, funded by ERC. Her earlier research led to the discovery of the key role of the enzyme lysyl oxidase in cancer metastasis and brought the scientist and businesswoman very close to curing cancer. Until some sad envious bad-wishers found duplicated gel bands in Erler papers.
For Better Science 