Tag: diabetes

Kathrin Maedler loses Heisenberg Professorship, found guilty of misconduct by DFG

The German central research funding society DFG has issued a press release about two decisions on research misconduct. The main point concerns the Bremen University diabetes researcher Kathrin Maedler (see my story here) and strips her of the prestigious Heisenberg professorship awarded to her by DFG in 2014, after having found her guilty of misconduct and co-responsible for misrepresentation of research data in 6 publications. Today’s DFG decision stands in contrast to two previous investigations by the Universities of Bremen and Zürich, which acquitted Maedler of all suspicions of misconduct and upheld the validity of all her published research results. This is my Google-translate assisted English translation of the Mädler section of DFG press release.

Scientific misconduct: Decision in two DFG procedures

The General Committee decides to withdraw Heisenberg’s professorship […]

The German Research Foundation (DFG) is once again drawing conclusions from the scientific misconduct by the scientists it funded. In its meeting on 8 December 2016 in Bonn, the main committee of the largest research funding organization and central self-administration organization for science in Germany decided in two cases to implement measures in accordance with the DFG procedural rules for dealing with scientific misconduct. In doing so, it followed the recommendation of the DFG committee to investigate allegations of scientific misconduct. Continue reading “Kathrin Maedler loses Heisenberg Professorship, found guilty of misconduct by DFG” →

Kathrin Maedler: persecuted genius or zombie scientist?

Kathrin Maedler: persecuted genius or zombie scientist?

The prize-winning German pharmacologist and diabetes researcher Kathrin Maedler is regularly in the German and international news, either as a celebrated genius about to cure diabetes or as a potential cheater, responsible for masses of duplicated images in her publications. The rectorate of her own University of Bremen absolved their professor of all suspicions of data manipulations, while admitting image duplications and loss of original data. One argument was that all results were successfully reproduced, yet by whom: that the Bremen rectorate prefers not to answer, together with all other relevant questions which would have made this investigation anywhere credible. In the same vein, another investigation at the University of Zürich in Switzerland, where Maedler did her PhD in 2000-2004 under the supervision of Marc Donath, absolved them both of any suspicion of misconduct as well, while refusing to provide any further explanations. Meanwhile, other labs have refuted Maedler’s discoveries, but these publications were dismissed by the University of Bremen as irrelevant. Maedler also had to retract a publication Ardestani et al 2011 from the Journal of Biological Chemistry (which is known to have a rather tough stance on suspected misconduct). Continue reading “Kathrin Maedler: persecuted genius or zombie scientist?” →

Does ERC help cheaters pay protection money?

Does ERC help cheaters pay protection money?

Did you ever wonder why certain zombie scientists were still in academic jobs? Despite having been caught on data manipulation or biomedical ethics breach?

It seems the answer is simpler than you thought. They are paying for their protection, by giving pizzo to their crooked research institutions, just as in some unoriginal mafia film. Well, actually YOU are paying their pizzo, through your taxes, which in turn are awarded to these zombie scientists as public research funding, from the national, international and European funding agencies. In fact, the most prestigious and self-important European funding agency ERC is completely unprepared or maybe just unwilling to respond to evidence of research misconduct by their elite grant recipients.  

My understanding is provocative, and I may be utterly wrong. But absent of any reasonable alternative explanations, let us for a moment go with this one. I will provide you with examples where questionable European scientists surprisingly retained their European funding unquestioned (or even received fresh millions of Euros), and coincidently or not,  many institutions did not at all mind to keep them in their jobs. Continue reading “Does ERC help cheaters pay protection money?” →

Pontus Boström: cheater carousel in Sweden

Pontus Boström: cheater carousel in Sweden

Sweden is a tolerant country, which is a very good thing. Unfortunately, sometimes this Swedish tolerance seems ill-advised. Dishonest scientists caught faking data are happily given another chance and fat funding, like the case of the diabetes researcher Pontus Boström shows.

This scientist was found to have fabricated data during his PhD studies with late Sven‐Olof Olofsson at the University of Gothenburg, and went afterwards to publish a seminal paper in Nature with the biggest godfather of the diabetes research field, Bruce Spiegelman. Also this high-impact study turned out to be irreproducible by other researchers and a likely artefact of erroneous antibody use. Yet due to his impressive publishing record and unwavering support of the mighty Spiegelman, Boström was invited to head a group leader position at several Swedish universities, while he settled on the best offer by the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at the prestigious Karolinska Institutet (KI) in Stockholm, supported by the elite EU funder ERC.  All despite his previous convictions of research misconduct in Gothenburg and ensuing retractions of two meeting abstracts, which were at all times perfectly known to all parties involved. Continue reading “Pontus Boström: cheater carousel in Sweden” →

Mario Saad and the return of the wandering western blot

The wandering western blot of Mario Saad (which I reported on previously) was spotted yet again, no less than three times, which makes it now 15. The duodecuplicated western blot is therefore now upgraded to a quindecuplicated one.  Also, some more of its new replication-happy friends emerged. A suspicion creeps in that Saad and his Brazilian colleagues José Carvalheira, Cláudio De Souza and Lício Velloso only ever made a handful of western blots which were forced to stand in for all possible instances in their many publications in high-profile journals. Most interestingly, Saad’s State University of Campinas in São Paolo (Universidade Estadual de Campinas, UNICAMP), apparently saw this as a perfectly normal research method. Saad, and as far as we know also his 3 partners, never had to answer for their creative approach to science. This of course may change, since Saad already had to retract a number of papers (currently six, according to Retraction Watch). Several of his publications also received editorial expressions of concern, which could mean further retractions. All this may be gradually decreasing Saad’s standing and funding-pulling value at UNICAMP.

The scientist whose recent analysis of Saad blot breeding I present here exclusively, is Paul S. Brookes, his is the entire credit for the figures below. His entire analysis is available here as PPT file. Continue reading “Mario Saad and the return of the wandering western blot” →

The Duodecuplication of a Wandering Western Blot

This is a story of western blot, which might be holding the current record of re-use. While other papers are plagued by image duplications, this little western blot seems to have been used in a different context 12 times, in 10 papers, in 9 different journals. At least this is the current count. As the evidence suggests, the blot began its wandering adventures in 2006 and stood in for a different protein each time. It may have started as a western blot probed for glucose transporter GLUT4 or phosphotyrosine, but actually, it is now really hard to say what it may originally have been.

The wandering western blot’s owners are the Brazilian physiologists Mario José Abdalla Saad and his colleagues José Barreto Campello Carvalheira, Cláudio T. De Souza and Lício Augusto Velloso. I received the information from this, well, duodecuplication, from a concerned source whose identity I was asked to keep confidential. Therefore, I have assembled a PowerPoint file on this wandering western blot, with the corresponding editorial replies (or the lack of them) attached as presentation notes. The file is publicly accessible here. Continue reading “The Duodecuplication of a Wandering Western Blot” →