An English university has issued a finding of research misconduct against a former graduate student and is requesting 10 retractions of his published work, which they say bears the marks of being papermilled.
The former student, Sameer Quazi, was enrolled at the University of Manchester in 2021 in the school’s “PGCert” program in clinical bioinformatics, according to his LinkedIn profile. The certificate program sits between undergraduate and masters training. Quazi’s profile states he is currently enrolled in a master’s program in biomedical sciences at Anglia Ruskin University, in Cambridge.
According to a January 30 statement from the university:
In September 2023 a concern was raised about the conduct of Sameer Quazi, Founder and CEO of GenLab Biosolutions Private Limited, India, regarding publication ethics.
The University of Manchester completed an investigation and reached a finding of research misconduct against Mr Quazi, who is no longer enrolled as a student at the University.
The investigation was conducted in accordance with the University’s Code of Practice for Investigating Concerns about the Conduct of Research. The Panel of Investigation noted no research in the papers was completed at The University of Manchester and found a large number of instances of other types of research misconduct in relation to Mr Quazi’s sole- and co-authored papers. The Panel of Investigation was of the view that Mr Quazi was running a paper mill. Publishers have been contacted to request retraction of ten papers.
Quazi has had at least two papers retracted, both published and pulled in 2023 from Frontiers journals. The notice on one of those, “Application of biosensors in cancers, an overview,” which appeared in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, reads:
Following publication, concerns were raised regarding the contribution of the author of this article. Our investigation, conducted in accordance with Frontiers policies, confirmed a serious breach of our authorship policies and of publication ethics; the article is therefore retracted.
Quazi was the single author on that article and objected to the retraction, according to the notice. He was the second author on the other retracted paper, “New insights into molecular signalling pathways and current advancements in prostate cancer diagnostics and therapeutics,” from Frontiers in Oncology. The retraction notice is identical.
The university does not identify the papers involved in the case. A search of Pubmed turned up 10 articles by Quazi published between 2021 and 2022, on topics ranging from the gut microbiome to AI in medicine. Quazi was the sole author on eight of those articles.
An April 2024 PubPeer comment on one his papers notes likely “tortured phrases” and reference problems.
The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment. We emailed Quazi for comment but have not heard back.
Last year, Quazi opined on LinkedIn about university ranking systems, many of which rely heavily on citations – an easily gamed metric that is often the focus of paper mills:
While I appreciate the intention to challenge the current rankings system, boycotting may not be the most effective solution. It could be more beneficial to work towards improving the current ranking criteria or creating an alternative system that focuses on quality of teaching and research. Simply boycotting may not lead to the desired change.
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