By Leonid Schneider, on research integrity, biomedical ethics and academic publishing
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.
“These figures were elaborated by me personally and I remember quite well how I made them. Definitely, the images shown in this figure were cut and pasted from the originals in order to elaborate the figures, the overlapping was done “manually” using GIMP…” – Dr. José R Pérez-Castiñeira
Cancer research giant Joan Massagué has no time to correct his old papers.
“No, none of my data is forged.” – Ahmed Esmail Shalan
“I cannot help but wonder to what extent you will systematically scrutinize all publications from my group.” – Prof Dr Marino Zerial
“I do not who is doing this, who is behind this. Papers were not manipulated, please believe me. Someone must want my scientific death. This is scaring Believe me please. I am a modest scientist.”
Dead men don’t talk. A dead colleague, especially a foreigner, is a perfect scapegoat to blame for fake data in your papers. And in your own PhD thesis.
“Recently we realized that some images were used wrongly in the paper, so I want to retract this article.
The key message of the paper is very solid and results have been reproduced independently in many laboratories, but I find unacceptable the wrong use of some images during figure preparation” – Pedro L Rodriguez
They are professors of molecular biology and they don’t know how microscopy or western blots are supposed to work. But it passed peer review!
Human-monkey chimeras arrive to solve the problem of organ shortage. Thank Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, who is ready to cure all possible diseases and even the old age. With chutzpah and Cell on his side.
For Better Science