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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 6h

(6/6) Mu Yang also reviewed my concerns and asked Wiley to re-examine. Valentin Rodionov (@arbitraryeffect.bsky.social) is a chemist and understands the underlying science. He has raised various additional issues in the results of the paper. Wiley seems to have ignore both so far. Unbelievable...

Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 6h

(5/x) I received another email by Wiley today, ignoring the additional concern I raised, stating that they're outside the scope (???). I was also informed that the underlying data is not available for me to review. The lack of data transparency in this matter is the underlying root of all this.

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 6h

(4/x) I cannot see any logical explanation for the anomalies present. I send a long reply trying to clarify concerns and seek more detailed clarifications. I also asked for the underlying data to take a look at it myself. I found an additional concern w/ the paper as well:

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 6h

(3/x) Almost all papers were flagged by Mu Yang (@mumumouse2.bsky.social) and me this year. Multiple articles were reported to Wiley, 50+ are currently being investigated by Elsevier's ethics team. Wiley's team looked at the article in (1) and send me this email which left me very confused:

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 6h

(2/x) A little background: One of the authors, M. Monier, is a papermiller working in Egypt with ~70 articles on PubPeer. In almost all cases XRD patterns or spectra are manipulated (often extremely obvious, such as in the case above). The evidence for misconduct is overwhelming.

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 6h

(1/x) Some thoughts on a recent case: I raised concerns about an article published in 2010 w/ Wiley's IACR team in August 2025. I considered the problems to be severe and clearly indicative of manipulated data (see image below): Sarhan et al. 2010 (DOI: 10.1002/app.32522) pubpeer.com/publications...

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 7d

Spirulina has been Un-Unleashed: MDPI retracted a paper (I am always surprised when that happens - this is the 2nd one out of 100+ I sent them so far). Nisa et al. 2024 (DOI: 10.3390/foods13213512)
Their fancy title didn't safe them after all.

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 9d

I posted about one of the featured papers (which introduced me to these fraudsters) here before: bsky.app/profile/acad... & @elisabethbik.bsky.social just spotted even more duplicated areas in these TEM images: pubpeer.com/publications...

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 9d

I wrote a little piece for ForBetterScience.com: forbetterscience.com/2025/09/29/f... about a duo of Egyptian papermillers in Europe.
(I unfortunately cannot claim credit for the great title image - that one has to go to Leonid himself!)

Fady & Marian, or How to share a Photoshop license

“If you need a graphics designer with basic photo shop skills to tune up your data, they might be the right team for the job!” – Fabian Wittmers

forbetterscience.com

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 10d

It's a whole thing. We call them "corner clones" when flagging them. There is a lot of examples out there, this is one of them: pubpeer.com/publications...

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 11d

A question that I get all the time. I often think the same to myself. We will not be able to understand their motivation & yet should still retract these papers rigorously.
For example this one: Rofeal et al. 2023 (DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2022.11.080) pubpeer.com/publications...

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 11d

It is not a dumb question. I often see manipulated images where it is not clear to me why the authors did it. I have come to the realization that I never get an explanation that makes sense, so I have stopped trying to understand why people cheat like this. The consequences should be the same.

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 11d

@kaveh1000.bsky.social illustrated the overlap here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPnJ...

CFA067967C98350D1628FF4D989F9A#1

YouTube video by River Valley Technologies

www.youtube.com

Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 11d

The authors state that they accidentally cloned sections when adjusting the contrast of the image. Sounds wildly unrealistic to me; I have never seen this happen on "accident": Yu et al. 2025 (DOI: 10.1007/s00203-025-04453-6) pubpeer.com/publications... #ImageForensics #ResearchIntegrity

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 12d

Alalem et al. 2023 (DOI: 10.1186/s12985-023-02146-4) published some rather interesting-looking flow cytometry: pubpeer.com/publications...
Clearly not an accident as I have found a total of 15 papers from the lab with poorly faked flow data. Didn't stop any journal from publish this fraud though...

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 14d

And yet your PubPeer record is always on the up!

Wafik S. El-Deiry, MD, PhD, FACP @weldeiry.bsky.social · 15d

Academic life is definitely a roller coaster with many ups and downs.

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 14d

Wouldn't you say that systematic scientific misconduct (let's say, through neglect or actual fraud) going back decades should also be fully prosecuted? I am also unable to understand the politics here. It's a scientist reading a paper and seeing potential issues. Are we not allowed to talk about it?

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 15d

PLOS ONE also retracted a paper by the same team today: Almagrami et al. 2014 (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0096004) is a complete clow-show:
pubpeer.com/publications...
This is already the 4th retraction I caused for the team around papermiller Mahmood A Abdulla since screening his papers in Dec 2024.

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Reposted by Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei

Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 16d

A CRO has been scamming academic and industry labs in the US with fraudulent data that has been published in Nature and other high impact journals. Leonid has written a great piece on my findings: forbetterscience.com/2025/09/22/i...

In Bad Company

“Authors thank the members of NeuroDigitech for their contribution to data generation, and all the animals that contributed to these studies.”

forbetterscience.com

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 15d

A retraction in MDPI?! Didn't think I would ever be involved in one of those, but this fake study was so bad even they couldn't defend it: pubpeer.com/publications... (others found more stuff too, see PubPeer) #ResearchIntegrity

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 18d

Scientists in Springer's Journal of Sol-Gel Science and Technology are bending space and time again: Santhosi et al. 2025 (DOI: 10.1007/s10971-025-06926-y), published just 3 weeks ago. An editor and 2 reviewers certainly took a good look at this paper! pubpeer.com/publications...

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 19d

People like this who systematically fake dozens of breast cancer papers over more than a decade deserve a special place in hell. Andò should be ashamed of himself. What a despicable person. Let's hope other editors grow a spine and retract this dudes bullshit.

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 19d

Complete bogus Correction: Oxford University Press doing everything in their power not to retract a fake breast cancer paper by Italian frauds Marcello Maggiolini, Sebastiano Andò: Lanzino et al. 2010 (DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkq278). "Corrected" without correcting any figure. pubpeer.com/publications...

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 20d

Another Retraction: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archive of Pharmacology has notoriously struggled with papermill submissions for years. Ommati et al. 2021 (DOI: 10.1007/s00210-021-02177-0) is a good example. The overlap with other papers leaves little doubt about intent: pubpeer.com/publications...

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Fabian Wittmers - PubPeer: Archasia Belfragei @academic-integrity.bsky.social · 20d

I think author replies are not moderated before publication. I have seen a few instances where they were moderated afterwards because of insults. But yes, it's not an equal standard, especially anonymous users are held to quite a high standard (which I do not necessarily disagree with).

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