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by Leonid Schneider August 24, 2018 51
Academic Publishing Research integrity

How Lopez-Otin et al mocked data policy at Nature Cell Biology

Elite journal Nature Cell Biology (NCB) requests deposition of raw data, in particular original scans of western blots and other gel analyses. Spanish star cancer researcher Carlos López-Otín, winner of 2017 Nature Mentoring Award, instead deposited whatever odd gel picture his lab had available, counting that nobody will bother to check. Yet readers did.

by Leonid Schneider August 22, 2018 9
Research integrity University Affairs

Dahlman-Wright: Gothenburg investigation began, raw data doesn’t match

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.

by Leonid Schneider August 6, 2018 6
Medicine University Affairs

How Macchiarini was recruited to Karolinska

In September 2010, trachea transplant surgeon Paolo Macchiarini was basically at the end of his career of fraud and patient abuse, unwanted by everyone. Except by Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, which pushed the recruitment process through in just 3 weeks, despite warnings from colleagues in Florence, Barcelona and Hannover not to employ someone who was basically a lying psychopath. Yet Karolinska leadership was desperate for some positive reviews for Macchiarini. They finally got them from London, from UCL and GOSH.

by Leonid Schneider August 1, 2018 15
Academic Publishing News Research integrity

Catherine Jessus case: journals hide behind Sorbonne & COPE to avoid retractions

Jaw-dropping corrections issued for the French martyr saint of research integrity, Catherine Jessus, head of biology branch at the French CNRS. All these works of science contained such appalling Photoshop manipulations that the academic publisher had to bend over backwards and hide behind COPE guidelines to invent a reason against retractions.

by Leonid Schneider July 31, 2018 14
News Research integrity University Affairs

DFG and Marburg drop misconduct investigation of Roland Lill papers

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

by smut.clyde July 23, 2018 9
Academic Publishing Smut Clyde

Tarantino & Finelli: i plagiatori di Napoli

Giovanni Tarantino andC armine Finelli are two medical plagiarists from Naples in Italy, who became infamous after one of them was caught having stolen the work of a US colleague he was peer reviewing. In other cases, the two Napolitans were even too lazy to plagiarise. They simply republished their already plagiarised “works” several times, even as book chapters. The journals were informed, but most couldn’t care less.

by Leonid Schneider July 19, 2018 23
Research integrity

Former KI rector Dahlman-Wright: stones in a glass house

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.