Science journalism by Leonid Schneider, on research integrity and academic publishing in life sciences and biomedicine
“For TCM : Chairman Xi :: Lysenkoism : Stalin, and no Chinese academics are losing their positions because they pretended to vindicate the curative claims of TCM. Thus pratersein, genistein, didymin, helenalin, Tormentic acid and of course Trolline.”
Science communication by press release. No paper is published, no data available, but a Max Planck Institute director is eager to announce a possible cure for COVID-19: artemisia extracts, by his own company.
Smut Clyde follows the dark path of Traditional Chinese Medicine again. What will he find there? As usual, all the big publishers peddling TCM fraud, that’s what.
Is the inventor of chloroquine cure for COVID-19, the French microbiologist Didier Raoult, sane? But then again, is anyone these days?
Smut Clyde investigates two more Chinese paper mills. One teamed up with an obscure Italian publisher, the other offers access to respectable society journals. How much of published and allegedly peer reviewed science is real?
An investigation by Elisabeth Bik, Smut Clyde, Morty and Tiger BB8 reveals the workings of a paper mill. Its customers are Chinese doctors desperate for promotion. Apparently even journal editors are part of the scam, publishing fraudulent made-up science.
Smut Clyde studies two Chinese research groups to understand how TCM can be used to create modern Photoshop art.
Royal Society of Chemistry published a research paper which unashamedly peddled TCM, under the title: “Probing the Qi of traditional Chinese herbal medicines by the biological synthesis of nano-Au”. Both Editor-in-Chief and publisher executive saw no problem there because the paper passed peer review.
Smut Clyde and Tiger BB8 uncover a Chinese network which spreads over two cities and uses same stash of fake data to keep inventing nanoparticle or TCM-based cures for diabetic brain damage and other diseases.
Cardiff university declared their oncology professor and TCM peddler Wen Jiang innocent of any data manipulation. It then issued then a press release accusing me personally of having slandered Jiang with false allegations of misconduct.
