Schneider Shorts of 9 August 2024 – Polish rector extorts journalists for money as yet another papermiller is installed, how to look like an Israeli Scientist, sleuth’s boss accused of fraud, retractions for innocent Italians, Sicilian man gets a new job, and finally, an obituary on another master from Messina.
Table of Discontent
Science Elites
A precursor of sustainable manufacturing – Opole University of Technology recruits yet another papermiller
Rector Lorenc, we will not be intimidated – Polish journalists and academics reject lawsuit threats
Il Consigliere – Salvatore Cuzzocrea gets a new job
Obituaries
One of most illustrious masters – Francesco Squadrito dies, retracts paper
Retraction Watchdogging
Editor-in-Chief has recused himself – Ben Albensi couldn’t save Dom Pratico from retraction
True Science is like good wine – Saverio Bettuzzi severed from two papers
Data Othman Ghribi had fabricated – Matthew Schrag’s fraudulent mentor loses another paper
Editor-in-Chief no longer has confidence – Springer journal finally acts on Selvaraj Miltonprabu
Science Breakthroughs
Curated, filtered trash-talk – Israeli Scientists jokes in PNAS, edited by Susan Fiske
Science Elites
A precursor of sustainable manufacturing
A new arrival at Opole University of Technology in Poland, to strengthen the Polytechnic’s already mighty papermill capacities. For which we must once thank its Vice-Rector and the newly appointed president of the national Council for Higher Education, Science and Innovation, Grzegorz Krolczyk, the rapacious papermill rabbit. And under his watch, papermillers at Opole Polytechnic indeed breed like rabbits! Read here for background:
Polish science eaten by PapermillKrolczyk
“Prof. Grzegorz Królczyk, Vice-Rector for Science and Development of the Opole University of Technology, was elected President of the Council for Innovation in Higher Education and Science.”
byLeonid Schneider
The new arrival joins the already installed papermiller fraudsters Zhixiong Li and Munish Kumar Gupta. The latter seems to be a colleague of the new arrival, who was announced by the Polish university on 5 August 2024 (translated):
“Prof. Vishal Santosh Sharma is recognized as a precursor of sustainable manufacturing, with more than 20 years of experience in teaching and research. – I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Grzegorz Królczyk for giving me the opportunity to conduct research in his laboratory. I chose the Opole University of Technology because of its excellent reputation and phenomenal interactions with the professor. […] – says Prof. Vishal Santosh Sharma, who is from India. […]
“It’s a big distinction for me to be able to work together with Professor Vishal Sharma. As a young assistant, I learned from the professor’s scientific articles. To this day, his 2009 work on cooling techniques to improve rolling performance published in one of the world’s best journals (International Journal of Tools and Manufacture) remains a key job for mechanical engineering worldwide,” says Prof. Grzegorz Królczyk, Vice-Rector for Science and Development of the Opole University of Technology.
Prof. Vishal Santosh Sharma came to the Opole University of Technology as part of the Stanisław Ulam program of the National Agency for Academic Exchange.”
The press release was illustrated by a photo of Krolczyk, Sharma and the Opole rector Marcin Lorenc, who is a former senate candidate for the PiS party and an unhinged sociopath (read July 2024 Shorts):
Now, you can imagine what Sharma published. Here he is with his colleague, the Opole professor Gupta:
“Following receipt of whistle-blower complaints, an investigation of this and related papers was conducted. The Editor-in-Chief no longer has confidence in the scientific integrity of this paper as similar images have been used in various articles in multiple journals claiming varying conditions, which violates our publishing policies.
Table6, Table7, and Figure9 in this article were reported differently in other articles (e.g., The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, 2019, 102, pp. 3995–4009, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-019-03453-3
). These results have been carefully checked and reviewed by a duly constituted expert committee, and are concluded to be unreliable findings.
Communication with the corresponding author raised further concerns with the integrity of this work and proposed revisions deepened, rather than clarified, the uncertainty as to what materials/parameters were used in this study.”
It was corrected on 25 November 2022 to replace the duplicated Figure 7 and to add a reference to the now retracted study.
I hope you now see how both Sharma and Gupta fit the Opole profile. Let’s look at their coauthors, specifically Daniil Pimenov and Mozammel Mia, who also happen to be Krolczyk’s (and his wife Jolanta’s) collaborators:
Mia Mozammel,Gupta Munish Kumar,Singh Gurraj,Królczyk Grzegorz, Pimenov Danil Yu, An approach to cleaner production for machining hardened steel using different cooling-lubrication conditions, Journal of Cleaner Production, (2018) DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.03.279
Mia Mozammel,Gupta Munish Kumar, Lozano Jose Adolfo, Carou Diego, Pimenov Danil Yu.,Królczyk Grzegorz, KhanAqib Mashood, Dhar Nikhil Ranjan: Multi-objective optimization and life cycle assessment of eco-friendly cryogenic N 2 assisted turning of Ti-6Al-4V, Journal of Cleaner Production (2019) DOI: 10.1016/j. jclepro.2018.10.334
Królczyk Grzegorz, Maruda Radosław, Królczyk Jolanta, Wojciechowski Szymon, Mia Mozammel, Niesłony Piotr, Budzik Grzegorz: Ecological trends in machining as a key factor in sustainable production – a review, Journal of Cleaner Production, (2019) DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.02.017
First, Mozammel Mia, presently assistant professor in Bangladesh. He used to be a Commonwealth fellowship-funded PhD student at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Imperial College London in 2019-2023. In these four years Mia published 128 articles with the Imperial affiliation. The British university holds records of his many papers, but no records of a successfully defended doctoral dissertation. This public information by Imperial College, about a student caught papermilling and then merely mildly admonished, most likely refers to Mia:
“In 2023 a PhD student’s supervisors reported that the student had published a large number of papers covering a very wide range of topics outside of the main subject area of his PhD without their knowledge or permission. There were concerns about the quality of some of the published papers and it was also alleged that the student had misrepresented his institutional affiliations in several of the papers. The screening investigation upheld four of the specific concerns that had been raised and recommended that these issues should be investigated further. Five other issues that had been identified both before and during the investigation were either dismissed or were resolved informally. The student agreed to accept full responsibility for his actions, thus negating the need for a formal investigation, and apologised to his supervisors and his department and agreed to undertake further training in research integrity and in future to comply with Imperial’s exacting research standards.”
Retraction blackmail – new service by Iranianpapermills
“I was asked to pay in bitcoin to avoid retraction”. – Zbigniew Leonowicz
byLeonid Schneider
Mia didn’t reply to my email to deny that it was about him. Maybe he is busy packing suitcases to join Opole Polytechnic right now. Here is a nice paper by Mia, Pimenov, the Opole professor Gupta, and another Polish scholar, Szymon Wojciechowski from Poznan Polytechnic. The other authors are from Brazil, India, Pakistan and Turkey, which is perfectly normal with papermills:
“The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reported that polyaromatic rings in mineral oil-based cutting fluids cause skin cancer [231].“
(231) Balasubramanian M. Prediction of optimum weld pool geometry of PCTIG welded titanium alloy using statistical design. Eng Sci Technol Int J 2016;19:15–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jestch.2015.06.001.
Danil Pimenov from Chelyabinsk, russia, has other stuff on PubPeer, for example:
Manduca manducoides: “Two very similar papers appear in the MDPI title ‘materials’ with some common authors. While the same ‘nano powder’ has been used in each paper it appears images have been cropped and results represented in order make these appear different.”
Importantly, Pimenov is not just a papermiller, but also a proud rascist Z-patriot. See his LinkedIn posts, and especially see his russian-language posts in VKontakte, where he celebrates putin, his chechen butcher ramzan kadyrov, russian empire and russian nuclear weapons, and of course Pimenov fully supports the “special military operation” against Ukraine:
Definitely the right kind of collaborator to have for a Polish university, no? Now Pimenov, Gupta, Krolczyk, plus Krolczyk’s Turkish associate Mehmet Korkmaz:
“It is confusing that five of the six references mentioned in this fragment ([39 – 43]) are mostly unrelated to titanium alloys, the main topic of the current paper. Instead, these references all share the same author, M Korkmaz.“
Dillenia retusa
Again we see another Polish name: Jozef Gawlik, who is merely the former Rector of the Cracow University of Technology. Here is he again, again doing tribology with Krolczyk, Gupta and Wojciechowski:
Now, Gawlik also used to be member of the national Concil of Scientific Excellence, which processes applications for the title of a professor. It was Gawlik who approved Krolczyk’s professorship application 4 years ago. As you see, Krolczyk paid him back.
Here are Opole geniuses Krolczyk, Gupta and the newly recruited Sharma, who has already published under Opole affiliation. Korkmaz is co-author and cited 5 times:
And here is a recently flagged paper by our Opole vice-rector, with the infamous papermill fraudster and citation buyer Changhe Li, and other scammers:
The citations go of course to CH Li (24 of them), but also to a Shubham Sharma (27), plus Opole professor MK Gupta (16) and Mozammel Mia (10).
According to my sources, the Polish Minister of Science has asked for Krolczyk’s resignation from the position of the president of the Council for Higher Education, Science and Innovation. The show is just beginning.
Rector Lorenc, we will not be intimidated
We remain in Opole and on the case of the Polytechnic’s vice-rector Grzegorz Krolczyk, and now turn the full attention to rector Marcin Lorenc. He namely announced to announced to sue the newspaper Opolska unless they delete all articles about him and Krolczyk.
As reminder, while his vice-rector Krolczyk embraces rascist papermill orks like Pimenov, the PiS-patriot Lorenc accused me and the whistleblower Marek Wronskiof being russian secret agents. His anger is understandable. Thing is, Lorenc just started with his own papermilling, thanks to the Opole professor Zhixiong Li, and then everything went tits-up because of us. See below, Li (who is of course never a Chinese agent) was editor of these two MDPI papers by Lorenc (with Chinese coauthors!), his editor colleague was a papermilling Florida man from russia, named Maxim Dulebenets, who recently retracted his own Iran-bought paper for papermill fraud.
Lorenc is an electrical engineer, but with the help of his Chinese friends he became an expert for rice agriculture and legal issues with pandemic lockdowns. But actually, Lorenc is a legal expert – see his lawsuit threats! In fact, he demands not just the removal of the articles, but a financial compensation, direct quote from Lorenc as now published by Opolska:
“For each subsequent article the amount will increase by 15 thousand zlotys“
Jakub Jasiczak, member of Krolczyk-led Council for Higher Education, Science and Innovation: “Unanswered questions about retracted papers remain, about where this sudden increase in the Opole University of Technology’s rankings comes from and what was the role in it scientists brought to university a few years ago.“
Witold Zembaczyński, local MP of Civic Coalition (KO): “Scaring independents media with lawsuits over publications proves that the [PiS] hydra is trying to defend itslef. Opole University of Technology wants to be a censor instead of explainign itself thoroughly.”
Lothar Kroll, Polish-born professor at the Technical University Chemnitz in Germany, who worked hard to establish a Fraunhofer Institute at Opole Polytechnic, which Lorenc then liquidated on orders of his PiS party: “The rector offered me a scam. He asked me to resign, but at the same time he said that if I wrote a concept for further research, he would tear up my resignation. I didn’t understand what he meant at all. Ultimately, I sent him this concept. He never addressed it. Finally, they found formal reasons to fire me.“
Arkadiusz Nowak, director of the Polish Academy of Sciences of the Botanical Garden: “Since he had retractions, i.e. articles withdrawn from publication, the public should find out the reason why the works of Prof. Krolczyk were deemed not to meet scientific standards. […] I expect to see how much pseudoscience and cunning there is in our environment. And also unforgiveble theft, which was visible in the example of what was happening in the National Center for Research and Development, managed by politicians. […] Universities financed by Polish taxpayers cannot be offended by this, and even less should they intimidate journalists.“
Il Consigliere
Guess what happened to the Sicilian cheater Salvatore Cuzzocrea after his entire publication oeuvre was exposed as falsified, six retractions (by Aneurus Inconstans’ count), and a dismissal as rector of University of Messina for embezzling money.
Cuzzocrea’s Magnificent Fall
“These unscrupulous charlatans in Messina should be fired on the spot tomorrow morning, forced to return twenty years of undeserved wages and sent to work the land” – Aneurus Inconstans
byAneurus
The Italian Newspaper Il Fatto Quotidianoreported on 31 July 2024 (Google-translated):
Cuzzocrea ended up at the center of two different judicial investigations to the Messina prosecutor’s office. The first for abuse of office concerns the alleged reimbursements collected as rector, the other instead is for forgery of the public official in competition with another 8 suspects of the university, regarding direct assignments and contracts above the Community threshold. Procurement for which the university led by Cuzzocrea had already been admonished by the ANAC for “serious non-compliances and irregularities”.
In Italy, you have to prove yourself a ruthless fraudster to qualify for a job in politics.
“The new role will start from Thursday, August 1, but on the website of the university it is not specified what will be the compensation, which remains “to be defined”, while only a “40-hour commitment” is mentioned, without clarifying if weekly, monthly or annual. “The minister appreciates the competence and knowledge of the issues related to the Universities of Salvatore Cuzzocrea”, they report to ilfattoquotidiano.it from the press office of Minister Bernini.”
Obituaries
One of most illustrious masters
We remain in Messina. Francesco Squadrito, the Sicilian cheater, is dead. Soon after his wife Dominica Altavilla died. Read about this couple, their University of Messina associates, and their excessively fake science here:
The Fraud Squad
Either a Muslim colleague or a retired technician did it. Or so these Sicilian professors insist.
byLeonid Schneider
An obituary was published in the local newspaper on 29 March 2024 (translated):
“Rector Giovanna Spatari expressed her condolences for the passing of Professor Francesco Squadrito . The University of Messina and the Messina Pharmacological School lose one of their most illustrious masters .”
Professor Squadrito, full professor of Pharmacology at the University of Messina and director of the Clinical Toxicology Unit of the “G. Martino”, passed away prematurely at the age of 65.
He has also held various important roles in city politics, among other things in the 2000s he was councilor for the Environment of the Genoese council at Sdi fraction, the coalition of Italian Democratic Socialists. In 2007 he was also health councilor of the same council, and among other things he dealt with the future of the former Margherita hospital. He was Councilor for Health and Environment of the Municipality from December 2006 to November 2007.
«Professor Squadrito – stated the rector Spatari – was a researcher of national and international fame, author of numerous scientific publications in the field of clinical and experimental pharmacology, in particular in the area of cardiovascular pharmacology».
All these papers were fraudulent. At best fraudulent, because there were also highly problematic clinical trials on children with a potentially toxic drug. Anyway, here is a recent retraction:
The retraction from 2 August 2024 mentioned Squadrito’s death:
“The Editor-in-Chief retracted this article because of concerns regarding a number of figures presented in this work. These concerns call into question the article’s overall scientific soundness. An investigation conducted after its publication discovered similarities in the six gels presented in Figure 1. The Editors-in-Chief therefore no longer have confidence in the integrity of the research presented in this article.
Giorgio Ivan Russo agrees to this retraction. Alessandra Bitto and Giuseppe Morgia disagree to this retraction. Letteria Minutoli, Herbert Marini, Natasha Irrera, Salvatore Arena, and Sebastiano Cimino have not replied to correspondence from the Publisher. The Publisher was unable to contact Mariagrazia Rinaldi and Gabriele Pizzino. Alessandra Bitto has also informed the Publisher that Domenica Altavilla and Francesco Squadrito have passed away.”
Here by the way is the original press release with condolences by the University of Messina:
“During his long teaching career he has trained generations of students, transmitting with dedication and passion his expertise in the field of Pharmacology.”
Don’t worry about Italian science, Alessandra Bitto is more than a worthy successor to her mentors Squadrito and Altavilla, read here:
“The University of Messina was, in short, a good business that appealed to many, including organized crime on both sides of the Strait of Messina.” – Aneurus Inconstans
byAneurus
I had the honour to communicate with Squadrito before. In May 2022, just days before his wife Altavilla died, he announced to sue me:
“Yousent thebelow mail on May 2nd2022 to more than 50 coauthors stating that I also experimented on children with a toxic substance [actually, the email was addressed to 50 recipients including trial’s PIs- LS].This is a false and serious allegation. It is not a problem of blots. This accusation has penal l implications. You cannot send statements of this kind to everyone. With this crazy allegationof yours you are accusing me unfairly and you have created serious moral and material damage for me that you must compensate. You have to pay for it. My attorney is suing you and will demand appropriate money compensation for all the damage you have done to me with this false allegation withoutproof. People you emailed will testify against you. I am looking forward to meet you in the court.
Regards
Francesco Squadrito“
Retraction Watchdogging
Editor-in-Chief has recused himself
Yet another retraction for the Temple University quack Domenico Pratico, who is definitely never guilty of anything untoward, as his university insists.
The Pratfalls of DomenicoPratico
Next time you wonder why mouse research does not translate to humans, think of Domenico Pratico work on Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases.
byLeonid Schneider
Pratico’s fake science has been exposed by the sleuths Mu Yang aka Dysdera arabisenen, Elisabeth Bik, or, like in this case, Kevin Patrick aka Cheshire aka Actinopolyspora biskrensis. I am showing only some of the findings for this massively forged study:
Now, the mega-retraction from 2 August 2024 (highlights mine):
“The Associate Editor and Publisher have retracted this article because it shows extensive overlap with articles that were previously published or simultaneously under consideration in other journals [1,2,3,4]. Additionally, concerns have been raised regarding a number of figures, specifically:
Figure 3B: two blots from the 5LO band appears to be identical to two blots in the p25 band of Figure 4D in [5].
Figure 3D: there appear to be splices in the bands for AT270 and PHF-1.
Figure 3F: the AT8/htau panel appears to partially overlap with the PHF-1/htau panel.
Figure 3F: the PHF-1/htau panel appears to partially overlap with the PHF-13/htau panel.
Figure 3F: the AT180/htau/zileuton panel appears to have been previously published as the AT180/htau panel of Figure 2E in [1].
Figure 3F: the HT7/htau-zileuton panel appears to have been published as the HT7 (Hippocampus)/12/15LO panel of Figure 3C in [6], which was under consideration within a similar time frame.
Figure 3F: the AT8/htau panel appears to have been previously published as the AT8/3xTg panel of Figure 3C in [7].
Figure 4A: the MC1 band appears to have a vertical splice mark.
Figure 4C: the HT7 band appears to have a vertical splice mark.
Figure 4E: the band for cdk5 appears to have a vertical splice mark.
Figure 4E: the blots for cdk5/htau appear to be identical to the blots for cdk5/htau-zileuton of Figure 4D in [5].
Figure 4E: the blots for cdk5/htau/zileuton appear to be identical to the blots for cks5/htau of Figure 4D in [5].
Figure 4E: the p35 band appears to be identical to the p25 band of Figure 4D in [5] (mirrored vertically).
Figure 4E: the p25 band appears to be identical to the p35 band of Figure 4D in [5] (mirrored vertically).
Figure 4E: the PP2A band appears to be identical to the Actin band of Figure 4D in [5] (mirrored horizontally).
Figure 4E, the Actin band appears to be identical to the PP2A band of Figure 4D in [5] (mirrored horizontally).
Figure 5A: the second blot in the PSD95 band appears different from the rest of the image.
Figure 5C: the MAP2/htau-zileuton appears to have been previously as the MAP2/htau panel of Figure 4C in [1].
Figure 5C: the panels for PSD95/WT and PSD95/htau-zileuton appear highly similar (mirrored).
Figure 5C: the panels for MAP2/WT and MAP2/WT-zileuton appear highly similar.
Figure 6A: the blots for WT-zileuton and htau-zileuton in the GFAP band appear highly similar (mirrored).
Figure 6A: the blots for WT and htau-zileuton in the CD45 band appear highly similar.
The Associate Editor and Publisher therefore no longer have confidence in the data reported in this the article.
The Editor-in-Chief has recused himself from involvement in this retraction due to a potential conflict of interest. Therefore, the decision was taken jointly by an appointed Associate Editor and the Publisher.
Phillip F. Giannopoulos has stated he was unaware of the submission and publication of this article.
Domenico Praticò agrees to this retraction, but disagrees with Phillip F. Giannopoulos’ statement on being unaware of the article submission. Phillip F. Giannopoulos has not explicitly stated whether he agrees to this retraction. The Publisher has not been able to obtain a current email address for Jian Chiu.”
The Pratfalls of DomenicoPratico
Next time you wonder why mouse research does not translate to humans, think of Domenico Pratico work on Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases.
byLeonid Schneider
There are some interesting aspects in that retraction notice.
Fist of all, Pratico is currently suing his former PhD student Phillip Giannopoulos, accusing him of having faked everything behind his back (read January 2024 Shorts):
“…Dr. Giannopoulos’ reckless behavior profoundly polluted several manuscripts prepared by Dr. Praticò’s lab, and thereby undermining Dr. Praticò’s scientific reputation. Dr. Praticò has suffered actual injury as a result of the defamatory statement including an impairment to his reputation and standing in the academic community, personal humiliation, and mental anguish and suffering.”
And specifically about this retracted paper, Pratico claims in his lawsuit:
“Dr. Giannopoulos’ made a false statement of fact when his attorney represented to Springer Nature Journal that Dr. Giannopoulos was unaware that he was named as an author of the Article and when he claimed that he did not consent to being in the authorship for the Article. Dr. Giannopoulos’ statement to Springer Nature that he did not consent to the publication of the Article is a statement of defamatory character, which blackened Dr. Praticò’s reputation, exposed him to public contempt, and injured his business or profession.”
And second, it is rather peculiar that the Editor-in-Chief Benedict Albensi “has recused himself from involvement in this retraction due to a potential conflict of interest.” The COI is Albensi’ own ethical failure as editor and scientist, visible on PubPeer and discussed here:
A whistleblower tried to report fraud in Domenico Pratico’s papers via proper channels, and hit a wall everywhere.
byLeonid Schneider
Some examples from Albensi’s own papers, flagged actually by Mu Yang:
In December 2022, the first author Aida Adlimoghaddam, now assistant professor at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, admitted a mistake and offered a replacement figure. Yet the Correction was only published in February 2024, where the authors discovered that also in Figure 2, “there was a problem with uploading the correct image in the resubmission“. We were also informed:
“Dr. Benedict Albensi is a scientific advisor for Mitrix Bio and the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Molecular Neurobiology, but was not involved in handling the manuscript peer review process.”
True Science is like good wine
Another Italian scholar suffered two retractions. This time, it is the University of Parma professor Saverio Bettuzzi, read about him and Italy being persecuted “in a selective or chauvinistic way” in November 2023 Shorts.
In his message to me from November 2023, Bettuzzi blamed his former lab member Alessandro Caccamo for faking data of otherwise totally reliable papers:
“Dr Caccamo did not want to spend too much time with the figures, and I gave him my trust, what he did was bad enough to convince me to fire him.My trust was misplaced and I too was a victim of it.“
Bettuzzi also introuced himself as “a serious and honest person” and educated me, in Italian:
“I took it upon myself to reproduce these results, several times, confirming them. […] I did not deem it appropriate to withdraw the scientific work. […]True Science is like good wine: it needs time to mature. It is up to all of us to defend it.”
Well, Bettuzzi’s science matured nicely. The Retraction was issued on 10 July 2024:
“This article[…] is being Editorially retracted from the Biochemical Journal following receipt of a notification from a reader, alerting the Editorial Office to multiple concerns surrounding the scientific validity of the results presented in this paper. Specifically:
Duplications of protein bands within Figure 2A Pan-cytokeratin panel with resizing
Duplications of protein bands within Figure 2A caspase-3 panel, Figure 3A PARP panel, Figure 4 p-FAK-Tyr397 panel, Figure 4 Protein loading panel, and Figure 5A Nuclear protein loading panel
Image segment duplications between immunofluorescence images in Figure 1
Additionally, the Editorial Office identified signs of manipulation in the background detail of the immunofluorescence images in Figure 1, duplication of protein bands within the Figure 4 PAR panel with stretching transformation, and duplications of protein bands within the Figure 5 Pan-cytokeratin panel.
The authors Maurizio Scaltriti and Massimo Mangiola wish to retract the article. No response was received from the authors Domenico D’Arca, Andrea Caporali, and Saverio Bettuzzi. Contact information for the authors Alessandro Caccamo, Francesca Scorcioni, and Serenella Astancolle could not be found. The Editorial Board and its Chair agree with the retraction.”
Andrea Caporali happens to be a mentee of the cheater couple Paolo Madeddu and Costanza Emanueli, all of them are based in UK. Read here:
Bristol Madness
“People should believe in themselves; to search the treasures that they have inside and use them to reinterpret the role.” – Paolo Madeddu,, Professor and Chair at University of Bristol.
byLeonid Schneider
In November 2023, the Vice-Rector for Research at the University of Parma, Daniele DelRio wrote to me about having “started a formal investigation after your allegations” and that “I’ll let you know about the outcomes of this action.” I never received any follow-up notifications. The second retracted paper is also by Bettuzzi and Caccamo, and it also matured into vinegar:
“The retraction has been agreed following allegations raised by third parties. Several lanes within the Western Blot images displayed in Figures 1 A, 2 A, 2B, and 7 were found to display highly similar patterns despite depicting protein extracts from samples of different origin/treatment. As the raw data could not be retrieved due to the significant time elapsed since publication, the concerns could not be addressed. In light of the significant number of concerns, the editors have lost trust in the overall accuracy of the data presented. The corresponding author S. Bettuzzi disagrees with the decision of retraction. Confirmation of retraction could not be obtained by the remaining co-authors.”
Data Othman Ghribi had fabricated
Yet another retraction for the University of North Dakota professor Othman Ghribi, who was originally exposed by his former mentee and now Alzheimer’s fraud sleuth Matthew Schrag (read November 2022 Shorts).
“The above article, published online on 13 November 2007 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editor-in-Chief, Michael E. Hasselmo, and Wiley Periodicals LLC. The retraction has been agreed upon following an investigation by the authors’ institution, the University of North Dakota, which determined that this article contains data that the corresponding author Othman Ghribi had fabricated. Matthew Schrag was unaware of Ghribi’s actions and not in any way involved, and agrees with this decision. Sunita Sharma, Holly Brown-Borg, and Othman Ghribi did not respond.”
“In fairness, I wasn’t asked to respond. I agree with the decision to retract. I was not aware of Ghribi’s actions and not in any way involved.”
Editor-in-Chief no longer has confidence
After five years, the Editor-in-Chief of the Springer journal lost confidence and finally decided to retract a very fraudulent paper. Its author is the Indian fraudster Selvaraj Miltonprabu, read here:
Milton Prabu’s outsourced artgallery
“now we have equipped with our own photo microscopy, we didn’t depend on the out sourcing fellows to take the photography our slides”. – Dr Milton Prabu.
bysmut.clyde
Here it is, flagged on PubPeer by “Lottia cassis” in 2019, initially for spliced western blots and a duplicated image. Then, more fraud was found:
Also, as Hoya camphorifolia noted: “The panels of Fig 11 also appear as Fig 14 of Thangapandiyan et al (2018)” by same authors but representing different experiments.
“The Editor-in-Chief and the publisher have retracted this article. Concerns have been raised regarding a number of figures, specifically:
Figure 6a: gels appear to show signs of crop marks and bands appear to be to be visible multiple times within the same blots, or between blots
Figure 7a: the gels appear to show signs of crop marks and bands appear to be visible multiple times within the same blots, or between blots
Figure 8a: panels c and d appears to show an area of overlap
Figure 9: panels a and c appear to be identical.
Figure 9: panels b and c appear to be identical, but turned 180 degrees
Figure 10: panels a and e appear to be identical, but turned 180 degrees
Figure 11: all four panels show unexpected repeated patterns
Figure 11: panels a and c appear to be similar, but mirrored
Figure 11 also appears to have been previously published as Figure 14 in (Shanmugam et al. 2018)
The Editor-in-Chief therefore no longer has confidence in the reliability of the results and conclusions of this article.
The Authors have not responded to any correspondence from the publisher about this retraction.”
The Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Science and Pollution Research is the retired French professor Philippe Garrigues, Read about him and his papermill-infested journal here:
Environmental Pseudoscience and PollutedResearch
“We are living in a faked world and there is a lot of un-verified avatars. “, Philippe Garrigues, EiC
bymagazinovalex
Science Breakthroughs
Curated, filtered trash-talk
PNAS editors got nervous that they haven’t been ridiculed for some time already, and this time it is not even a “contributed” paper. Also, we haven’t had Israeli Scientists(TM) jokes for some time.
So here we go, a fresh press release by Reichman University in Israel:
“A new study reveals that a person’s face tends to evolve to suit their name, demonstrating the profound impact of social expectations. The research showed that adults’ faces could be matched to their names with high accuracy, while children’s faces could not.
Machine learning also found significant similarities among adults with the same name. This effect, known as a self-fulfilling prophecy, suggests that social constructs can influence physical appearance over time.
Key Facts:
The study used both human participants and machine learning to confirm findings.
Adults’ faces evolve to match their names due to social expectations.
Children’s faces do not show the same name-based similarities as adults.”
Here is the PNAS study:
Yonat Zwebner , Moses Miller , Noa Grobgeld , Jacob Goldenberg , Ruth Mayo Can names shape facial appearance?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024) doi: 10.1073/pnas.2405334121
The lead authors Yonat Zwebner, assistant professor at Reichman University, and her former PHD advisor Ruth Mayo, professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, established all facts already in their 2017 study “We look like our names: The manifestation of name stereotypes in facial appearance.” From the associated 2017 press release by American Psychological Association (APA):
““We are familiar with such a process from other stereotypes, like ethnicity and gender where sometimes the stereotypical expectations of others affect who we become,” said Zwebner. “Prior research has shown there are cultural stereotypes attached to names, including how someone should look. For instance, people are more likely to imagine a person named Bob to have a rounder face than a person named Tim. We believe these stereotypes can, over time, affect people’s facial appearance.””
The new PNAS study is just a continuation of the same, or maybe it just reuses the same questionable data. Zwebner now also has a manuscript in preparation titled “We Look Like What We Like: Predicting Brand Followership from Profile Pictures” and “Would You Trust Me? The Social Impact of Face-Name Congruency”. I suspect there may be a study about pet owners looking like their pets in planning.
In any case, one cannot argue that Zwebner looks like a typical Yonat (i.e., a white Israeli woman) and Mayo also looks like a typical Ruth (i.e., a white Israeli woman).
In 2022, Zwebner gave Haaretz an interview which has since been deleted (archived here). She spoke about her lab studies on distrust, where people allegedly name the wrong diapers brand than the one they were shown, because they read an article about governmental corruption. Also, Zwebner lamented that the otherwise reliable phrenology of faces (trustworthy vs untrustworthy) doesn’t work anymore because people are suspicious of everyone these days.
Bah Humbug
Edinburgh psychologists announce in Nature Communications genes for being rich. A Christmas Carol.
byLeonid Schneider
The new PNAS paper was editorially handled by National Academy of Sciences member, former APA president, and Princeton University professor Susan Fiske, who also looks like a typical Susan (i.e., white American upper middle class woman). She is famous in psychology, because she viscerally hates all sleuths and whistleblowers who expose the fraud of her fellow bigwigs. In 2016, Fiske published this letter to address the issue of the so-called replication crisis once and for all (highlights mine):
“Our field has always encouraged – required, really – peer critiques. But the new media (e.g., blogs, twitter, Facebook posts) are encouraging uncurated, unfiltered trash-talk. In the most extreme examples, online vigilantes are attacking individuals, their research programs, and their careers. Self-appointed data police are volunteering critiques of such personal ferocity and relentless frequency that they resemble a denial-of-service attack that crashes a website by sheer volume of traffic.
Only what’s crashing are people. These unmoderated attacks create collateral damage to targets’ careers and well being, with no accountability for thebullies. Our colleagues at all career stages are leaving the field because of the sheer adversarial viciousness. I have heard from graduate students opting out of academia, assistant professors afraid to come up for tenure, mid-career people wondering how to protect their labs, and senior faculty retiring early, all because of methodological terrorism. I am not naming names because ad hominem smear tactics are already damaging our field. Instead, I am describing a dangerous minority trend that has an outsized impact and a chilling effect on scientific discourse. […]
The destructo-critics are ignoring ethical rules of conduct because they circumvent constructive peer review: They attack the person, not just the work; they attack publicly, without quality controls […} the fact is that these vigilante critiques are harming people. They are a far cry from peer-reviewed critiques, which serve science without destroying lives.”
The letter was made public by the online vigilantes, self-appointed data police and methodological terroristsData Colada, who later on exposed the massive fraud by Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely. And got sued by Gino, who in turn was found guilty of massive fraud and about to be fired by Harvard.
Stuck with Hommel, or Bad Choices inLeiden
“Scientific articles often have more than one author, with different contributions and responsibilities. It cannot be the case that in all events of demonstrated malpractice in publications, where one or more authors have been shown to have breached the scientific integrity, all other authors are therefore suspect without any further indication.” Leiden University defends Bernhard…
byLeonid Schneider
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Introduction: My name is Nathanael Baumbach, I am a fantastic, nice, victorious, brave, healthy, cute, glorious person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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