Tag: Germany

Blog Smut Clyde

The anti-social mini-brains of Neanderthals

Neanderthals colonised Europe and Middle East long before modern humans and went extinct less than 30,000 years ago, when our species has spread there. Their story inspired the fantasies of generation of scientists, some of whom still cannot accept the idea that Neanderthals were just another kind of humans very similar or maybe simply just like us. Even new age phrenology is paraded as scientific explanation to why Neanderthal died out.

Academic Publishing Medicine Research integrity

Karolinska gets taught German medical ethics

In the aftermath of the scandal around Paolo Macchiarini, which left many patients dead, his former employer Karolinska Institutet requested a retraction a paper. The Swiss-German medical publisher Karger and its journal Respiration however categorically refused and ordered KI not “to patronize the readers of the journal ‘Respiration’.” The German Editor-in-Chief had namely a huge conflict of interest.

Industry Medicine Research integrity

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.