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Until spring 2020, Raoult is famous as a famous microbiologist who founded and led the research hospital Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée Infection, or IHU. They have discovered or discovered dozens of new bacteria – the group is named Raoultella – also a giant virus. By many accounts, his extensive reach in the scientific community matches his temperament: In 2012, Science magazine described him as “imaginative, rebellious, and often disdainful.” “They can make life difficult for you,” the researcher said.
Several thousand of Raoult’s publications have also been examined. In 2006, the American Society for Microbiology banned him and four coauthors from the journal for a year through “misrepresentation of data” after a reviewer spotted the same figures, but should not have been, in two versions of the submitted manuscript. (Raoult denied the ban, saying he was innocent.) And some researchers noticed that Raoult was in a third of all papers that would appear in a single journal, managed by several collaborators.
Last year, Raoult’s team published a correction to the 2018 study, and another from 2013 was retracted (the journal said Raoult could not be contacted when the decision was made). Both contain duplicate or suspicious images, first discovered by Bik, who has flagged more than 60 other studies on PubPeer for potential problems.
And in July of last year, the most famous study has been examined by external experts commissioned by the publisher of the journal. The scientists did not stop. “Gross methodological weaknesses,” “uninformative,” and “irresponsible,” he said. Another group said it “raises too much attention and contributes to the demand for the drug without proper evidence.”
Despite acknowledging the flaw, the leadership of the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, which publishes the journal together with Elsevier, chose not to retract the study. “We believe that, in addition to the importance of sharing observational data during a pandemic, a strong public scientific debate on the paper’s findings in an open and transparent manner should be available,” he said. At the same time, a group of 500 French infectious disease experts filed a complaint with local health officials, accusing Raoult of spreading false information about hydroxychloroquine.
Raoult defended his “seminal work”, arguing that the demand for withdrawal has “no justification other than the opinion of people who hate” hydroxychloroquine. At a French Senate hearing in September, he again downplayed criticism of his research. Bik has “been able to find five errors in a total of 3,500 articles,” he said, while admitting that there were also some other errors. He denied ever committing fraud.
In the Senate hearing, Raoult called Bik a term that translates to “headhunter”, a “girl” who has been “stalking” him since he was “notorious”. And around Thanksgiving, biologist Eric Chabrière, Raoult’s collaborator and coauthor of the hydroxychloroquine study, tweeted that Bik was “bothering” and “trying to humiliate” Raoult.
He claimed past work at uBiome, a microbiome testing startup that was raided by the FBI in 2019. (Bik, who was the scientific editorial director there until the end of 2018, said he was never questioned and was not involved in the founding. alleged plot to defraud insurance companies and investors.) Chabrière also accused him of being paid by the pharmaceutical industry.
“I am not sponsored by any company, but you can sponsor me on @Patreon,” tweeted Bik, linking to her account. As he explained to Chabrière, he was also a university consultant and a publisher who wanted to investigate suspicious papers.
“Good luck reviewing papers at your institution, as long as you pay me :-),” he added.
Over the next month, Chabrière would call them “real dung beetles,” “mercenaries who only obey money,” and people “paid to attack and destroy specific targets.” His supporters piled on, sometimes with vague threats. Meanwhile, Raoult called her a “crazy woman” and a “failed researcher” of “moderate intelligence”.
Then, on April 30 of this year, Chabrière tweeted a picture of a legal complaint allegedly filed with the public prosecutor in France. He accused him and Barbour, the co-organizer of PubPeer, of “moral harassment,” “attempted blackmail,” and “attempted extortion.” His home address is listed. The tweet was later deleted.
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