Science journalism by Leonid Schneider, on research integrity and academic publishing in life sciences and biomedicine
“How I would have loved it if a brilliant genius, in the style of Jeff Goldblum, had discovered, on a corner of a grubby lab bench, THE miracle treatment for SARS-cov-2! But we’re not in a Hollywood style blockbuster.”
Is the inventor of chloroquine cure for COVID-19, the French microbiologist Didier Raoult, sane? But then again, is anyone these days?
As COVID19 pandemic rages on, French microbiologist Didier Raoult offers a cure. President Trump is convinced, but is Raoult’s research reliable, here and in general?
A Chinese paper gets rejected at Elsevier after reviewer spotted fraud. Same paper re-appears unchanged in another Elsevier journal, the editors refuse any action.
Arturo Casadevall is probably the most recognized expert for research integrity, author of many peer reviewed papers on that topic. But now his own publications on microbiology and immunity are under scrutiny.
Frontiers describes itself as “a community-rooted, open-access academic publisher”, and boasts a ~71,000 head strong “virtual editorial office”. This guest post by Regina-Michaela Wittich, a former senior editor of a Frontiers journal, narrates how she was sacked by Frontiers because she rejected too many papers for being of insufficient scientific quality, instead of sending them into the “rigorous” Frontiers peer review process
Journals generally avoid acting on data manipulation, unless forced to by investigations from universities and research institutions. The Lancet‘s currentContinue Reading
Robert Ryan’s mentor Maxwell Dow used the legal means of DMCA take-down to attack my reporting, pretending to act on behalf of his University College Cork. UCC remained silent and refused to apologise. Dow was later absolved of all suspicions of research misconduct.
On August 24th I received an anonymous email over my website from a „Concerned Microbiologist”: “I would like to bringContinue Reading
