Science journalism by Leonid Schneider, on research integrity and academic publishing in life sciences and biomedicine
Cancer researcher Giorgio Zauli publicly declared himself exonerated because he simply forbids his University of Ferrara to publish the investigative report. The ultra-right connected rector used the occasion to equal his critics to Nazis and to announce defamation lawsuits.
In the David Latchman affair, UCL denied me access to investigative reports. The university however did give same files to proper journalists now. The censored documents still do not reveal fraudulent papers, but at least we know the Master of Birkbeck was found guilty of misconduct by recklessness. Trice.
After her lawyers threatened Linköping whistleblower Jaywant Phopase, accusing him of slander and demanding money, regmed researcher May Griffith wrote to me. She sent me a whole dossier: all misconduct findings against her were overruled, even in court. Turns out, ethics dumping is good and anyway, she is not responsible for her own publications.
The University of Manchester found out that someone has secretly manipulated data in the papers of their star cancer researcher, Richard Marais. Who might that be?
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?
A UCLA dentistry student writes in a leaked letter: ” I was having disagreements with my research mentor, and thought that Dr. Tetradis could help. Instead, he distorted the issues to attack my mentor, and sexually harassed me. When I filed the Title IX complaint, his powerful colleagues discouraged me from filing.”
A former Karolinska researcher is subject of research misconduct investigation, for forwarding to university OA publishing bills for her past research there. To save €3k, no trick is too dirty for Karolinska Institutet.
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.
I obtained the full report on the case of Karin Dahlman-Wright, Vice-Rector of the Karolinska Institutet. The investigation by Danish researcher Nils Billestrup for CEPN found 6 out of 8 papers contained data manipulations, but only in 2 cases serious enough to affect the conclusions.
