Peer Review Fail – Science Integrity Digest

A Dermatology journal issue that might make your skin crawl

A group of authors has found a way to crank up the number of papers on their resumes. The complete “Global Dermatology” September 30, 2019 issue of the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences is filled with papers from the same group of authors, headed by Torello Lotti and Massimo Fioranelli, both from the University of G. Marconi in Rome, Italy.

Some of these papers contain photos of patients without consent, others contain duplicated images, and some papers are full of extraordinary claims without any evidence. Just a bunch of pretty diagrams.

Worst paper of 2020? 5G and Coronavirus induction

This paper made my jaw drop:

5G Technology and induction of coronavirus in skin cells – M Fioranelli et al. – J Biol Regul Homeost Agents 2020 Jul 16;34(4). doi: 10.23812/20-269-E-4 [archived – PDF]

The paper suggests that 5G waves (the latest cell phone technology) can spontaneously generate Coronaviruses in skin cells. Yet, there is nothing in this article that proves this extraordinary claim. It is absolute nonsense.

Combining two hot topics into one title, this article is surely asking for some attention. Attention it will get. Because it is one of the worst scientific papers I have seen this year.

Animal ethics misconduct: mice with very large tumors

In the past few years I have found some examples of papers showing photos of mice or rats with very large tumors. Some of these tumors appear to go far beyond what animal ethics guidelines consider to be acceptable.

This post contains images that might be disturbing to some viewers. So, please proceed with caution.

COVID-19, small RNAs, and conflicts of interest

Recently a paper published in Nucleic Acid Therapeutics, a Mary Liebert publication not to be confused with the more glamorous Nucleic Acid Research journal, was brought to my attention. It described the potential use of small RNAs as a therapeutic against SARS-CoV-2.

Alas, it is most memorable because of the alarmingly short time-to-acceptance, lack of references, and the omission of several conflicts of interest.

Thoughts on the Gautret et al. paper about Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin treatment of COVID-19 infections

There has been a lot of excitement – and even a presidential tweet about a recent paper from the lab of Didier Raoult, an infectious disease specialist in Marseille, France. But although this study might offer a glimmer of hope, there are some serious problems with the paper too.

A study on Oncotarget papers

In 2016, with coauthors Arturo Casadevall and Ferric Fang, I published a study on 20,000 biomedical papers with photographic images, in which we found an average of 4% to contain inappropriately duplicated images.

Not surprisingly, we found that percentage to vary per journal. Some of the 40 journals we investigated had much higher percentages of image duplicates than others.

Mega-corrections and weak editors

In the past months I have been going through my spreadsheet with over 2,000 papers with image or other problems. Many of these papers were reported by me in 2014 and 2015 to the editors of the journals in which they were published. Now, around 5 years later, it is time to see what happened with my reports.

In this post, I want to show you an example of a paper that I reported in 2014, and that was corrected about a year later.

In my opinion, the Editors of the journal made a huge mistake here. This should have been a retraction.

Photoshop as a management modality

On Twitter, @DrVanDamme pointed me to a paper in published in July 2019 in the International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, a journal of the International Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (IAOMS).

Three diets, three papers, one retraction, and lots of concerns

Note: this post is not an allegation of misconduct. I do not have any strong feelings about low- or high-carb diets.

This post tells the tale of three paper. Paper #1 was retracted, republished as paper #2, and republished a second time as paper #3. Let’s take a look at what happened. Based on an original Twitter thread on Twitter and on ThreadReaderApp.

Surfing the water-DNA waves

A post about another “peer reviewed” paper published by World Scientific publishers (not included in any predatory publisher list that I could find). Based on this Twitter thread.

This paper is written by the same first author on the pregnancy/virus model from my previous post, a cardiology doctor from Rome. According to his website he “graduated with honors in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and is now publishing under the affiliation of the Guglielmo Marconi University in Rome.

The paper was published in the International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics – which seem to have a consistent problem with the quality of their peer review.

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