Tag: Maria Pia Cosma

Two EMBO corrections for the martyred saint Maria Pia Cosma

Two EMBO corrections for the martyred saint Maria Pia Cosma

The cell biologist Maria Pia Cosma, top-funded and prize-winning professor in Barcelona, is either an indestructible zombie scientist or a martyred saint. Her name means in Italian Mary the Pious, so it is probably the latter. So the following post is written in the style of a canonical satire.

Holy Mary Pia was accused by evil tongues on PubPeer of research misconduct in several of her publications. Philistines pointed crooked fingers and cast stones at duplicated western blot bands in papers published by St. Maria Pia in exalted scriptures like Cell. The accusers, envious of such impact factors, wished those gospels of scientific truth crucified on the cross of retraction and demanded for Our Lady of Barcelona to be judged and investigated. Yet Lord took mercy upon the tortured saint and sent His angels to defend her.

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The martyr of research integrity, St. Maria Pia (right, standing) receives a sign for “Beatified”. Source: Cosma lab, under fair use

Continue reading “Two EMBO corrections for the martyred saint Maria Pia Cosma” →

With Voinnet and Cosma cover-up, Cell now admits to have no editorial integrity whatsoever

The elite journal Cell issued editorial notices in regard to 3 papers by the Swiss-based French plant scientist Olivier Voinnet (found guilty of research misconduct in many papers) and one by the Spain-based Italian cell biologist Maria Pia Cosma (some information about her papers here). The journal Molecular Cell (which editorial offices are not entirely independent from Cell) issued same note for a different Cosma paper.

Despite obvious data manipulations, the journal decided not to do even as little as a correction. This is in full agreement with a previous declaration by the Cell Editor-in-Chief Emilie Marcus, who announced one year ago to be tolerating data manipulations in her journal, provided the science described is “wow” and “cool” (see details in my satire article here). Indeed, as a branch of the private business Elsevier, Cell is free to publish whatever they wish, even explicit fraud, lies and fakery. It is however the duty of all scientists, funding agencies and the subscription-paying university libraries to decide if what Cell publishes is actually any good science under such policies.  Even if it reads“wow”.

I will simply list the four editorial notices below, accompanied with some corresponding images off PubPeer. Naturally, none of that author-provided evidence (i.e., where it existed in the first place) which Cell found so convincing, is shared with us nosy readers. Make your own judgement, the notices speak for themselves. Continue reading “With Voinnet and Cosma cover-up, Cell now admits to have no editorial integrity whatsoever” →

Does Spanish Research recruit its Leaders from PubPeer?

One dishonest scientist sacked, another one is welcomed. At least this is what it looks like at the Spanish National Centre for Cardiovascular Research, CNIC, which seems to be recruiting their principal investigators through the whistleblower platform PubPeer, as the scientist who alerted me to this development quipped half-jokingly. The new recruitment at the Madrid institute is the regenerative medicine researcher Pura Muñoz-Cánoves, whose papers contain evidence of data manipulation in form of band and lane duplications in western blots and gels.

CNIC only recently sacked the ERC-funded heart regeneration researcher Susana Gonzalez. Their investigative report is confidential and not available to public, though one can safely assume misconduct was in play. Gonzalez quickly found another job, at a different Madrid research institute, her €2 Million ERC funding is not terminated, but suspended while ERC investigates (see my brief report here). Gonzalez’ research specialization is cardiac muscle ageing and regeneration (or the data manipulation therein), that of Muñoz-Cánoves is just the same, but for the skeletal muscle. The latter is therefore a suitable replacement for the former in every respect. Continue reading “Does Spanish Research recruit its Leaders from PubPeer?” →