By Leonid Schneider, on research integrity, biomedical ethics and academic publishing
David Latchman, Master of Birkbeck and professor of genetics at UCL was once again cleared of all suspicions of research misconduct, while his two subordinates took all the blame, for just 7 papers. Over 40 flagged for suspected data manipulations were ignored. Latchman is namely also Chair of the over £100 Million-heavy Maurice Wohl Charitable Foundation, which gave Birkbeck over £ 5mn.
This is a story of David Latchman, Master of Birkbeck at University of London, professor of genetics at UCL and Commander of the Order of the British Empire. As Birkbeck and UCL were repeatedly bombarded with evidence of data manipulation, Latchman was (pretend)-investigated on misconduct charges twice. Naturally, neither whitewashing report was released to public.
In 2017, UCL invited an external expert commission to investigate the deadly trachea transplants performed by the former UCL honorary professor Paolo Macchiarini. An already sacked UCL nanotechnology professor, Alexander Seifalian, whose lab made the two UCL plastic POSS-PCU tracheas in 2011, was announced as the main culprit on UCL side. All this despite Seifalian’s having had no clinical role, training or ambitions, as he professed in his interview to the investigative committee, which I now obtained.
Imagine you are Martin Birchall, laryngologist and ENT surgeon, star of regenerative medicine at UCL and trachea transplant enthusiast. You and your business partner Videregen need to explain to EU bureaucrats why your technology of decellurised cadaveric trachea is perfectly safe, what with all the dead patients of yours and your former best friend Paolo Macchiarini. Yet both your trachea transplant pigs die. EU authorities however accept this as proof that your method is safe!
The European Commission admitted that their €6.8 mn phase 2 clinical trial TETRA with cadaveric tracheas, led by the UCL laryngologist Martin Birchall is unlikely to ever recruit any patients. In January 2019, the status was changed to “grant agreement terminated”
The European Union Commission staunchly refuses to tell me what exactly their funded scientists intend to do to the scheduledContinue Reading
The Science and Technology Committee of the British House of Commons is now dealing with the trachea transplants performed byContinue Reading
The esteemed London university UCL seems to live in its own world. There, the regenerative medicine magic thrives, living organsContinue Reading
With his three trachea transplant clinical trials suspended, the British laryngologist and UCL professor Martin Birchall now tries to pull at leastContinue Reading
The British laryngologist and UCL professor Martin Birchall is one of the two founding fathers of “bioengineered” trachea, the other one beingContinue Reading
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