By Leonid Schneider, on research integrity, biomedical ethics and academic publishing
Schneider Shorts 22.10.2021: acupuncture in Nature, creationism in Scientific American, proxalutamide scandal reaches Brazilian Senate, a surprise new US academy member, entirely valid conclusions of photoshop fraud, MDPI reaches level X, colchicine doesn’t work for COVID-19 but fake Russian statistics do, plus Russian paper mills and a stuck Sputnik V.
Smut Clyde tries to understand how dietary miRNAs are supposed to work, and gives up. A story with three openings and no ending.
“Without even drinking water, she sometimes gained 0.5 kg to 1 kg after a telephone conversation with Dr. Yan.”
Schneider Shorts 4.06.2021: Israeli Scientists jokes, the business model of Nature Medicine, Retraction Watch exposing a fraudster, life extension by naturopathy, and a dirty old man.
Smut Clyde as Detective Columbo investigates: The victims of a paper mill are actually in cahoots with the perpetrators! Stealth corrections happen faster than one can catch them!
“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?
For Better Science