By Leonid Schneider, on research integrity, biomedical ethics and academic publishing
Schneider Shorts 22.12.2023 – trachea transplanters in London wish to continue, retractions happening when hope was lost, Welsh approach to papermilling, with an Italian researcher harassed, a role model debunked, and finally, with Sholto’s Science Police Christmas special!
“The reviewers and editors agree there is not clear evidence to support Dr Murray’s claim.”
Schneider Shorts 12.08.2022 – marine ecology whistleblowers topple another cheater, a French plagiarist’s newest prank, with greedy gits of UCL lying and taunting, a doctor in California selling long covid cure, a doctor in Spain selling ozone quackery for everything, Israeli Scientists selling anti-Alzheimer’s supplement, Ukrainians debunk American young blood pseudoscience, and Smut Clyde officially out of the closet.
Paolo Macchiarini affair: I reproduce the letter Patricia Murray, Raphael Levy, Peter Wilmshurst and myself published in The BMJ on 2 March 2022. I also publish Wilmshurst’s appeal to the UCL leadership.
“I felt I had a lot to give the world. Getting my first at university and doing so well in research was an antidote. Underneath, though, there is part of me that feels maybe one day someone will discover that I am stupid.” – Tony “Blue Peter” Hollander
The 2008 Lancet paper of Paolo Macchiarini and Martin Birchall about the world first trachea transplant might end up retracted. Until recently, the journal’s editor Richard Horton used to ignore and suppress “non peer-reviewed” evidence, but due to combined pressure of activism, media and politics, things started to move.
In yet another investigation, UCL whitewashed Martin Birchall of all responsibilities. I publish here the confidential report and excerpts from a secret PhD thesis, which the UCL committee carefully avoided to read.
The trachea-transplanting company Videregen, based in Liverpool, got another £2 million grant from UK governmental agency Innovate UK, to advance their tracheal replacement technology.
Paediatric surgeon Paolo De Coppi claims to grow all possible internal organs in his lab at UCL. Though his career started with his association with Macchiarini, and their regenerative medicine ideas sound strangely similar, De Coppi is celebrated as a modest genius poised to save lives of uncounted children, and the funding money flows.
A “defamation Complaint” was lodged with Google, against 6 of my articles and one cartoon. Each of them affects to some degree the British laryngologist Martin Birchall, professor at UCL and former close associate of scandal surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. I also show that Birchall and UCL even now continue researching plastic tracheas on pigs, for future use in humans patients. This grant is presently funded by UK government.
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