Science journalism by Leonid Schneider, on research integrity and academic publishing in life sciences and biomedicine
Catherine Verfaillie is a zombie scientist: her past stem cell research long discredited, but she still is an influential and very well funded star of Belgian science. Now Elisabeth Bik had a fresh new look at Verfaillie’s papers
A dishonest cancer researcher. A dud cancer drug based on rigged lab data. A clinical trial in The Lancet. A greedy university which finds no misconduct. And a medical journal which tramples over patients.
Elisabeth Bik reported 4 years ago 11 falsified papers by University of Nebraska oncologists. One was retracted, two corrected, the rest ignored.
Johan Thyberg discusses the Macchiarini affair in the context of ethical shortcomings of Karolinska’s own leadership.
Ashutosh Tiwari and his patron Tony Turner were found guilty of research misconduct by Linköping University. Turner is to be sacked as EiC of his Elsevier journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, a paper he tried to correct there will be retracted. Meanwhile, Tiwari and his LiU colleague Mikael Syväjärvi started a new business: they offer heart surgeries in India.
Karolinska Vice-president Karin Dahlman-Wright was found guilty of research misconduct, not much, only in one case, and even that shared. But she already resigned.
I publish exclusively two uncensored UCL screening panel reports into the David Latchman and Anastasis Stephanou affair. Now we know which papers were investigated and which requested retractions didn’t happen.
Katrin Amunts and University of Düsseldorf deploy lawyers to silence whistleblowers. After I was threatened with lawsuit, this post replaces the previous one. Learn the truth of who owns the brains in Moscow.
University of Ferrara rejected a journalist’s FOI request about the investigation of its own Rector. The arguments: the media is biased and drives a slander campaign against Giorgio Zauli, and in any case, his research can only be evaluated in a “Science Court” by peer review.
Katrin Amunts is director of Human Brain Project. Back when the Berlin Wall fell, this Moscow-trained young neuroscientist from GDR found a new mentor in Western Germany: Professor Karl Zilles. It is a remarkable story of a literal brain drain.
