The impossible Toni Camins
They are professors of molecular biology and they don’t know how microscopy or western blots are supposed to work. But it passed peer review!
Tag: diabetes
“Criaremos na Unicamp um escritório permanente de integridade em pesquisa para proteger a sociedade e o pesquisador”, afirma Mario Saad
Mario “Fakenews” Saad is entering a run-off election to become rector of his Brazilian university. The man responsible for massive research fraud and 18 retractions plays the victim of a “Cancel Culture”. Saad also announces to create an “Office for Research Integrity”, to legalise misconduct and to punish the whistleblowers.
mTOR: conclusions not affected?
David Sabatini, remember that story? Well, it seems the conclusions were not affected. I take an ill-informed look at the mTOR signalling research field, to understand how photoshopped data gets to be independently verified by other labs.
Colonel Cai, his postdoc Shen and the Weapons of Mass Fabrication
Smut Clyde and Tiger BB8 uncover a Chinese network which spreads over two cities and uses same stash of fake data to keep inventing nanoparticle or TCM-based cures for diabetic brain damage and other diseases.
Another dead scientist framed with manipulated data?
On 7 April 2010 the Spanish diabetes researcher Margarita Lorenzo died of metastatic melanoma, aged only 51. Two months after her death, Lorenzo’s colleagues submitted a paper to the journal Diabetes. The paper, which studies the mechanisms of obesity and insulin resistance, seems to be full of manipulated western blot data. While Lorenzo was dying of cancer, her colleagues advanced their careers using her reputation, using their own disreputable Photoshop skills.
The Kathrin Maedler Dynasty
German diabetologist Kathrin Maedler is a central figure of a questionable academic dynasty. Using Photoshop simulations, she discovered a cure for diabetes, which was then allegedly validated in clinical trials led by her Swiss PhD advisor Marc Donath. 15 years later, the Maedler-Donath diabetes cure was proven as utterly ineffective by same Donath, in another clinical trial. Maedler’s own PhD student, Amin Ardestani is group leader in Bremen, despite data irregularities and unacknowledged textual reuse in his thesis.
How Elsevier finds its peer reviewers
The following email exchange took place between the academic Editor-in-Chief of an Elsevier subscription journal and a professor of physics and astronomy, who was invited to peer review a clinical trial study on gestational diabetes, his expertise assumed from some obscure “keywords”.
How Irun Cohen and Weizmann Institute almost cured diabetes
This is a new episode of the data manipulation affair around Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel (and another guestContinue Reading
Yehiel Zick, Weizmann’s resident Western blot artist
The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is not just a renowned biomedical research centre of world calibre. ItContinue Reading
Kathrin Maedler loses Heisenberg Professorship, Diabetes award, found guilty of misconduct by DFG
“As a suitable and appropriate measure in accordance with the DFG procedural regulations, the Examination Board proposed to the main committee the withdrawal of the Heisenberg Professorship for Mädler, which was approved in 2014.”
For Better Science 