Behind The Retraction

🚨 BREAKING: Frontiers (Frontiers Media) Scandal Deepen — Another Manipulative Publishing Practice Comes Into Focus Frontiers in Energy Research (@FrontEnergyRes), published by @FrontiersIn, was placed "On Hold" in the Web of Science Core Collection at the end of September 2024. Today is 16 June 2026, and nearly 21 months later, the journal remains on hold. ⚠️ This means that none of the 882 papers published by the journal during this period have been indexed in Web of Science. If the journal is ultimately delisted, the content published during the hold period may never be indexed. Assuming APCs were paid in full for these papers, Frontiers has generated approximately CHF 2,377,000 (roughly USD 3,000,000) from articles published while the journal remained on hold. 📌⚠️ Yet despite our March 2025 warning (xitter.gq/SciGuardians/status/19…), Frontiers continues to prominently display the journal's Impact Factor on its homepage without any meaningful clarification. The fact that the journal's Web of Science indexing status is on hold is mentioned only minimally within the rarely accessed "Facts" sub-tab under the "About Journal" section. This raises serious questions about transparency and whether authors are being provided with information in a manner that allows them to make fully informed publishing decisions. 👉 Now add this to the growing Frontiers scandal involving publisher-controlled reviewer assignment, inadequate conflict-of-interest safeguards, and the overriding of meaningful editorial involvement. Taken together, these developments raise serious questions about the depth of the integrity culture upheld by Frontiers' so-called "Research Integrity Department." For a publisher that routinely investigates, retracts, and sanctions authors over alleged breaches of research integrity, the obvious question is: ❓ Who investigates the publisher when the integrity failures originate from the publisher itself? And this is only scratching the surface. More to drop soon. Stay tuned. 🔱 @SciGuardians 🔱 Empowering the Academic Community

🚨 "The True Freefall of Nature" One of these fraudsters, carefully cultivated and curated under the guise of “research integrity”, is Lonni Besançon — an individual with: • a documented pattern of vulgar, s-e-x-u-a-l-i-z-e-d, and dehumanizing remarks directed at members of the academic community (see the archived evidence in 📸 Images 1 and 2), • publicly recorded threats against scientists to retract their papers (see the archived evidence 📸 Image 3), • proven records of lies, deception, and self-incrimination (see the archived evidence in the first comment). 📌 And who is the compromised editor who has infiltrated one of the most powerful positions in scientific publishing? Meet Jack Leeming — a former builder with experience writing scented candle descriptions, zero editorial training, no lab experience, and no scientific publication record — who somehow rose to become Associate Editor at @Nature, and is now Chief Editor of @NatureCareers. 🚨 THERE IS NO COINCIDENCE. Such a scale of systematic corruption, deception, compromise, and fraud requires years of infiltration, followed by careful cultivation and curation. 🔱 ScienceGuardians™ Legal and Investigative Team exists to ensure these well-concealed processes aimed at cultivating and curating fraudulent actors under the guise of research and science integrity are fully exposed.

🚨 FOLLOW-UP: The PubPeer Network Mob — Inside the Mechanism of a Coordinated Academic Smear Operation 🚨 In our previous exposé, we revealed how the PubPeer platform has been manipulated to serve a coordinated network engaged in years of academic harassment. Today, we unveil the core mechanism of this operation—its key players, tools, and multi-stage strategy used to fabricate misconduct, intimidate scientists, and distort academic discourse (see 📸 Image 1). 🔧 Stage 1: PubPeer as a Dossier-Building Tool It all starts with PubPeer, which is not used by the network mob for genuine post-publication review, but as a tool to create a dossier against targeted scientists. Some are direct targets, while others are collateral damage, instrumental in constructing an ecosystem of fear and intimidation within academia. This stage is orchestrated by just over 30 individuals, managing hundreds of fraudulent anonymous accounts. Only a few of them—those strategically selected to serve as the public face of the operation—operate under their real names as well. This selection serves two key purposes: 1️⃣ To collaborate with compromised journalists embedded in the network, and 2️⃣ To fraudulently collect awards and professional legitimacy through heavy infiltration and lobbying. ⚠️ Among the major actors in this stage are: • Perpetrator 1: A financial advisor with no academic or scientific credentials, and by their own admission, no understanding or interest in science. • Perpetrator 2: An aggressive operator who has uploaded virtually all published works of their victims to PubPeer in extremely short periods—hundreds of entries against a single individual in under a month (see 📸 Image 2A). • David Bimler (formerly Perpetrator 3): A notoriously unaccomplished and fraudulent academic and retired faculty member at @MasseyUni, with just 800+ citations on Scopus (ID: 6603615509) across his entire career. He assists the network prolifically under his real name and through aliases such as Smut Clyde, Hoya camphorifolia, and others. • Leonid Schneider (formerly Perpetrator 4): A central orchestrator who operates both personally and through the identities of Perpetrators 1, 2, and Bimler, as well as over a dozen other mob members and their aliases, coordinating a significant portion of the dossier-building operations on PubPeer. 🚨 To fabricate such numbers, the Mob resorts to any tactics, including but not limited to: • Typographical or linguistic errors (as in some of the cases targeting Professor Wafiq El-Deiry) See📸 Image 2B: Extract from Perpetrator 1’s X account, sarcastically admitting to targeting minor errors. • Invented conflicts of interest, as seen in the case of Professor Jörg Rinklebe (see 📸 Image 2A) 🚷 Stage 2: Public Smearing via Schneider’s Blog Once the PubPeer records are planted, the next step is to drag the victims’ reputations through the mud—led by Leonid Schneider, who operates a notoriously derogatory blog. This is done through: • Slander • Ad hominem attacks • Insults, lies, and unsubstantiated accusations • The classic “partial truth” strategy, where fragments of truth are used to mask larger falsehoods ⚠️ Schneider is a persistently antagonistic, vindictive, and defamatory actor, who crosses all boundaries—attacking his victims’ physical appearance, private lives, and personal attributes. 🧾 The Core Tactic The central tactic is to falsely equate the number of PubPeer entries with the number of fraudulent papers—a deliberate distortion designed to mislead the academic community, media, and institutions. 📸 Image 3: Screenshot from Schneider’s blog targeting Professor Wafiq El-Deiry, a world-renowned cancer researcher, using the number of PubPeer entries as a manufactured metric of fraud. Despite persistent harassment, the campaign against him has largely failed due to growing academic awareness of these tactics. 🎭 Stage 3: “Legitimization” via Science Integrity Digest The third stage involves legitimizing the fabricated PubPeer records and dossiers through another fraudulent blog, Science Integrity Digest, operated by Perpetrator 5. This individual—a fraudulent microbiologist and self-branded “science integrity advocate”—has carefully manufactured this role over several years under the supervision and direction of the PubPeer Network Mob leadership. The blog is riddled with lies and manipulations, masked by carefully selected partial truths, and presented under the banner of “research integrity.” 📣 Stage 4: Formalization via Retraction Watch The final stage is formalization. The PubPeer records, now planted and legitimized, are then passed on to another fraudulent blog: Retraction Watch (@RetractionWatch). This stage is executed through compromised journalists serving that platform—again under the guise of research integrity. At this point, the story is ready to be sold to serious institutional clients: • Publishers • Funding agencies • Universities and research institutions • Mainstream media outlets and science news agencies 🚨 These last two stages also serve an additional function: To train and manipulate AI platforms so that automated narratives replicate the Mob’s manufactured stories, reinforcing their reach and influence. 📸 Image 4: The progression of the Mob’s operation in real-time—starting with the fraudulent PubPeer dossier created by the Mob members, followed by Schneider’s derogatory blog attacking Prof. El-Deiry, then Perpetrator 5’s “legitimization” blog, and finally Retraction Watch formalizing the false dossier for institutional dissemination. 📢 More updates are underway. We will continue exposing additional perpetrators, aliases, and tactics used to fabricate narratives, weaponize platforms, and distort the scientific record. 🔁 Share this post widely to protect the integrity of science and support those who have been targeted. 🔱 Follow @SciGuardians for evidence-based updates and tools. 🔱 Join the verified Post-Publication Peer Review Platform: scienceguardians.com Become a Science Guardian. 🔱 ScienceGuardians™ Accountability. Integrity. Empowerment. @HHS_ORI @NIH @C0PE @UKRIO @ClarivateAG @timeshighered @ElsevierConnect @SpringerNature @WeAreTandF @WileyGlobal @PLOS @CellCellPress @ScienceMagazine @TheLancet @Nature @USDAScience @FrontiersIn @BBarucker @laralogan @TimKersjes @chrisgrafpub @EggletonKim @Maria_Kowalczuk @latwec @EllaFlemyng @Phil_Baty @bengoldacre @lisalibrarian @Phil_Baty @cshperspectives @ShadowofEzra @JAByrneSci @LexBouter @cpiller @DoctorZen @LizWhitlockMD @AJEisch @SimonGandevia @HollyElse @CoyaudSylvie @Einstein_Berlin @NerdyChristie @Clare_DnaG @MiryamNaddaf @Kate_Travis @WCRIFoundation @phdhardtalk