Science journalism by Leonid Schneider, on research integrity and academic publishing in life sciences and biomedicine
St Carlos of Oviedo almost was canonised as Spain’s first living martyr, but now Nature revoked his mentoring award. Spanish media and science elites are desperate, even the Queen is not amused.
Smut Clyde goes nanotechnology again and disagrees with Royal Society of Chemistry and the Chinese authorities on how honest a researcher Mi-Cong Jin is.
Oncotarget, the somewhat controversial OA journal, switched from pretend-soliciting my services to threatening to sue me for defamation. Their lawyer writes my disrespect caused them financial damage.
Magdalena Migocka is a shooting star of plant sciences in Poland. Now she will have to retract at least two papers, for which she blames her incompetent students.
Carlos Lopez-Otin was forced to retract EIGHT papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, right after he retracted a very important paper in Nature Cell Biology. Spanish elites cry foul, a letter signed by 50 Spanish researchers was sent to JBC to prevent retractions. The ringleader is Juan Valcarcel of CRG in Barcelona, and I release 3 incompetent investigative reports Valcarcel commissioned in 2015 to whitewash his CRG colleague Maria Pia Cosma.
The 2015 Nature Cell Biology paper by the Spanish cancer researcher Carlos Lopez-Otin and his US partner George Q Daley, stem cell titan and dean of Harvard Medical School, is being retracted. First author and Lopez-Otin’s student Clara Soria-Valles caused Daley even more trouble: her next groundbreaking paper was meant to be already published, but it is not even submitted and might never be.
With nobody above him, ICR director Paul Workman was seemingly investigating himself, and found two female colleagues guilty of placing fake data into his papers, primarily the ICR emeritus Ann Jackman. One paper was retracted, another received an outrageous correction. The previous ICR CEO, Alan Ashworth, together with his right-hand man Chris Lord, have their own impressive, but hitherto ignored, record on PubPeer.
The travesty around the data faking regenerative medicine enthusiast Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson is finally over. Her Swedish employer University of Gotheburg announced to sack her as university professor. Retractions of 7 papers were requested
Karolinska Institutet announced its decision on 6 papers by their former professor and surgeon, Paolo Macchiarini. All are to be retracted, 7 scientists were found guilty of research misconduct, including one of the whistleblowers.
In October 2017, I brought an exclusive story of a mysterious sacking at the University of Edinburgh. The molecular biologistContinue Reading
