Academia is BROKEN! Nobel-Prize Winner with Fake Results (Medicine) 

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having a scam artist as a sponsor for a video about another scam artist is top notch irony lmao

I attempted a PhD in cancer biology twice. I quit bith times, partially because I couldn’t get reproducible data from my experiments. Experiements I based on papers like thise mentioned here that have been proven fraudulent. Sigh

Pete, love most of your videos, but please, be careful with sponsors like Masterworks. The fact that these kind of videos are sponsored by them could diminish your content, to say the least.

This case reveals yet another tip of the iceberg in the broken peer review system that rewards the quantity of publications over quality.

"I take credit but not responsibility." "I share in the immediate rewards but refuse any later punishment." Authority without responsibility - the plague of our times.

taking Masterworks as sponsor is a L on this channel

You know masterworks is timeshare scheme? Bc you don't truly own the pieces and it's impossible to sell and you have to pay management fees

Paper-milling is endemic in academia. Researchers want money -> get a grant -> need papers -> generate papers -> need more papers -> rewrite existing papers -> need more papers -> come up with a sexy solution, hope they never read past the abstract -> grant money! -> money for me -> go back to beginning.

56 results for Semenza on pubpeer. Many of these papers were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which allows members to 'contribute' papers which receive preferential treatment in terms of review. This is probably why Semenza is the only western name on these papers since his primary role was likely to get the paper published by this less stringent route.

How many patient treatment protocols have been affected by fraudulent papers.

as someone who has worked on this side of academia it’s MUCH worse than people can imagine … we don’t even want to get into the topic of the statistical validity

Thanks so much for these videos, I’m just in my 1st year in Uni and watching these videos have really helped me “touch grass” and take off my rose tinted glasses about academia. Please continue to enlighten me and others with your knowledge and experience, it really helps

Indeed, I was trained in statistics and experimental design and anymore I can't hardly TOLERATE reading ANY life science article. Probably 80 plus percent either show gross flaws in design/analysis or else report SUSPICIOUS data.

What strikes me most about the fraud cases I know is how blatantly obvious the fraud actually was. Knowing it would be easy to disguise fraud just a little bit, and knowing this would be sufficient to go undetected in today's world lets me estimate that the actual amount of fraudulent behavior in science may be gigantic

I think you need to put these people's names in your titles and/or descriptions. When people search their names, your videos should show up exposing them.

Masterworks has distributed $45 million. How much of that was actual profit to the investors? Meanwhile Mark Lynn CEO pays $30 million for a New York condo.

As former scientist, i always hated that mass production of papers. Some colleagues were usally not deeply interested in their scientific topic, climbing the ladder as fast as possible was more important to them. This (your topic) is what emerges from it. What i most hate about it this is, that the dark shadow of these scandals fall upon all the other (deeply honest) scientists, who try hard to advance science. All the black sheeps should experience fast and hard consequences! Cheating in science is a no-go!

Thanks for the video. This is more disturbing than the others because it goes all the way to the Nobel Prize. Small point: It is "Johns Hopkins," John has an "s" on it.

Retraction is not good enough. There needs to be a permanent record of why specifically they were retracted (not generalities but “data was falsified” and how). Authors (names inserted)retracted their peer reviewed paper after caught falsifying the data.

Wow! The consistent pattern of fraud is so disturbing...plus the conflict of interest as a deputy editor... Thanks so much for sharing this.

These people should be in jail. They are committing fraud, which wastes millions of dollars. In any other industry they would not be treated so favorably.

Linda Buck the winner of the 2004 nobel prize, and dicoverer of the family of odorant receptor genes together with Richard Axel, had a posdoc that invented a bunch of results, nature, cell and science level, they were all retracted.

Pete, I would recommend a book called "Medical Nihilism" by Jacob Stegenga. Have you heard of it? I read it a few years ago and I loved it. Opened my eyes to some problems in medical research, especially the influence of non-scientific values and how they penetrate deep within research methodology.

How hard is it to just not manipulate data? I don't understand why they are even doing it. You can publish a paper, even if you didn't get the result you were expecting or hoping for. That's the whole point of science.

Being a author on a paper you did not contribute to is almost as disgusting as him doing the fraud himself 🤮

When they let in the normal people to buy an asset class, that's when you know that they are trying offload their investments onto the common people. Do not invest in anything which you don't know how to value or at least why it is valuable.

Thank you for these reveals. The world of academia is difficult to keep a finger on. You're doing marvelous work.

The main issue on all these cases of fraud isn`t just "academia pressure" or "peer review failures"; it is the moral of the researchers. It doesn't matter if "academia makes pressure on you to find results otherwise you don't get any sponsors" or "peer reviews is a broken system" - if you don't want to fraud or lie, you simply won't bend yourself down to the system. World may let you on your knees on many ways, but morally, it's always up to you. These doctors ain't no children that couldn't do the right thing "because they're being pressured to do so" like a kid pressured by his teacher. It's always a choice.

I believe scientific audit should be conducted routinely even and perhaps especially of well-established respected researchers/authors. What's bad is not that it happens, but when it continues so long due to stellar reputation. No one should be untouchable. It hurts everyone including legitimate sound research.

I lost confidence in the Nobel Prize when they started handing them out to celebrity politicians

Thank you for a series of great videos, Pete.

The ethics of Master Works (the sponsor of this video) could be discussed as well. :) Great video! But I have some reservations about the sponsor.

Everyone involved should be held accountable. High profile academics like Nobel Prize winners should be held to a *higher* standard than a random researcher.

Appreciate that you are pulling this information together and presenting it. I believe that I speak for many when I observe that conduct of this nature would go unnoticed were it not for your efforts. It certainly would for me. Shining a light on this fraud is the start to a cure.

The academic peer reviewed system operates on a voluntary basis and a honour system, meaning people who participate in it are assume to have integrity and honest.

Research fraud should result in a prison sentence especially when public resources are squandered on it.

This channel is so under rated! I hope many people see your content!

About the edited western-blot. It is, actually, verry difficult to see if you are not looking for it. The responsibility should be of the people who committed the fraud... usually when we are reading or reviewing a paper with this kind of experiment, you are looking for the height of each band and the strength of the color. The shape of each colum is easily missed. I dont think it is fair to expect the reviewers or co-author to know that it was manipulated if they aren't directly involved in the act itself.

I just want to say i love the channel. You made things i never gave a sh*t about interesting af. I can honestly say you have made me a smarter person and for that i would like to say thank you. PLEASE DONT STOP THE KNOWLEDGE. Also ty for sharing your college education i could never afford. I mean it your great.

Thanks for the video. I spent months writing my thesis for a bachelor in applied psychology, I heard 30% of all papers are a problem across all departments, such a shame, but also an opening to rediscover that 30% again with new knowledge, and science will be the better for all these, the more the better as reforms will be needed and the time spent on my 9000-word thesis will not go to vain and the countless others also who did their best being true and honest according to ethics.

This reminds me of the stem cells fraud in SK in the BobbyBroccoli documentary. It had an allegedly hapless Westerner signing off on research he apparently knew little about.

Were any of Semenza’s retracted papers cited in his Nobel?

Thank you Pete for talking about this subject. I think acknowledging the problem is the first step in fixing it. Once the problem has greater recognition increased steps to prevent it can be implemented. As a science PhD student myself, what stands out to me is that those long lists of authors who likely include PhD students, Post-Doctoral researchers, maybe some undergraduates. If any of those students don't get their name on a published paper it could mean their career is over. It may mean they are not allowed to graduate. It may mean they can't get hired even if they do graduate. That seems to be a major aspect of this false data phenomenon. There should be a counterbalance to that where things like the counterfeit data that you showed is met with loss of research funding. The guy you talked about seems to be a major enabler; that's not who should be on scientific publication boards.

What scares me most about these copy-paste incidents is that it'd be incredibly easy to cover their tracks if they were willing to do so. These people took no effort in hiding it, but it'd be incredibly easy to edit the image so it isn't that obvious that the result was copy-pasted. There might be more cases of fake results such as these around, but considerably harder to track due to the person taking some effort into hiding it.

In the business world, we say there's an apparent conflict of interest when the administration makes decisions that appear to served their individual interests over the broader interests of the various stakeholders. In occurrence, one might argue that there's apparent conflict of interest to be the head editor of an academic journal and publishing within the journal, especially considering the numbers of academic retracted. At the very least there's a deontological case on the basis of undermining the public's trust that can be put forth to the professional order. Criminal charges might be difficult to prove, but it should be fairly easy on the basis of the demonstrate a case for negligence on the proof by balance of probability against the journal and the heads of the editorial team in a civil trial. At the very least, I'd expect the journal to be required to pay substantial penalities considering the nature of the multiples papers under investigation. Ideally, the scientific community should petition for hefty penalities in order to deter future frauds. Furthermore, the legislator should establish public audiences to establish a forum to debate on the credibility and legitimity crisis in the academic world.

So thank you. I feel this calls for an independent review club. Copy Pasta is the lowest form of data fraud.

Really fascinating, and disheartening, stuff! I hope you'll continue to do these videos!

Reading a book on UPF at the moment. The author states that, out of every 10 research papers, 7 are flawed, 2 provide useful information, and 1 is actively fraudulent...

>complains about fraudsters >advertises masterworks Cmon

I think there should be an investigation about this to determine what happened and how.

a person who got the most credit bears the most of responsibility

(6:51) "the last author on the paper bears the responsibility for everything that goes into that paper" (paraphrased). This doesn't sound right to me. If we're talking about the _first_ author then yes, but the last one is often the one who's the most senior, oversaw the project, or even the one that had the _least_ to contribute to the paper - depending on the field there isn't always someone assigned to this role. None of these mean they're 100% responsible for the paper, though. I think this point could have been made a bit better than just "last name = responsible for everything".

As a future biologist, I also study those things and i'm ashamed to this... science should not work like that

Judgments and penalties for being named on a fraudulent paper should be done based on number of incidents. Anyone could have the misfortune of being part of a team where someone on it committed the fraud. Maybe that could have happened a couple of times in a career (assuming that you didn’t learn to be more watchful after the first incident), but if it keeps happening, there should be serious consequences on a sliding scale. Being part of TEN papers isn’t an accident and his Nobel prize should be taken from him and he should lose his positions; even prison time for fraud shouldn’t be off the table as a consequence. Strong consequences are needed to reduce the temptation for others.

I love this channel ! Thanks for bringing all this to light!

We need more people like you bringing this information. Thanks for taking the time to do so :) I'm a huge fan of Elizabeth Bik's work in discovering fraud, but I think making this news available on RU-vid in video format is a huge niche that hasn't been filled. Subscribed for any future videos you make on these topics :) Just a sidenote though, I would potentially reconsider your choice of Sponsor. If you plan on making videos on fraud... definitely stick to the safer, less sketchy sponsors.

Trust the science!! Then along comes Pete Judo.

Science has been overwhelmed by politics, power and money. It just not science anymore - was it ever? I think it was, but as political operators became more aware of the the power of subsituting e.g. "The Bible says" with "Scientists Say", along with apocalyptic doom forecasts, well...... the temptation was just too much.

Thanks Pete. This is full of pain in so many ways. What do I make of all this? Hmm, no system is perfect as it's always changing. With new forms of information processing, comes new forms of processing logic. I am starting to notice a trend or pattern regarding this generation of "intellectuals", "vanguards", "philosphers", "influencers", "podcasters" such as people like you and Peter Zehain. With short versions of modern day pamphlets containing harsh truths to the masses. I was beginning to think we were in for another decade of Rogenism.

Would you make a video explaining how research is reviewed before submissions to publisher? And how peer review is currently working.

There must be a price to be paid, or there is no reason for these people to not cheat.

Is there a place to report fraud that you are aware of? All the fraud I see in the news is about medicine or psychology.

Dr. Vinay Prasad silently nodding in the corner.

I'm a biochemistry student and doing sds-page and/or blot is easy and standar procedure. It usually takes me half a day to a couple days of work depending on how much purification you need before hand.

Western blot is one of the worst techniques that we have but unfortunately essential. Not only is it easy to be fabricated, the nature of the experiment actually makes it hard to present because of all the noises and inconsistency of the technique. It's also hard to provide a statistical analysis of the results. One can see a difference between two bands when another person would call that BS because of that. There is software to measure the band intensity but from my experience it's complete BS. Unfortunately that is one of the cheapest and easiest method to implement when it comes to protein quantification. I think this put even more incentive to some researcher to fabricate the data (not that anyone should do it at anytime). As for the animal study, from what I know, the US has one of the loosest control over animal use in research in the developed world (this is hearsay please don't sue me for libel). Same as Hong Kong (this is my personal experience). In the UK, we have a license for the establishment holding the animal facility, license for each project and license for the personnel. The animal welfare officers and vets are also more attentive and more caring to the animals than what I know those in Hong Kong and US would be. The animals in the picture you shown were most definitely way pass the humane endpoint for ANY cancer related experiment. The vet/staff at the animal facility should know. I think they are accomplices (intended or not) as well. If the animal has weight lost of over 10% usually they would be culled by one of the methods listed in the guideline issued by the Home Office. For solid tumour, there is also a maximum size of the tumour and animal must be culled immediately when the endpoint is reached. Speaking of waste of money, they are too many non-reproducible data out there. Most of them are not the results of data fabrication but all the uncontrollable factor of the reagents and cell lines we use. Also the negative results were never published so people waste time to repeat the experiments done in like ten other different labs without knowing. Effort has been made to minimise that, including a database with negative results (it's better than the journal of negative results imo). Hope this could minimise money wasted and more importantly plastic wasted (if you have never worked in a molecular biology lab you wouldn't believe how much plastic is used a day)

The best way to stop this is to make the last author liable for the return of the funding. Funders should quite simply sue for the return of the money that paid for the study. If this were the case and I was the last author I make sure I was thoroughly familiar with the contents and if I doubted it would not put my name to it.

I would understand it if someone tries to forge or ‘adjust’ the data but saving time by copying and taking images from other papers. That’s truly crazy!

Great Channel idea. These Journals are filled with studies that no one has been able to replicate the same results and these studies are being used to advise gov policy

It's really sad to see a video of yours sponsored by masterworks, which has been identified as a possible scam

Hey man, don’t spoil the party! That’s how this 1% thing works~gotta get those grants! 😂 (In all seriousness, thanks to the two women doing these investigations)

Last author: all the glory, none of the responsibility.

Pete what's some under rated & top books to read in increasing Self belief ?

The LTCM - scandal was the canary in the coal mine for me. Two Nobel-prize winners leading the way to financial ruin.

Every author is responsible for ALL of the content of every paper. That's the way it works. Now if someone is an author on several retracted papers, and in each case they contributed data for a certain type of experiment that they specialize in (let's say proteomics for example) AND that data is not suspicious AND the fraudulent data was contributed by someone else AND that person is not the senior author, I think most people would cut them a break, even if technically they are responsible for all the content. But that is certainly not the case here, as by convention (as well as the letter of the law), the senior author (i.e. last one listed) is directly accountable for any data manipulation or fraud.

Thank you for your work.

I find this infuriating because I was screwed out of lead authorships by my postdoctoral supervisor and my graduate advisor (jailbird). The system is corrupt.

So much for 'This channel won't become Science Scandals,' eh?

As long as Science has no moral or ethical foundations this will continue to happen.

The worst consequence of sci fraud is the many projects that have been denied access to funding on the basis that their 'lines' of research didn't quite fit the mainstream ideas on the problem at hand. The reviewers who decide on funding are fully on the bandwagon of active research, very wary of alternative views that might represent a threat to them. Funding is mostly - perhaps rightly so - a competition for limited resources, usually leading to 'a few get it all' solutions that favor the most cited, accepted lines pursued by a select few.

At the risk of drawing fire I opine, having worked in industry with overseas teams, that being asian or Chinese is quite likely a factor and anyone putting their names on such papers must be extremely diligent. I have found such teams to be very driven to provide whatever result they perceive a client wants (at least superficially) by any means necessary (but also to commodify and sell any IP that they happen across). I don't know if it's got better in the last couple of decades but it was strong in the culture back then. It's not that they can't do good work, but more about what they think good work means to you.

This is why I snicker when people whine "Trust the science!" because in reality you're actually trusting the scienTISTS. And even then, science is completely limited to the subjective human experience.

How could these papers, with obvious flaws in the data pass peer review? In my opinion, the 'peer reviewers' should be disqualified. Maybe a vigorous overhaul of the review system is needed.

When Obama was given a Nobel prize for peace after being in office for three months was when i lost all faith in the nobel system. Then the final nail was driven in by not giving one to Trump who signed three, THREE peace treaties with arab nations.

5:30 Well, I don't know if you were aware of it before my comment on one of your previous videos, but now I can see you definitely know about retraction watch now. Scary place, isn't it?

Keep up the good work, Pete. This is unbelievable. This kind of fraud is rampant today.

Aside from the dishonesty of the author(s) doing fraud, the true problem is the peer review process. There should have less scientific papers, but each one should be verified in their entirety instead of blindly trusting the data presented.

Great video but please explain how his work detracts from cancer research. I missed that in your video.

You would think that peer review is supposed to catch exactly this kind of thing, but apparently not

4:40 Aysha Akhtar has a paper called The Flaws and Human Harms of Animal Experimentation that speaks to how much this kind of thing sets science back.

The referees and journal editors should have caught this. No one has had confidence in the Nobel committees for decades, so no loss of reputation there.

Woukd you agree? Nassim Taleb wrote, for many academics (including those involved in peer review), there is no "skin in the game". If they are wrong or lazy or corrupt in the peer review process, there are no negative consequences. No repercussions. The peer reviewers remain anonymous and not accountable. Agree or disagree?

Not surprising. Recently, the paper upon which many doctors based their prescription of statins to lower cholesterol to prevent heart attacks was shown to have misled with and even falsified the data. When examined carefully, the data actually showed there was no benefits from statins for most people. See LDL-C does not cause cardiovascular disease: a comprehensive review of the current literature, Uffe Ravnskov, et al. Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, Volume 11, 2018 - Issue 10.

What is very surprising is the referee not saying nothing.... I had referee remarks and questions because of captions not precise enough, graphic color not be contrasted enough etc.. and here 2 pictures identical and the paper went through... it is very suspicious..

The persons responsible for errors in the scientific work are the lead author, the editorial staff of the journal, and, in this case, the Nobel committee, none of whom did their jobs (did not come even close). All the other authors are in very suspicious circumstances.

If someone can reach to the point of getting a nobel prize with a history of cheating, fraud and academic dishonesty, what is the point in it for the rest of us? This "publish or perish" attitude that favors '"eye catching" results above solid science is truly depressing.

I said this in a previous video and I'll say it again, the "publish or perish" approach is killing academia and therefore, research fields. At some point all the low hanging fruits get picked, and what's left after are hard to solve problems that take years of hard work just to make a marginal improvement on. Yet academia only values the ones that can pump out consistent, novel publications. That's now how science progresses. This is why i left academia. I was also in cancer research and I got the feeling that it was more about getting the articles out over the actual results a few years in. Still makes me sad to think about

Science has lost its integrity and objectivity, as has politics, journalism and academia.

In this case, they need a Prisoner's Dilemma way to get at least one or more of the co-authors on each questionable paper to roll over on the guilty party or parties in each case and do to them what they're doing to the "lady" at Harvard Business School. THEN make ALL of them take a polygraph (not a perfect tool, but better than most laymen believe).

If I were at Johns Hopkins and was told to investigate this I’d be really interested in understanding exactly what his role was in all these papers. Is he rubber stamping papers from around the world without being personally involved in the research? Does he have some sort of supervisory relationship with these people? Is her personally photoshopping the pictures? The institutional response I’d recommend depends a lot on what exactly he did here. Pointing out that he is responsible for anything he signs his name to is just the first step.