Month: October 2021

Concerns about Marseille’s IHUMI/AMU papers – Part 3

This is Part 3 of a series describing papers from the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée-Infection (IHUMI or IHU) and Aix-Marseille Université (AMU) — institutions in Marseille, France — with potential problems.

In Part 1, I listed papers with image concerns. In Part 2, I focused on a set of papers describing many different research projects on specimens collected from homeless people — but all run under the same IRB approval number.

In this post, we’ll take a look at IHU/AMU papers describing samples obtained from people in African countries. Many of them lack wording on ethical approval by the local authorities, and all lack authors from these countries. This type of research might fall under the definition of neo-colonial science.

A paper on a bacterium isolated from a stool sample from a Pygmy woman named after the senior author. Amazingly fast peer review too. Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2052297516301536
Continue reading “Concerns about Marseille’s IHUMI/AMU papers – Part 3”

Blast in the Past: Image concerns in paper about comet that might have destroyed Tall el-Hammam

Tall el-Hammam was a Bronze-Age city in current Jordan that is a site of archaeological interest. It is believed by some to be the biblical city of Sodom. According to the Bible, Sodom and Gomorrah were cities full of sinners, which were destroyed by “sulfur and fire” sent by God.

A paper published last week in Scientific Reports now claims that Tall el-Hammam was destroyed by a “cosmic airburst”, perhaps by the impact of a meteorite or comet. The article provides evidence of melted pottery and plaster, shocked quartz, and diamond-like carbon, all suggesting the city was exposed to a sudden high-temperature event.

The paper got a lot of media attention. However, several images presented in the paper appear to contain repetitive elements, suggestive of cloning.

Continue reading “Blast in the Past: Image concerns in paper about comet that might have destroyed Tall el-Hammam”