Well-known scientists have been exposed to scandals and have been "confessed gods" for a paper

Recently, Canadian botanist Steven Newmaster fell from the altar, which may be the biggest irony in the scientific world in recent times
.

In 2013, when he exposed fraud in the herbal dietary supplement industry in a paper, Newmaster became an authority on the verification of food and supplement ingredients almost overnight
.

Manufacturers need his certification to prove the authenticity of their products, and several companies have hired him as a scientific advisor

Ironically, eight academics in the field, including his student (now a Stanford postdoc), pointed out that the Newmaster paper itself was a hoax
.

In a recent "Science" investigation, it was found that, in addition to misconduct in papers, Newmaster's speeches, teachings, biographies and other academic writings are obviously fabricated, manipulated, and plagiarized data.
He often exaggerates and falsifies his own.
achievement
.

Steven Newmaster Source: University of Guelph official website

A paper that reshuffles the industry

In a 2013 paper in BMC Medicine, Newmaster published an analysis of 44 herbal dietary supplement products using "DNA barcoding (a system that uses small, unique fragments of genetic material to identify species)" and found that most Products do not contain advertised ingredients and contain ingredients such as fillers, potentially toxic contaminants, etc.

that are harmful to humans

In his paper, he wrote, "We found that the label ingredient Hypericum perforatum was replaced by senna in the actual product
.

Senna is an FDA-approved over-the-counter herbal laxative that causes chronic diarrhea, Adverse reactions such as liver damage, abdominal pain, epidermal rupture and blistering should not be taken for a long time

　　Not only have they identified the problem, but Newmaster and co-authors have already come up with a solution for the industry, "We suggest that the herbal industry should voluntarily embrace DNA barcoding to give companies a competitive advantage so they can advertise that they are producing authentic, high-quality products.

," they wrote in the paper
.

　　Once the paper was published, it attracted a lot of media attention
.

In an interview with the media, Newmaster said, "These findings make me very angry.
I spent a lot of money to buy products that I trusted, but there are no ingredients in the products.

　　The paper also drew international attention and caused panic in the herbal dietary supplement industry, which hired Newmaster as a scientific advisor, quickly began using his methods to verify the ingredients of their products, and paid him millions to obtain Certification
.

　　Criticisms of the paper followed, however, and came from colleagues at Newmaster
.

Two University of Guelph scientists, Evgeny Zakharov and Natalia Ivanova, challenged at a meeting, arguing that DNA barcoding cannot identify ingredients in herbal products with complete reliability

　　Later, Jonathan Newman, then dean of the school's School of Life Sciences, warned the two scientists in his office to avoid making similar comments
.

They asked the dean, "Are you sure you're supporting the right thing?" The dean responded, "You're not the one who brought me a million dollars

　　Formed 4 companies with multi-million dollar economic benefits

　　In this 2013 paper, Newmaster et al.
declared that "there are no competing interests"
.

　　But in 2012, before the paper was published, Newmaster and others at the University of Guelph founded Biological ID Technologies, a company that uses DNA barcoding to provide ingredient purity certification for food and herbal products
.

　　In 2013, about a week after the paper was submitted, they formed a second company called Tru-ID to take on the business initiated by Biological ID Technologies
.

(Newmaster later said that Tru-ID collapsed in 2020 due to economic hardships brought on by the coronavirus pandemic

　　After the paper was published, the New York attorney general launched an investigation, forcing industry companies to verify its ingredients
.

Three major supplement manufacturers, Natures Way, Herbalife Nutrition, and Jamieson, all hired Tru-ID to certify and pass them

　　In 2017, Newmaster established a joint venture within the University of Guelph, the Natural Health Products Research Alliance (NHPRA)
.
The University of Guelph's Office of Alumni Affairs and Development said on its website that the university is "raising $20 million through the company to create new validation standards and develop new technologies, and several herbal industry giants have joined and are offering $2.
5-1 million.
Variety of sponsorships
.
"

　　After the outbreak of the new crown pandemic, Newmaster and others founded ParticleOne, which sells software that can assess whether the new crown virus is present in indoor air
.

　　8 domain experts ask school to investigate after student reports

　　While Newmaster was making his fortune off the technology, his former student Ken Thompson, now a postdoc at Stanford University, kicked back and began to debunk the hoax
.

　　Back in 2012, Newmaster provided some aggregated data and asked Thompson, then an undergraduate, to analyze it and compare traditional taxotyping and DNA barcoding methods for identifying forest plants
.
This paper was published in 2014
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　　Years later, Thompson realized that the paper's claimed method of perfect species identification would not work for some plants, but Newmaster never showed him the raw data and never uploaded it to the standard sequence repositories BOLD or GenBank
.

　　In early 2020, Thompson asked the University of Guelph to investigate, "I'm not 100% sure this is fraud, but I'm 100% confident to ask the question
.
"

　　In September-October 2020, in response to Thompson's inquiries, Newmaster collaborators deposited thousands of sequence records purportedly as paper data into GenBank
.
However, Thompson checked and found that 80 percent of the data exactly matched sample data hundreds of kilometers away that another student had collected in his dissertation
.

　　Thompson subsequently discovered other cases of Newmaster's image forgery or plagiarism and requested an inquiry into the University of Guelph investigation, but the university's administrators defined it as an informal inquiry and rejected him in early 2021
.
Later, Thompson asked the editors of Biodiversity and Conservation for review, but the editors complied with the University of Guelph
.

　　With nowhere to go, Thompson had to self-publish the experiences in May 2021 on the popular biodiversity blog Eco-Evo, expressing his concern, "It's unbelievable to do this on your own behind the scenes.
isolation, and hopefully by sharing criticism of our paper, some will choose to support me
.
"

　　After seeing it, Paul Hebert, an evolutionary biologist with the "father of DNA barcoding," contacted six other scholars to examine Newmaster's papers together
.

　　In June 2021, eight academics, including Thompson, asked the University of Guelph to conduct a misconduct investigation and asked the publisher to retract the manuscript
.
In a 43-page allegation letter, they noted that "the data underpinning the paper was lost, fraudulent or plagiarized, and the relevant interests were not disclosed"
.

　　Paul Hebert fears the University of Guelph will dismiss the allegations against Newmaster
.
University rules require such an investigative committee to be composed of the Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences, the Vice-Chancellor for Research and representatives from outside the University
.
But in the end, the investigative committee consisted of a business professor, the dean of the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine and a psychologist from a nearby university, none of whom had a relevant scientific background
.

　　"We need an independent body (from outside the University of Guelph) to review cases like this, and that's the only solution to stop history from repeating itself,
" Thompson said
.

　　Fabricating, plagiarizing data, or even plagiarizing undergraduate papers

　　Science analyzed thousands of pages of papers, conference presentations, slides, training and promotional videos published by Newmaster, and conducted a survey of interviews with 24 of his colleagues and independent scientists, 16 regulatory or research institutions, and found that Newmaster's The problems don't stop there
.
It also includes fabricating and plagiarizing data in speech, teaching, biography and academic writing, exaggerating and falsifying one's own achievements, and taking other researchers' data as their own
.

　　Back in 2010, students reported that most of Newmaster's course material was copied from the Internet
.
At the time, the University of Guelph had quietly asked Newmaster to restore the material
.
Science obtained a sample document and verified that there was indeed a lot of copy-paste
.

　　In addition, Science has found plagiarism in other papers, including a paper on millet in southeastern India, and even plagiarized from an undergraduate student's paper (pictured below)
.

　　

　　Comparison of Newmaster's paper and the original paper Source: Screenshot of the "Science" website

　　In an interview, Newmaster said that at the request of the U.
S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), he was tested for the new coronavirus in the summer and fall of 2019, a few months before the outbreak of the new crown pandemic, "We are already in the Samples, blood samples, saliva samples to sequence and study the virus
," he told the incredible presenter
.
But a CDC spokesman said there was no information on the collaboration with Newmaster
.

　　References

　　1.
https://　　2.
https://cosmosmagazine.
com/health/medicine/supplementary-saga-steven-newmaster-accused-of-fraud/

　　3.
https://　　4.
https://　　5.
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