Unable to recommend the services of the Acme Electron Microscopy Corporation

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/cy/2019/c9cy90078k#!divAbstract:

The authors informed us that the characterisation was completed by a third party company and they used the images “without any editing or modification”. The authors repeated the experiments and requested to provide replacement data for Fig. 1a, S1b, S3, S22, S24b and S25a. The new figures were reviewed by an independent expert. The authors believe that the scientific content and conclusions of the related studies presented by the pictures in the published paper can be reproduced. However, the independent expert still questions the reliability of the published images. The authors informed us that due to a flooding accident in the laboratory, the original data of the published EM images were destroyed. In addition, the third party company only saved the test data for one month. Due to the large number of images, it is not possible to replace the published images with the new figures. To avoid the possibility of publishing unreliable EM images, the authors agree to retract this paper to protect the rigor of the scientific record.

Also, I can't believe that people are still transgressing the laws of nature with blasphemous experiments in flood-prone underground laboratories when they could locate their laboratories in castles on Carpathian mountain peaks. This isn't the Century of the Fruitbat, you know!

[Backstory here]

"Sausage Cartel" is the name of my Throbbing Gristle tribute band

What the news item doesn't explain is how the cartel drove up prices by engineering artificial scarcities. They would promise a shipment of sausages, then delay delivery with a series of excuses.

Always promising that "The wurst is yet to come".

Onan, what is best in life? #2

To walk the Ruapani Circuit track. To drive to Morere Hot Springs in the evening when most people had left. To have the hot pool to ourselves, with a bottle of Armageddon IPA, and torrential rain pissing down outside the shelter. That is good.

Question to Radio Yerevan: Is it true that Brutus is an honourable man?

Not many people know that in the first draft of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony's funeral oration was couched in the form of an extended Radio Yerevan joke (before Shakespeare's financial backers convinced him to edit that section of the script into a format more familiar to the Globe regulars). "People who are unaware of this fact" include potential buyers of that first draft -- now in Riddled possession -- and they are swift to voice unbecoming doubts as to its authenticity.

This is Reason #118 why Another Kiwi is no longer trusted with unescorted use of the Riddled time machine.

Messrs ¼maine, @kins and S&erson from The Demolished Man would like a word, or a logogram

Wh@ TF? Whackyweedia contributor is droll, or has never encountered Twitter, or indeed my abbrevi8d Dad-phone texting. Hilarity is 4thcoming.

In Old English manuscripts, the Tironian "et" served as both a phonetic and morphological place holder. For instance a Tironian "et" between two words would be phonetically pronounced "ond" and would mean "and". However, if the Tironian "et" followed the letter "s", then it would be phonetically pronounced "sond" and mean water .... This additional function of a phonetic as well as a conjunction placeholder has escaped formal Modern English; for example, one may not spell the word "sand" as "s&" (although this occurs in an informal style practised on certain internet forums).

Reassuring: White House contains fewer than three preschoolers

John Decker: The President announced on Twitter that there's no chaos at the White House. How would you describe what has happened over the course of the past ten days?

Sanders: I have said it before, if you want to see chaos, come to my house with three preschoolers. This doesn’t hold a candle to that.

It's almost the deadline Don't miss the deadline, darling

One of the laziest way to fill a blog-post must be to whine about the annoying spam from predatory-publishing grifters that clogs up the mail-bag here at the Riddled Museum of Salted Pineapples. So here goes, with the shitweasels and skeezebags and latrine-sloths at 'Open Access Text'!

We last met this mockademic outlet when they were providing the antivax autism scammers at AutismOne with a stove-pipe, or a stomach tube rather, to disguise the quality of a tainted on-line survey and pretend to their followers that it was actually a study. Think "human centipede" but with a feeding tube. Then hilarity ensued when the OAfs unpublished Mawson's papers again until his sponsors coughed up more money.

OAText are Navaneeth Reddy and his partner Khalid Mohammad, based in Hyderabad, because where else would they be? Though they dropped the diagnostic "Greetings for the Day!" salutation from their spam and launder everything through Reddy's company "ResearchWallet", to present themselves as operating out of the UK, in the belief that a London address endows them with gravitas and credibility. We try to lock them out, adding their Sender addresses to the blocked-domain-name list, but the OAfs keep adding new domains to squirm past the spam filter.

They are persistently concerned that I might miss the deadline, and miss the wunnderful opportunity to give them moneys publish through their science-reportage outhouse.

----------------------------------------------------------------

From: Kathy Allison [mailto:editor@ophthalmicjournal.org]
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2016 12:48 AM
Subject: [SPAM]Follow up e-mail by Editorial Office

Dear Colleague,
I didn’t hear back from you about the e-mail which was sent to you few weeks back; hence making a follow up.
I am writing this e-mail with reference to your article published in the field of Ophthalmology.
Our team highly appreciate your work. Based on the same, New Frontiers in Ophthalmology (NFO) team welcomes you to submit your new articles. We are sure your article would aid in escalating the standards of our journal.
I welcome you to submit the article to submissions@oatext.com
Please let me know your interest in publishing with NFO.
With appreciation,
Kathy Allison
Managing Editor
for Prof. James B. Aguayo-Martel
Editor in Chief

----------------------------------------------------------------

From: New Front Ophthalmol [mailto:ophthalmology@oatextjournals.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2016 7:04 AM
Subject: Notification from Editorial Office: Please reply

Dear Colleague

Recently we have sent you an e-mail but didn’t receive any reply; hence making a follow up.

We are contacting you with the reference of your recently published article.  Our team has read your article with great interest and wish if you could publish your upcoming articles in our journal New Frontiers in Ophthalmology (NFO).

You can send us your submissions at submissions@oatext.com

Please take a few minutes to let us know your concerns regarding publication.

Awaiting your reply.

With appreciation,

Kathy Allison
Managing Editor
for Prof. James B. Aguayo-Martel
Editor in Chief

----------------------------------------------------------------

From: James B Aguayo-Martel [mailto:editor@medicalopenaccess.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2017 3:37 AM
Subject: Upcoming Issue Submission Alerts: New Frontiers in Ophthalmology

Dear Colleague,

We are contacting certain eminent researchers who have recently published high quality article in the field of ophthalmology. Its our pleasure to recommend our journal New Frontiers in Ophthalmology (NFO) for your upcoming articles.

NFO follows fast peer-review process (7-10 days) and rapid publication of the articles.

Kindly submit your article to our editorial office by email to submissions@oatext.com

We appreciate your prompt response and attention regarding your interest in publishing with NFO.

Awaiting your reply.
With Appreciation,
Kathy Allison
Editorial Assistant
For
James B Aguayo-Martel
Editor-in-Chief
New Frontiers in Ophthalmology

You are receiving this email because of your relationship with the sender. To safely unsubscribe or modify your subscription settings please click here

----------------------------------------------------------------

From: Kathy Allison [mailto:editor@oatextjournals.info]
Sent: Thursday, June 22, 2017 8:47 PM
Subject: Second e-mail: Discounted_Fee_Ophthalmology

Dear Colleague,

Recognizing your very busy schedule, I am sending you this follow up e-mail.

New Frontiers in Ophthalmology (NFO) is now accepting submissions for its upcoming issue. Knowing your expertise in the related field, it would be our pleasure to review your work for publication in NFO. We are sure your quality articles would raise the standards of our journal.
Upon special consideration, all the articles submitted before June 28^th, 2017 will be subjected for the discount in the publication fee.
You can send us your articles to ophthalmology@oatextjournals.com

Regards
Kathy Allison
Editorial Assistant
For
New Frontiers in Ophthalmology

You are receiving this email because of your relationship with the sender. To safely unsubscribe or modify your subscription settings please click here

----------------------------------------------------------------

From: Kathy Allison [mailto:editor@oatextjournal.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2017 6:20 PM
Subject: Follow up on previous e-mail: Kindly Reply

Dear Author,

We have contacted you few weeks back but didn’t receive any reply; hence making a follow up.

We are contacting few researchers whose published work is novel to the current literature of Ophthalmology. We appreciate your work and hence recommending our journal New Frontiers in Ophthalmology (NFO) for publication of your new articles by July 25^th, 2017 or let us know your tentative date for submission.

We welcome you to submit the article to submissions@oatext.com

We look forward for your positive reply.

With appreciation,
Kathy Allison
Editorial Assistant
For
New Frontiers in Ophthalmology

You are receiving this email because of your relationship with the sender. To safely unsubscribe or modify your subscription settings please click here

----------------------------------------------------------------

It might never have occurred to readers that "unsubscribing or modifying subscriptions" could be UNSAFE if it were not for these turdwaffles' reassurance that the unsubscription link is perfectly safe, no toxic HTML code there, promise! OAText were early-adopters of the addition of tracker code to their spam, to inform them when a recipient was foolish enough to read it and could be stalked with creepy targetted demands.

"Kathy Allison" is probably a $NAME parameter for a spam-script. but the Editor at least, James Aguayo-Martel, is a genuine facsimile of a human being. He is not an innocent victim of dirtball grifters appropriating his name for their shoddy little scam... he writes their Editorials, while his LinkedIn account boasts of his association with them, perhaps under the impression that the title of "Editor-in-Chief of a Journal-Shaped Pukebag" adds lustre to his reputation.

Dr Martel further burnishes his CV with an impressive range of roles at other spammy, scammy predaceous & parasitical journals -- Associate Editor and Honorable Editor at MedCrave, Editor at ECronicon, Editor at 'JOJO' from Juniper, Editor at OpenVentio, Associate Editor at "Annals of International Medical and Dental Research". Perhaps he is hoping to qualify for the title of 'Hyderabad Honorary Consul'. He does not boast of these low-life collaborations in his self-written Whackyweedia entry, however, so perhaps a vestigial sense of shame lingers still.

Dr Martel has been advised that the dregs of humanity are traducing his good name by signing it at the bottom of their griftograms, but he does not respond to well-meaning Riddled emails.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

AFTERTHOUGHT: Jeffrey Beall speculated about the similarities between the OAText and OMICS operations. A commenter confirmed that Navaneeth Reddy had worked at OMICS before going into the business himself, wondering why he should work his fingers to the bone defrauding strangers on behalf of a boss when he could keep those strangers' money for himself.

The two scam-shops seem to maintain a collegial relationship, and Beall noted the ostensible existence of one Amanda Venis, a high-functioning $NAME parameter who works both sides of the street. "Her" FaceBukkake page primarly peddles one of the dismal OAText travesties (Global Derpatology) but the advertisements that comprise "her" Twitter stream alternate between that journal and the Journal of Figmentary Disorders from OMICS. Of the three LinkedIn entries set up in that name, one has her working in SF as an Editorial Assistant for OMICS, while the other two have her in London, as OAText Managing Editor for Global Dermatology or, possibly, for the Interdiciplinary Journal of Chemistry.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

AFTERTHOUGHT²: Two other OAText Editors are also unaware that their names appear in lying spam beamed across the Interlattice by lowlife scammers, for unfriendly strangers to jeer at. Despite my gently-worded attempts to warn them.

From: Dr. Yassine Amrani [mailto:editor@pulmonarystudies.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2017 11:04 PM
Subject: Dr. Yassine Amrani: Submission Call

Dear ,
As members of the editorial board of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine (PCCM), I would like to invite you to contribute to the Journal with a short review, case report or research articles.
As you will from the journal website, there have been a number of good articles published by the journal and we want to ensure that we keep attracting the best science possible (as far as time allows).
So I would be very grateful if you could find the time to submit an article to the journal.
Submissions received till 08 March will receive a 30 per cent off on fee or help us know approximate date.
Your early response is appreciated.
Please do contact us for any query.
Regards,
Yassine Amrani
Dept of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation, University of Leicester,
National Institute for Health Research
Leicester Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit
Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, LE3 9QP, UK
To unsubscribe click here

------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Prof Rex Cheung [mailto:editor@medicalopenaccess.org]
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2017 11:52 PM
Subject: NMBI Vol 2: Submit Images for Special Issue

DearDr. ,

Hope this mail finds you in good health.

We would like to invite your kind attention towards the journal Nuclear Medicine and Biomedical Imaging – NMBI (ISSN: 2398-3361).

We have a Rapid Review Process and Publication Facility which allows submission to be published in just over 7-10 days.  We appreciate all your efforts for the growth of scientific research. Based on your recent contributions, it is a great pleasure for me to invite you to contribute an article to NMBI.

Special processing fees for Vol 2:

Article Type	Charge
Images with short description	Free of cost
Commentaries/Short Review	$250
Case Reports	$350
Research/Review Articles	$450

For more details, please contact editor@nuclearmedicinejournal.com  or to submissions@oatext.com (mention the journal’s name)

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Regards

Robert Rae

Editorial assistant

Supporting

Rex Cheung

Editor-in-chief

University of Texas M.D.

Anderson Cancer Center

You are receiving this email because of your relationship with the sender. To safely unsubscribe or modify your subscription settings please click here

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rex Cheung can be excused for his ignorance for he is quite hard to contact... his claimed affiliation with Anderson Cancer Center is fraudulent, and his e-address there is no longer valid. He appears to have left the University of Texas, to spend more time editing his collection of journal-shaped pukenozzles from the Hyderabad digital-fraud industry.

Brightness falls from the air,Queens have died young and fair

Then the dough boiling in oil suddenly shot out of kitchen pots.

[Thx H. Rumbold, Master Barber]

Wuzi, wugé, wugové? Analogy, frequency and uncertainty in a Czech wug study

This conference presentation is RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS.

Later at the same conference:

Peanut Butter is the Miley Cyrus of spreadable edibles: Creatively figurative X is Y of Z constructions in a cross-linguistic/cultural perspective

It is not too late for some kind generous person to pay the travel costs for me to attend.

Fear and Trembling in Linguistics

It is a source of lasting regret that Eek and Help never got around to publishing with Aymaus as the third author.

Australians continue to live down to our expectations

This appears to be an Australian re-make of 'Ruthless People", but with unrequited explosions:

About 1am on February 1, 2015, Yarnton woke in the passenger seat and heard a "hissing sound" coming from an open gas bottle in the car, and found his socks soaked with petrol.

Haven't we all woken up like that after date night?
I am just puzzled that the accused Mrs Yarnton -- a "high-ranking police officer" -- could not find more competent criminals than "Married couple Monique Hayes, 25, and Fady Houda, 24" to dispose of her husband.

Nice things, why we can't have them, #107

WTF, Australian customs? (not the ones involving sheep):

The story does not say whether the Australian bioseurity officers huddled around the incinerator breathing in the hallucinogenic fumes while the "pressed-daisy" specimens were burning. More details here, including the news that Australian officers destroyed a package of New Zealand lichen specimens in October 2016 but did not get around to telling anyone until now.

This vindicates the advice from the Library Pixies not to share the priceless Riddled Dried Leeches-and-Spiders Collection with our Australian colleagues.

The existence of a Society of Herbarium Curators, quietly exchanging their dried samples in a genteel interlibrary loan network, opens up new possibilities for writing epistolary-format romantic-comedy novels. Just saying.

I'm on the Lame but I Ain't No Sheep

Science unfetta-ed! From Tim van der Zee:

This study had 600 participants who judged over 80 clips of goats... goat lameness research is better powered than most of psychology!

I am not sure how the researchers accounted for the lameness-inducing effect of men staring at the goats across the Interlattice.

"Those who study WWII Jewish history are still condemned to relive it" *

Eminent French-Jewish historian specialising in Vichy France (and the subsequent historical amnesia) detained at Houston Airport and held in custody for 10 hours to show his papers.

https://twitter.com/Henry_Rousso/status/835655881362636800

* Stolen cheerfully from BoingBoing commenter LearnedCoward

In vitro in vino

From the Department of Unexpected Results:

This study (N = 124) tested the main and interactive effects of alcohol consumption, egalitarianism and right wing authoritarianism (RWA) in relation to prejudice suppression in the natural environment of a British Public House (pub). Employing a quasi-experimental between-subjects design, participants who had consumed alcohol were worse at suppressing their prejudice than participants with no alcohol consumption.

I am far from convinced that "natural environment" is the best description of a British Public House (pub).
Also too one wonders whether "regular costumers" was a typo, or whether the venue in question caters primarily to Furries and Cosplayers.
 
Inquiring minds wish to know whether Canterbury qualifies as one of "the two major universities in the Southeast of England", as I was brought up to believe that it's a second-rate dump.

Below: Regular costumers

[H/t Neuroskeptic]

When I become world dictator (#273)...

...The BBC will broadcast a science fiction series about the adventures of an immortal alien who believes that he is dead, or a fictional character, or both, as he recruits companions who share his delusion, and they travel through time and space in the Cotardis.

I want your wife to be my baby tonight I choose to steal what you chose to show And you know I will not apologize I'm making a career of evil

Here in distant Hobbiton we keep our ears to the grindstone and our noses to the ground. Thus we are appraised through various covert sources of bad craziness and implausible goings-on in Americanic politics, in the form of a tape in which a failed conman brags of his career of sexually assaulting women, and the subsequent discovery that the conman in question somehow became the Republican candidate for the Presidential election.

The more dedicated fluffers and apologists for his cause have come up with the intriguing excuse that Trump's sexual-predator boasting and low-life mode of self-expression can really be blamed on the corrosive effect of rap music, and really the violent misogyny of his conversation is no worse than the average rap lyrics. Alas, many other Republican candidates are not entirely reassured by this line of rhetoric, and foresee an immanent decline in Trump's ratings. Thus they are distancing themselves from his campaign, or even retracting their earlier endorsements.

One seldom encounters a case of shits leaving a sinking rap.

New plagiarism scandal looms

Donald Trump said Wednesday he would consider recognizing Crimea as Russian territory and lifting the sanctions against the country if he’s elected president.

The settlement of the Czechoslovakian Crimean problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor Russian Premier, Herr Hitler Putin, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. 

My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister an American President has returned from Germany Russia bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.

God Win

Teh Dim-Post (a New Zealand political-humour blogger) has a bleg:

I am now obsessed with and addicted to reading about the US election campaign. My favourite commentator at the moment is democratic blogger Josh Marshall – but who else is good? I’d be very interested in reading an intelligent informed right-wing perspective, if that’s even a thing in contemporary US politics.

I have referred him to the works of William L. Shirer.

Post truth, post hole

It seems that we live in the era of "post truth" politicians. An interesting take on the matter, considering the amount of lying that has gone on in recorded history. Perhaps a more accurate description would be the Couldn't Give a Bugger About the Truth era? It would certainly enliven future textbooks about the early 21st Century.
 "At this point it became obvious just how few buggers were actually given by politicians as it was conclusively proven that Trump was of an alien species but his voters continued to say he connected with real heartland Americans".
 New Zild has had its own share of non-fact-connected politicians but the current Prime Minister must be in the top 5 in the top No Buggers Given list. In the past he has opined about all and sundry with no scraps of credibility or knowledge to impede his decision making. For instance we know he has peed in the shower but not masturbated, he thinks Iraq is a safe place and he would not have shot the Gorilla. Many of his National party colleagues breathed a little easier after that one.
But he doesn't just limit himself to shower antics or zoo animal preservation, he also comments upon things that are central to the modern, go ahead Conservative government he leads.
Conservative governments have a bit of a checklist of things they will do, a comment I have made on this blog before, hopping into the poor people, lowering taxes for rich people and helping businesses to oppress their workers etcetera, etcetera.
This government has ticked all of those boxes and made a special point of Great Specialnesss about how they had "reformed" employment laws with the introduction of the 90 day rule. After they realised that this not a relaxation of the 4 second, dropping food on the floor rule, many New Zilders reacted with "Wahhht... my...did...rugby on". Unbeknownst to them the government had introduced legislation that allowed people to be employed for 90 days at low pay rates and even more excitingly dismissed with no reason and no backsies at any time in the 90 days.
At the time this was greeted by government spinners and lackies as a Great Leap Forward for industrial relations and the benefits would flow to all and young folks would get jobs and possibly everyone would get a panda to keep as a pet.  
Of course, it did no such things.
Five years on from the introduction of the 90 days rules a Treasury report has concluded that the introduction of the 90 day rule has had little to no affect on NZ employment issues. This is the Treasury, mind you, Friedmanites to the core and paid for by the Gubblement to find shit out when the troooooth is needed.
So the PM was in a bind, since his fairytale did not have the right ending and the people collecting the data are his inquisitorial shocktroops. Brilliantly he ignored that dumb ole report. People, he said, talked to him all the time as he went around NZ  and they said it had gone swimmingly and everyone was happy as two clams in whatever place would make clams happy. So there! To make sure that The Base would get what he was on about he noted.

"You can have a piece of academic research but it's quite different from the small cafe owner whose money is on the line, who is taking the risks and who actually rely on this kind of policy.

Academics amirite?

Still, quite brave of him to bring up small cafes after the ponytail pulling incidents of last year. But he is nothing if not something or other.