The ghost of the publication

Imagine that you are a successful scientist, work at Boston, at the Dana-Faber Institute, study adipokins-special proteins that are formed in adipose tissue and regulate the exchange of carbohydrates and fats, participate in inflammatory reactions and, in connection with this, may matter for the treatment of metabolic and diabetes. The direction is new, so there are few competitors in it, but there seems to be prospects, especially since at one time you organized a small company for the development of drugs specifically to correct metabolic disorders.

Time goes on, experimental data accumulates, and you understand that it is time to publish. But as an experienced researcher, you understand that first you need to run into this case at conferences. Prepare a report and perform with it at several specialized events. Then make the latest adjustments, are going with thoughts and begin to prepare the material for the output.

What will you do in the first place? Of course, look for publications on the topic. And then suddenly the search engine gives you an article by Greek scientists, where you know familiar not only letters and words, but also materials, methods, and results. All this is painfully reminiscent of a report made by you at conferences. However, as an honest person, you think that some other research group worked in the same direction and turned out to be a little faster and more successful than you. Naturally, you are driven by the desire to find out who are those lucky. And then the most interesting begins. You cannot find any of the five authors of the article. Neither on the University’s website, nor in Pabmed. They simply do not exist.

Sounds like nonsense? Meanwhile, this is an absolutely real story that happened with the cellular biologist Bruce Spiegelman, and the ill -fated article appeared in a completely respectable Elsevir magazine Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (BBRC) . When Spiegelman turned to the edition of the publication, he was waiting for another surprise: only one of the authors had the only contact e-mail, and it was located on the Mail.com public domain. And, characteristic, it was not possible to contact this author. The University of Thessaly, in which the authors supposedly worked, spread their hands in the answer to the official request: there are no such scientists at the university and never was.

The BBRC editor emphasized that he had no doubt about the authenticity of the article, the material was written flawlessly, and its authors are clearly not newcomers in the scientific world, they are familiar with all the nuances of the design of publications. Theoretically, the editorial board noted, the editorial office could alert the post office at a free service, but many scientists are acting now, the policy of some universities regarding the mailboxes of their employees cannot be called adequate.

Now, the article has a WithDrawn status in Science Direct, but it is difficult to say how it ends, the ends were not able to find the ends. At least for now. That is, this is how a group of ninja scientists suddenly arises from the air out of the blue that publish data that is in a strange way very much resembling the data of another scientist, all this is printed without question at all in the poor publication, but no one can explain how and why it all happened.

But the largest mystery is the motives of the stealth greens (or masking under the Greeks). What kind of profit to them? Priority? So no one gives ghosts to the Nobel Prize. So far, the only plausible version is the desire of ill -wishers (sorry for the tautology) to just spoil the life of a more successful colleague. Moreover, in addition to scientific successes, he also has the already mentioned personal candle factory in the form of Ember Therapeutics. And you say the "District".

1. Mystery Over Obesity 'Fraud' - Nature 501, 470471 (26 September 2013) DOI: 10.1038/501470A

2. Vezyraki A. et al. Identification of Meteorin and Metrnl as Two Novel Pro-Differentiativeadipokines: Possible Roles in Controling Adipogenesis and Insulin Sensitivity- Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (13 July 2013) DOI: 10.1016/J.BBRC 2013.07.008

Alexey Vodovozov,
Medical journalist,
Scientific editor of the magazines "ABC" and "Russian Pharmacies"