Neel

@MicrobiomDigest Corrigendum for figure/data duplicate is the most funniest thing. *Everyone knows that it wasn't a mistake*

Instead of investigating properly, the journal issued a *corrigendum* 😱 "The authors regret that Figure 3D were mistakenly uploaded - corrections do not affect the conclusion." The original figure was simply replaced with a completely different set of images😭 #ThisImageIsFine

*How *not* to handle image manipulation*. Editors, please do not address this level of photoshopping with a correction. In 2020, I flagged Figure 3D of this 2017 BBRC paper. Multiple regions appeared reused within or across panels. pubpeer.com/publications/1… #ImageForensics

@SmutClyde The retraction notice does not accurately reflect what happened. Instead, it is a bit self-congratulatory for the EiC, who discovered a single duplication in Figure 3C but did not find the dozens of duplications found earlier in 2020 in Figure 3D sufficient reason to retract.

@fake_journals @SciGuardians @unibern @MicrobiomDigest You've always been the diplomatic one! One needs to spine to fight the frauds which you don't have

Can a university organise an honorary doctorate in three weeks? A claim on social media, by @SciGuardians, suggests that the @unibern awarded an honorary doctorate to @MicrobiomDigest in December 2025 as a reaction to a social media post on 17 November. Here is a link to the post: buff.ly/yxcb5tI. See thread 6/7. Before going any further, two things are important to say. 1) I am not commenting on the issues between Sci Guardians and Elisabeth Bik. It appears to be a complex situation and not an area where I claim any expertise. 2) I am not questioning the decision of the University of Bern to award the honorary doctorate. That decision belongs entirely to the university. What interests me is something else. ________________________________________ How universities normally award honorary degrees In my experience of working within universities, honorary doctorates are rarely organised quickly. They typically involve a structured process such as: ⚫️ A nomination ⚫️ Supporting documentation and justification ⚫️ Consideration by a faculty or honorary degrees committee ⚫️ Approval through senior academic governance structures ⚫️ Final sign-off by institutional leadership In practice, this usually takes months, and sometimes longer. ________________________________________ The timeline question The claim circulating online implies the following sequence of events: ⚫️ 17 November 2025: social media revelations ⚫️ 6 December 2025: honorary doctorate awarded as a reaction to the social media post That is less than three weeks. For anyone familiar with university governance processes, this immediately raises a practical question. Could an honorary doctorate realistically be proposed, approved, and organised within that timeframe? ________________________________________ Another relevant detail The ceremony in Bern did not involve a single honorary doctorate. Five individuals received honorary doctorates at the same event. That strongly suggests these awards were part of a planned institutional ceremony, rather than a decision made at very short notice. ________________________________________ A simple point about evidence Social media claims can spread very quickly. But when those claims involve universities and formal academic processes, it is worth asking a basic question: Does the claim match the facts, and is there evidence to support it? If the honorary doctorate was indeed awarded as a reaction to events in mid-November, then evidence would need to show that the nomination, approval and ceremony were organised in under three weeks. Without such evidence, the more plausible explanation may simply be that the decision had been made long before the social media discussion. ________________________________________ So here is the question. For those who have served on university committees or governance bodies: Have you ever seen an honorary doctorate proposed, approved and awarded in less than three weeks, particularly in response to events on social media?

@Spottingthespot @hkust @ElsevierConnect @NaturePortfolio @Nature_NPJ Never, journals earn of scamsters like this. Just a shame on @NaturePortfolio

The #papermill #fraud and corrupt editor Daniel C.W. Tsang @hkust got kicked out of multiple @ElsevierConnect journals so now he became EIC for the @NaturePortfolio journal npj materials sustainability. Seriously, when will journals screen their editors (in chief)??? @Nature_NPJ

@mumumouse2 Wondering what kind of response will the authors with

I guess we need some special optic lens to see this properly. pubpeer.com/publications/6….

3. The HR Illusion Situation: You think Human Resources is a neutral third party there to mediate and hear your side of the story. You want to vent to them. System: Treat HR exactly like the company's legal defense team. Do not vent. Do not show emotion. Keep all communication strictly professional and documented. Why it works: HR's primary job is to minimize company liability and execute the manager's decision legally. Protect yourself first.

@manishagarwala @milesmintIN Check Rule 15(5) Table 4 Sl. no 3

@milesmintIN Checked. There is nothing at IT website that indicates that meal vouchers are allowed in new tax regime. There are no clear indications

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@Pluxee_india Why do some companies don't allow the meal coupon benefit for tax exemption under new tax regime?

@Spottingthespot Publishers won't wake up, because the survive on this money.

No surprise here! Fake papers will recycle 'ethics statements' they find somewhere. Happens a lot! Publishers need to wake up.

One of the biggest scams Indian telcos have pulled off is to convince you you're in 5g mobile internet, when it works in 3g speeds. If you ever experience 5G abroad, you'll instantly realise how poor Indian telecos are.

@Narayani07 Can Indian recruiters look beyond CTC & Notice period?

Career gaps don’t scare recruiters; arrogance does. You can explain gaps but not attitude.

@fake_journals @EmeraldGlobal No

Is this the correct way to do a corrigendum? I was tagged in a (LinkedIn) post (buff.ly/7FdohBx) about a paper (published in Kybernetes, which is published by @EmeraldGlobal) that had used text from previous papers and a corrigendum had been issued, which said: === "It has been brought to Emerald’s attention that the article by Chingiz Hajiyev, Ali Okatan (2010), “Innovation approach to detect the faults in multidimensional dynamic systems”, Kybernetes, Vol. 39 No. 1, pp. 127-139 contains material taken from previously published work: ⚫️ Hajiyev,Ch.M. (2000),“Approach to fault detection inKalman filter based on spectral norm of innovation matrix”, Proceedings of the International Conference System Identification and Control Problems, Moscow, 26-28 September, pp. 1077-1085; and ⚫️ Hajiyev, C. and Caliskan, F. (2003), Fault Diagnosis and Reconfiguration in Flight Control Systems, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. These passages were included without reference to the previous work(s). The authors apologise for this oversight." === I would make these comments about this corrigendum: ⭕ We don't know (at least I can't find) when this corrigendum was issued. Given that this is a 2010 paper was it a few months after the paper was published or was it only recently. It would be useful to know when the Corrigendum was published. ⭕ The corrigendum says that the article "contains material taken from previously published work". But it does tell us what passages were plagiarised and how much has been plagiarised. ⭕ The two papers that are mentioned in the corrigendum are not listed in the references, which I would have thought would have been the sensible thing to do - not least of all, it would have meant that where the citations appear in the article would indicate which text had been reused. The references would also be in the metadata, be included in citation indexes and it would help the authors h-indexes. ⭕ If you attend any course at university about how to avoid plagiarism, there are various things you are told. Two of the most important (at least in my view) are i) cite your sources and ii) if you reuse a lot of text, which seems to be the case here, then you should include it in quotes. It would have been useful to have updated the paper so that it was clear what text had been reused from a previous paper. Overall, I though that the corrigendum could have been much more informative. I also feel that the body of the article should have been updated so that the readers know which text had been reused. In a later post, I’ll look at this article a little more, as I am limited for space (at least one some of the social media channels I post on).

@Spottingthespot @NaturePortfolio @SciReports I like to believe that good will always win.

@supercritic @NaturePortfolio @SciReports Learning to catch them or learning to become a good fraud? hahaha Catching them will only become more difficult as the idiots are being eliminated and the new ones are smarter/learn from the idiots that got caught. And AI etc won't help either as it improves the frauds' work

And there it is, another retraction for #papermill #fraud Shafaqat Ali! This time in @NaturePortfolio, @SciReports! This idiot should get easily >50 retractions given he only published papers mill nonsense

@Spottingthespot @NaturePortfolio @SciReports I am still learning

@supercritic @NaturePortfolio @SciReports Most of those you catch are the idiots. The ones that are good at it, you don't catch them.

I process resignations for a living. The ones that shock management the most? The quiet, high-performing employees. Not the complainers. The ones who smiled, said nothing, and applied elsewhere. Silence is the loudest resignation letter.

Salary : ₹9 CR Income Tax : ₹4 CR Business : ₹20 crore Tax : ₹80L Political party revenue: ₹7,000 crore Income Tax: 00 BCCI revenue : ₹12,000 crore Income Tax : 00 Tax Terrorism is only applicable for Middle Class ... show more

@she_by_choice @critiquesahu 60/90 days notice is joke, this joke is supported by the Indian Laws as well. Corporates are favored over individuals.

@supercritic @critiquesahu Almost all companies have 90 days notice period, so its hard to stay employed without ignoring this red flag...

when their own company's np is 90 days but expects the candidate to join in 30 days

@Lipstick_Logic How does one even get a first offer with 90 days of notice period? Your guide is not practical at all.

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@Philosopar 😋 try this on desi company & desi HRs

If a job description says “Immediate joiner preferred” Apply anyway. That line is pressure, not rule. Good candidates bend timelines. Average ones obey them.