Science journalism by Leonid Schneider, on research integrity and academic publishing in life sciences and biomedicine
Professor Ruben Plentz chose to focus his career on clinical medicine in Bremen, despite his tremendous academic achievements in cancer research. Was it because malicious critics harassed him with frivolous investigations and corrections, envious at all those peer-reviewed cancer cures the great doctor invented?
On 27 December 2018, I received an email from the Italian Office for Protection of Personal Data. A certain Professor Giorgio Zauli has reported me for publishing an official letter his University of Ferrara sent to me on his behalf.
Ariel University is a settlers’ university, located outside of legal Israel borders. What Ariel lacks in academic performance or even official recognition, it makes up in support from right-wing politicians. This post addresses the scientific qualifications of Ariel’s rector Michael Zinigrad. Or the pretence thereof.
A PhD thesis was defended in 2017 at CNRS plant science institute IBMP in Strasbourg, it tested the anti-flu product L52 by the French homeopathy manufacturer Lehning Laboratories. The homeopathic concoction was found very effective, with potential use for human health!
The Swedish Linköping University (LiU) finished their first investigation of the affair of Ashutosh Tiwari and his ongoing predatory conferences. The bureaucrats, busy covering their own professional failures, found that nobody among the grown-up men they investigated was actually responsible for their own behaviour. Not even Tiwari, who would have been LiU professor now where it not for my reporting.
Research by German journalists revealed whole lists of German academics engaging in predatory publishing and scamferences. Named on over 60 predatory conference papers is Bernd Scholz-Reiter, Rector of the University of Bremen and former Vice-President of DFG. Several such papers are even self-plagiarised, and were used in DFG project reports and Scholz-Reiter’s rectorship application from 2011
Karin Dahlman-Wright, Vice-Rector of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, is under misconduct investigation, initiated externally by University of Gothenburg. None of her papers under scrutiny is older than 10 years, yet the raw data does not seem to be available to all of them. Where it was provided, it doesn’t always match the published figures.
