Hi, I’m Marshall. I report here an event of academic cheating because I find their data is fraudulent or their figures are fake.

 

These figures has been published on Molecular ecology with title “Warm–cold colonization: response of oaks to uplift of the Himalaya–Hengduan Mountains” (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/mec.14092).

 

 

Then, I show, how to find this academic cheating event.

Following the Section Data accessibility,

 

I download the sequences from ncbi GenBank. Then I align these sequences using MEGA and I account the number of variant sites. A total of 23 polymorphic sites are found. Then, I plan to do phylogenetic analysis and network analysis.

 

However, I am conscious of an abnormal situation. That is, the authors reported 31 different sequences in their paper. Or say 31 haplotypes.

Everyone know that, one mutation produce one novel sequence. How many mutations are needed if producing 31 haplotypes? At least 30 mutations if there are no recombination.

As the paper’ show in Fig. S1, there is no recombination in their data and a tree-like evolution model was suitable.  The figure 5 and 6 draw the relationship of these 31 haplotypes.

 

 

How to produce 31 haplotypes from 23 mutations? Obviously, it can be done by cheating. Maybe the figures 5, 6 and S1 are bogus, maybe the data is fake. Or maybe both are cheating.

 

 

 

!

Moderator Note

Marshall, this is not the place to report alleged academic cheating. We have no authority to do anything.