It was a paper that caught the attention — and bemusement — of Twitter:
And now it is no more, along with four more articles from the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences in what was billed as a special issue on Global Dermatology.
Here’s the whole title: “A black hole at the center of earth plays the role of the biggest system of telecommunication for connecting DNAs, dark DNAs and molecules of water on 4+N- dimensional manifold.” (Be warned that the link takes you to a login.)
You may fairly wonder what a terrestrial black hole and skin diseases have in common. The abstract, which we present for posterity, sheds no, ahem, light on the question:
Recently, some scientists from NASA have claimed that there may be a black hole like structure at the centre of the earth. We show that the existence of life on the earth may be a reason that this black hole like object is a black brane that has been formed from biological materials like DNA. Size of this DNA black brane is 109 times longer than the size of the earth’s core and compacted interior it. By compacting this long object, a curved space-time emerges, and some properties of black holes emerge. This structure is the main cause of the emergence of the large temperature of the core, magnetic field around the earth and gravitational field for moving around the sun. Also, this structure produces some waves which act like topoisomerase in biology and read the information on DNAs. However, on the four-dimensional manifold, DNAs are contracted at least four times around various axis’s and waves of earth couldn’t read their information. While, by adding extra dimensions on 4 +n-dimensional manifold, the separation distance between particles increases and all of the information could be recovered by waves. For this reason, each DNA has two parts which one can be seen on the four-dimensional universe, and another one has existed in extra dimensions, and only it’s e_ects is observed. This dark part of DNA called as a dark DNA in an extra dimension. These dark DNAs not only exchange information with DNAs but also are connected with some of the molecules of water and helps them to store information and have memory. Thus, the earth is the biggest system of telecommunication which connects DNAs, dark DNAs and molecules of water.
We think this is the “scientist(s) from NASA” but it’s really difficult to tell.
The announcement, from editor-in-chief Mirko Spiroski, reads:
Editor-in-Chief has retracted five articles from the special issue Vol. 7 No. 18 (2019): Sep 30 (Global Dermatology.
An internal investigation has raised sufficient evidence that they are not directly connected with the special issue Global Dermatology and contain inconsistent results. Several co-authors requested to be excluded from the author list. As such, we retract these articles from the literature and by guidelines and best editorial practices from the Committee on Publication Ethics. We apologize to our audience about this unfortunate situation [https://www.id-press.eu/mjms/article/view/5492].
The other four papers are:
- DNA Waves and Their Applications in Biology – Massimo Fioranelli et al. – Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences (2019)
- Recovery of Brain in Chick Embryos by Growing Second Heart and Brain – Massimo Fioranelli et al. – Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences (2019)
- A Mathematical Model for the Signal of Death and Emergence of Mind Out of Brain in Izhikevich Neuron Model – Massimo Fioranelli et al. – Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences (2019)
- New System Delivering Microwaves Energy for Inducing Subcutaneous Fat Reduction: In – Vivo Histological and Ultrastructural Evidence – Nicola Zerbinati et al., Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences (2019)
Massimo Fioranelli is a common author of all five papers. Retraction Watch readers may recall his name from another bizarre paper that was recently retracted. That one blamed COVID-19 on 5G technology. Fioranelli has not responded to a request for comment we sent earlier this week.
Another author, Uwe Wollina, caught the attention of Der Spiegel, who pointed out that he has published nearly 2,500 papers, with much of the work, the newspaper said, pseudoscientific nonsense.
Hat tip: Nikola Stikov
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https://www.id-press.eu/mjms/announcement/view/53
“Special issue “Global Dermatologyâ€, 18th issue of the seventh volume of Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences (OAMJMS) was published online (September 30, 2019). A total number of 39 papers are published. We thank Prof. Dr Uwe Wollina (Department of Dermatology and Allergology, Städtisches Klinikum Dresden, Dresden, Germany) and Prof. Dr Torello Lotti (University of Rome G. Marconi, Rome, Italia) for the cooperation. We expect the rest of the special issues to be completed until the end of the 2019 year.”
Lotti has a couple of dozen papers on PubPeer too: https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Torello+Lotti
Hard to see how the journal could be unaware of the shaky content before it was published.
Sounds like the journal still stands behind “Formation of Neural Circuits in an Expanded Version of Darwin’s Theory: Effects of DNAs in Extra Dimensions and within the Earth’s Core on Neural Networks” and “In Ovo Sexing of Chicken Eggs by Virus Spectroscopy”. They must have been sufficiently dermatological.
It was a paper that caught the attention — and bemusement — of Twitter:
Previous coverage of the paper may have contributed to its high profile, e.g. the loving attention lavished upon it by Elisabeth Bik:
https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2020/07/29/a-dermatology-journal-issue-that-might-make-your-skin-crawl/
Several co-authors requested to be excluded from the author list.
Is there any indication of any members of the co-authorship cabal objecting to these dubious additions to their CVs before people started pointing and laughing?
It also conceivable that they were added as co-authors without ever being asked. The case is not unheard of, and it’s not as if that would be likely to have been caught by the quality control of a dermatology journal that lets through papers on black hole 😉
The most surprising is that this journal is available through PubMed.
Where is the journal quality control?
One of the most efficient tools to improve science and increase reproducibility, and in the long end improve public health, would be to limit the volume of journals indexed in PubMed.
They are, sort of. Except the journals that are indexed are part of the PubMed subset, Medline. When searching Pubmed, check to see if the journal is “Indexed for Medline”. If it is, there’s been some degree of quality control (of the journal, not the individual article) by NLM staff. We’re definitely seeing an increase in dubious journals being added to Pubmed, so its something to be on the look out for.
Are we witnessing the attempted destruction of journals by salting them with poor quality (absurd even) papers?
We are witnessing a Wild West of scientific publishing where no one take responsibility.
I lost faith in the scientific publishers a long time ago, and my hope was that NLM would take the fight.
I have always respected the hard working underpaid employees at NLM who provide us with PubMed, but where is the leadership?
NLM/NIH has the power to really implement strong measures to improve the scientific literature, but doesn’t use it.
They even provide the journal indexing for free for the high profit destructive publishers.
Responsibility is not needed as long as you know who publishes most of the garbage results. I can look quickly at a paper and know if I should read it or not, largely from where the paper was created. Just ignore these papers, and the journals that publish them.
The references section to the paper contains an interesting mix of papers from all fields of physics. Ref. 19 is equally bizarre but less obvious because it uses more complicated language. Is anyone able to write Elsevier about https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437119302237 ?
You don’t even need to know physics to write that one off. Anyone with some knowledge of avian DNA would be able to tell you that birds don’t have X- or Y-chromosomes.
I’m not contradicting that paper is a load of gibberish, but unless I am understanding their discussion completely incorrectly, they actually do not say that birds have X and Y chromosomes, but rather mention they have Z and W chromosomes.
You’re right, I was triggered by the first images of chromosomes and the grammatical errors around it and skipped a part of the paper there.
If these articles are peer-reviewed it makes me wonder how such an aberration could be accepted. It is something wrong with the all process and this issue must be corrected. It is unaccepted in the scientific world and causes harm to those who have genuine scientific articles accepted in the same journal since nobody will reference the article due to poor peer review process linked with the journal.
The editors of this Special “Global Dermatology” issue were also the authors, and it is unlikely that peer review took place.
Which again makes me think that papers co-authored by an editor or someone on the editorial board should disclose this in the COI section.
Hides the face, lies the snake
In the sun, in my disgrace.
Black hole sun, wont you come…wash away the fraud…
Another contribution to the high Twitter profile of the work of Sepehri, Lotti and other members of the coauthorship cabal is Sylvie Coyaud’s coverage (in Italian) at Oca Sapiens:
https://ocasapiens-dweb.blogautore.repubblica.it/tag/torello-lotti/
I can claim some priority for my own attempts to publicise Sepehri’s discoveries:
http://eusa-riddled.blogspot.com/2017/07/adrift-just-off-islets-of-langerhans.html
My view…
In the Universe
There is No space anywhere , everywhere is pressure of space on physics or Gravity.
Where is space exist they call it blackhole.
Black hole is not pulling
Its pressure means trying to be equal
In way of trying everything is moving
In way of trying physical has a time exist.
In way of trying into the level of pressure time is different with different level
With low pressure time will slow
With speed of phyics, pressure of space decrease or low
So time will slow.
Doesnt mean there is time slow , there are pressure of space is low so our cells will not get tried or end fast like on earth.
We are living with pressure of space on earth.
We think food , water or anything is the reason we are alive no
They are just broost,
they are just holding aliveness
They are just renew the cells to again hold to the pressure.
The truth is the equal or ending point exist on center point of every physics.
Sun is shine because of pressure of space
Trying to be equal.
When sun blast or something…, the pressure of space will end or equal on the center point of sun.
There is everything is one counting is more.
Excellent! I suggest you add some references and submit this to the Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences.
Gibberish
May papers like this, together with their authors & reviewers disappear into the black hole of oblivion…
Blame Deleuze
Deluded not Deleuze. I don’t think postmodernist psychoanalysis, or psychobabble has anything to do with dermatology. I put it down to careerism; pure and simple.