CRG, Barcelona, Spanish/Catalan science: yet another way to carry out research activity (and lies even to the Court)

Update after Catalan Court hearing:
Luis Serrano, CRG Director, lied to the Court

«There is one single problem with spanish, as José Ortega y Gasset explains so well: "no code of honor". No rules, nothing... In other countries also you will find people without code of honor, the vast majority, but there are others that they do have, a percentage. In Spain that percentage is so small that can be considered non existing. No matter the social level, you can't trust them. … Emotionally speaking, are most of them broken. This is why they are impulsive, they call that "hot blood", but the real meaning is lack of emotional intelligence, they are ruled by impulses.» [The Spanish Personality]

Here are the threats of legal persecution I've got from CRG, Barcelona, signed by Managing Director Bruna Vives on behalf of the Centre and Luis Serrano, CRG Director. Look at the Centre for Genomic Regulation at their finest in intimidating and disrespect.
My notes are below the copies (clickable to enlarge).

Spanish version:

1. Here we have a classical actus reus.
2. This threatening from CRG, Barcelona under the claim to keep «professional secrecy» (are these people even sane?) and «confidentiality», i.e. the claim to keep silence about their excellence in research misconduct, followed by these threats where I'm named as «and / or» doing even something «criminal», — look like fit of anger unless just laughable. They are supposed to represent a Spanish intellectual elite, aren't they?
3. Solely this claim to keep their threats confidential (see also the bottom of the pages) should be enough to launch the investigation on the activity of the top employees of CRG, including here-below mentioned favorite of Luis Serrano, CRG Director (ah, all right… she's supposed to be on the top anyway…).
4. NDA (appendix to the work contract) I signed, concerned the contract in force or expired.
   My contract is not expired or in force: it was interrupted (terminated — as they've recognized it themselves in their threat) by CRG, Barcelona due to alleged disobedience to another employee who was not even my immediate superior, the latter was silently dismissed from being such, excluded from the working process and substituted by incompetent, but badly ambitious and passively aggressive Director's favorite, Maria Lluch-Senar, as a «co-leader» of the project with so peculiar correspondence style (how come that such individuals can even get MS and even PhD in Spain? do they colourize their thesis that way too?)
5. I was slandered and mobbed by this M Lluch-Senar, CRG staff scientist (intensively supported by her patron, Luis Serrano, CRG Director in whatever she's been saying about me) several times, she announced me that I'd be dismissed anyway the very next day after she was set as my boss by Luis Serrano.
   Luis Serrano was persistently coercing me, in written too, to talk only alone with his favorite (who by the way is craving for a PI position and her henpecked one is desperate to help her as no one wants her in this.. hum.. another role). I called for CRG's Conflict Resolution Committee (and then they concocted the facts presenting them as if it was them who called for the Committee), — the Committee has completely ignored my complains and followed Luis Serrano's non-negotiable instructions forcing me to recognize scientific authority of his favorite, who persistently lied about my personality, aggressively refusing to get or accept any technical reasoning out of her competence.
   Moreover.
   She was misleading me with data sources and urging me to work with erroneous data concocted by herself.
   I said no.
   I was given «24 hours» to confirm my response.
   I was fired by the end of the same week.
6. CRG was already clearly told off about the neglect of their duty and reputation — they have completely disrespected the words of the conciliation officer, they have even refused to present themselves directly on the hearing.
   They had given no care to their reputation then and now suddenly they have recalled and decided to take care about it, starting with threats, apparently from the bottom of their hearts and their notion of what the (academic) culture is.
   Surely they don't just perform only a bare money laundering using their positions in Spanish science.
   Now they claim that one of their former, thrown out on the streets, employee is damaging their «honour» or «reputation» even «with the intention».
   
   
   Dear CRG, Luis and Bruna,
   • If it's possible for you to put a word «or» between «honour» and «reputation» which you claim you have (after you have lied so dishonourably) — then, obviously, only an upper authority could explain you something about what honour and reputation are: it seems you're still uncertain about these entities. No wonder you have failed to keep them intact.
     You did it on your own.
     No one has forced you to behave like you have.
     Paraphrasing Bertolt Brecht («Vertrauen wird dadurch erschöpft, daß es in Anspruch genommen wird»), your honour and reputation begin to vanish the very moment you claim you have them damaged the way you do it, — especially after you were utterly unable to display at least a minimum respect to your employee, let alone the kind of integrity you have shown as pertinent to you.
     My story is just a shadow on the sand in the background of your behaviour and culture. I'm too small comparing to your own self-exposure.
     «We trust that your knowledge, skills and experience will be among our most valuable assets» — remember the text of your offer? — you gave no respect to any of thus enumerated (by your own) qualities. That's why the only point you could use to attack me with your misconduct was a «discipline».
     Which is ridiculous since you do not have any notion of what it is.
     Not to mention work ethics.
   • I don't damage your «honour or reputation» as you claim «with the intention».
     I speak out, that's it.
   And of course I would only greet an independent open investigation of your professional activity and of its compliance with your own Code of Good Scientific Practice. 
   Even then I doubt that it could depreciate your significance and self-worth acquired with such diligence by your so creative advertising of your excellence, with your passionate appeal for money throughout your much more conspicuous networking, connections, pulls and of course… well… social network accounts. 
   Just don't stop disseminate food & drinks for your subscribers and sponsors as you used to do it: to make sure they would love your excellent science. 
   And, Bruna, seriously… I am so sorry, but having known now the story of your appointment, this your threatening burofax speech looks like a sincere coming out, especially when it's read in Spanish. But of course, of course, it's not how it looks like.

All the corresponding docs on CRG/Barcelona's research misconduct, mobbing and lies are on GitHub or DropBox.
Given the whole story I reckon that the above text is not too harsh and I apologize if someone's sensitive feelings are touched, —
Katerina aka Catherine

Maria Lluch Senar: colors of the work correspondence, data manipulation

Remember the time when scientific debates were open and public?
Maria's comment on the 3rd point below (she uses red color… doesn't it ring a bell?) is extremely marvelous.
Don't miss the moment of the new proteins discovery once she finds them ^*).
Especially after she finds someone to process concocted by herself Excel files of >100Mb, 15 spreadsheets each…
which are… ta-dam! — a «new format» © Maria Lluch Senar
— hand-made copy-pastes from standard mass spec files which were already processed.
Then ask yourself a fair question:
Why the hell the standardized files from the machine had to be concocted by Maria's hand before the analysis and processing into the DB?
Why she was so eager to make her own «new format» yet being utterly illiterate in the subject of standardization and data formats for analysis/DB processing?
So when you seem to be involved into a quite probable scientific misconduct (the negligent data making up, actually a sheer data modification!) by a person who repeatedly lies, spreads slander and intrigues behind someone's back — think about that you may become a scapegoat at the end. Even if you only get stained — it's still the shame.

Yes, it is awkward to read…
But much more shameful thing is to be cowed by a person who makes her move up to the position she holds by a very questionable way.
And to realize why this her way up is so questionable and shameful for a scientist: enough to see how she avoids open discussion and open exchange of opinions. Enough to have it experienced — of how she's been craving to fuck K.'s brain claiming to be alone with herself.

When a person, who repeatedly stresses you out, disrupts your work and utterly unable to openly and constructively discuss the project with all involved parties — it's freaking disgusting when the very same person also claims to have you alone with herself: indeed just to fuck you. Your brain actually but when your brain is violently fucked — it hurts unbearably.
Human brain is just as important to protect and keep unharmed as other parts of their body.
P.S. in this email below K' words are only those of black font

[click to enlarge]

full version on DropBox

Above we can see the favorite Maria's trip up, used repeatedly in her emails:
«If you think that changing the pipeline to consider the new format is not possible please let us know and we will find the way to implement it».

She used to insists that she tries «to describe the required tasks in a professional manner». Professional. These rogues love this word.
She thought her hysterics after her «if you want to meet» when only once K. said «no» — professional. And her sweet-heart then proclaims to the Court that K. had always refused to meet her. Nice isn't it? What a level of human integrity, isn't it?

She's been absolutely unable to perceive any explanations why her undoubtedly genius idea just won't work: her arrogance and ignorant obtrusion of the way how the data analysis (which is not her expertise at all) should be technically carried out just must be accepted with complete obedience no matter how feasible it is to perform at least partially. As soon as you start bringing her technical reasoning, however best you try keeping patience etc — she gets aggressive almost immediately throwing at you here-above quoted her favorite trip up.
Literally: «I am the one with the scientific authority here — you only must listen and follow! You cannot follow my genius ideas? — Shut up! Fired!!»
Yet another money laundry case under the brand of so called MycoSynVac project generously funded by ERC (European Research Council).

---

*) Sure she found them! Her patron has arranged the publication «Unraveling the hidden universe of small proteins in bacterial genomes» with extensively advertising campaign «Revealing the role of the mysterious small proteins» all over sci-comm media — how do you like the titles? remember the bad science signs of research misconduct? — the role is not revealed actually: see the paper, its heuristic modelling attitude…

— why «arranged»? — because they published it in Molecular System Biology EMBO journal, Luis Serrano is fostered there, in EMBL, he has many connections \m/, including his good friend Peer Bork (see Serrano's lecture on Youtube about Mycoplasma where he mentions that).
And Peer is a senior editor in Mol Sys Biol.
No scrutiny guaranteed!
BTW, Serrano also publishes his papers in Cell Systems, where he's himself in editorial board.
Cosy, isn't it?

Also try to find and make work the «Open Access»™ code used in the paper and written for it — check it out how it's easy to get it and how well it corresponds to the results, so loudly advertised!

The desktop version of Phobius was used to predict any signal peptides and transmembrane segments in our predicted SEPs using default settings and only differentiating between gram positives and negatives.

«Some software and our "RanSEPs: Comprehensive unbiased prediction of small proteins in bacterial genomes" used to predict any signal peptides in our predicted small proteins» :)
Find this «Comprehensive unbiased prediction».
Please, mind the bad science signs (kickers in titles) which, of course doesn't mean you should be biased.
Just check it out: and your guess is correct — it's not on GitHub or any other public open repository with versions and dates.

Do you really think that those who lie so heavily and cheat that at ease can do good science?
But, sure, they can publish their science and therefore are getting paid and having grassy allotments, i.e. academic positions for their «research» — to serve any shit their masters want them to make up.
They have all facilities for that, don't they?

Research miscoduct and the dismissal notice, how CRG quotes the sources

Full text of the email they quote in their dismissal notice:

Subject: Re: MS data
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2016 15:20:49 +0100
Dear Maria,
I am sorry, I cannot comment on this.
I expect you respect your colleagues and able to communicate in a calm and professional manner by email and in person.
I see you do not understand the standardization subject and I am very able to prove it to a professional commission if its needed.
I also clearly see that you are getting passively aggressive and disrespectful, you are trying to undermine me on my professional field which is ridiculous and unacceptable. I think you have to apologize.
So I am sorry, I have nothing to ask you in person.
Regards, —
Catherine

[DropBox archive to the story with the emails exported to PDFs]

— this was reply to Maria's email quoted here-above (where our rock star Women-in-Science© got red font yelling (or blushing)).

(signatures, my & by Bruna Vives Prat, CRG managing director, are dimmed)

Eso es me suena a franquismo!

The actual reason for the dismissal: you «must recognize the scientific authority of Maria as co-leader of the project and work under her direct supervision alone» otherwise you are fired. No one else should witness their research misconduct and data manipulation.

Let alone senseless orders to reformat data export files just to keep you busy («new formatting did not matter, your 1st version was absolutely fine» — a colleague commented while working with that file).

This is how these cool scientists spend public money and do science nowdays.
They send murky messages with messy content, several files of >10Mb sent by email, «new format» © Maria Lluch Senar represented by two >100Mb Excel files with 15 spreadsheets each with hand-made copy-paste — to process all this shit into the DB.
Then they harass a professional who tries to explain how the data should have been processed. And these are just ordinary examples from a routine intellectual work process (paid by public money) of a rock star scientist with «I have many publications» — yet another shining clause of M Lluch-Senar intellectual argumentation.

This rock star scientist which is unable to create on her own a single document (without her patron) or a literate email. The same so gifted person is unable to make a tiny bit effort to grasp one simple thing: what the standards for datafile procession are. Whatever you're trying to explain her, however you try to reach for her mind — «in turn» © this person just harasses you and keeps claiming for recognition of her poor scientific authority.

Remarkably all the harassment supplemented by these wretched claims were fully supported by the top manager of the scientific institution.
Intellectual reasoning? Logical reasoning? Whatever fair damn reasoning?
Come on, bow and scrape and thank Universe, that these so great scientists could not call for the authorized science gestapo to help them out: they have only fired you because you had dared to question the authority of a really cool scientist whose favorite trip up in reply on any reasoning on the subject was just: «If you cannot do this work let us know and we will look for another way to do that».
Which was exceptionally ridiculous for this really cool scientist because «them» had no clue whatsoever about any way how their data could be processed in particular and how the scientific data are usually processed into the DB as that was not their expertise whatsoever. But surely «they» had authority to impose on you any by-products from «their» so beautiful minds.
Because. You. Cannot. Period.
— intellect, culture, work ethic here are so blatantly demonstrated that you just lose the gift of speech…

Why the data analyst has been coerced to work with concocted data and had been denied the direct contact with the data producers?
Why that so damn bright scientist who, as we're sure, is Maria Lluch, — why she was so eager to interfere between the data and a data analyst, why the hell she had to concoct that shameful hand made copy-paste Excel spreadsheets (tens megabytes), which she was unable/unwilling to put in a group repository and thus sent it by email, instead of allowing the professional to work with the data sources directly?
MS data were already processed into the DB according to the format, suggested by the project leader, Luis Serrano, Director of CRG — why this very format was refuted by his favourite and why Luis Serrano, Director of CRG had to obey M Lluch-Senar and why did he let her make dirty manipulations with data?
Why on the Earth she's been so craving for that bow and scrape?
How the hell do they spend public money then? — they hire a professional, then perform their mobbing actions against her attacking her purely on personal ground, gaslighting and slandering about her relations with other colleagues with nonsense allegations (because there is no other way to attack her) for several months and at the end just fire her after more than 9 months without giving her any credit for the job she's been doing for them.
Is it a Franquist style of modernized Spanish science or what??
And at the and — why the Staff Scientist Maria Lluch Senar and the CRG Director Luis Serrano Pubul had to lie so shamelessly?
These are fairly good questions.
And finally, how come the path of the apparent scientific misconduct was the easiest choice for them?…

picture is taken from this article on scientific misconduct: Scientific misconduct & its effect on the medical literature
(as much as it affects biomed sciences)

Here is my twitter account: @JWapatoo where I post current updates on this case and my relaxed attitude, i.e. after me being put under pressure and stress, it is naturally personalized unlike expressed as such while I am on duty where I'm restrained by professional standing rules and contract clauses.

«You should be stressed as you are still in initial closely watched period»
© Julia Ponomarenko
(4 months after start of the contract… + «you have to satisfy Luis» — publicly, several times, in the same context: «do you care too much what people say about you?» — nice vibrant and so motivating working atmosphere, isn't it?)

So these people don't even give a damn about the fact that a professional engineer, doing brainwork, can be only either productive or stressed.
Never both. Obviously, if quality results are to be provided.
Or, there is no need for data integrity in all this so playful scientific ambiance?
Or, these scientists — do they use their own brain for professional purposes? 

P.S. CRG, represented by its Director Luis Serrano and PI Juan Valcarcel, do support scientific fraud of their PI MP Cosma — please see by these links an article of Leonid Schneider and PubPeer comments.

 

They do their best to follow the fashion:

 

 

— see the press release on CRG web-site about yet another biotech company Pulmobiotics to hack your health under the selling moto «we're saving lives» or/and yet another money laundry by Barcelona based InVivo Capital's operations.

CRG, Barcelona — recollection of phrases I wanted to say but did not dare…

…thought it'd be too funny/indiscreet and could make things worse: 

[Please read also how Luis Serrano, CRG's director lied to the Court]

— OK, Luis, she says nobody can work with me (the slander they both insisted in), but there is a certain proof that I can work at least with you! then why did your favorite turn out to be so furious by the results of this work? %)

— Luis, please calm down, I am not recording this conversation %)

— Maria, what exactly is going to happen when we are alone? >%[
Of course there were no problem for me to come up to her and that happened on many occasions. I just could not get why I had to be coerced to talk alone with her even when I asked for help while she'd been getting dumb blind or dumb unable to get a point.

Update after 31/01/18:
On the Court hearing Luis Serrano, CRG director, lied that I constantly refused to talk to her.
I never refused when it could have any sense. I just asked for help!.
I never refused any direct request for meeting, at most I felt annoyed by her dull «if you wish we can talk» — only in that cases I could openly respond: I don't.

— Luis, what exactly is Maria going to do with me being so necessarily alone with her? >%[

(no way that was really necessary and it was felt so freaking creepy!)

— James, what kind of science exactly people do here that this «closest to Luis person» claims to recognize her scientific authority? and you too, why do you have to coerce me to this scientific authority recognition on behalf of Luis Serrano? %-O

— All right I can recognize this scientific authority. But can I use a sound recording device to keep all fascinating quotes of such authority for posterity and then to display them for public appreciation and future generations? %P

Only in that case that'd make sense, I wouldn't mind to suffer for the sake of science!
I'd promise to skip details when this authority kindly enlightens ignorant-me about the differences between coding and non-coding RNAs…
Thank God Maria didn't start with teaching me how to count to 10, only to 15 — «I have fifty publications, I will teach you! — fifty or fifteen?… — well, fifteen»
But once I did take notes after her speech as I just felt uneasy — she claimed I'd tore out the sheets (I did) and handed them to her (I didn't). Creepy! %-|

— Let's send her hand-made Excel file to the group-list, it'd be fun!! :D

(where M Lluch Senar had been unable to calculate correctly mapping coverage between TSS & TTS in MS Excel and was trying to make me use it as a primary data source for the DB)

— It'd be good to have this email published, shall I forward it to…

(where a colleague writes me, after having advised me to simulate a depression^*): «ask for an external, independent psychological evaluation of you two (then it will be clear she has a psychopathy»)
I felt so touched by their so considerate intrigue (underlining above is mine), which was not a big deal to unfold though.
Yet disgusting.
Director's chihuahua surely happened to be not the only one little psychopath: he had a look very much the same in so many ways (for instance, shouting on me in his office just for bringing up an email citation from my official boss) :-|
And the person who urged me to simulate depression, stopped talking to me once I refused to follow her so solicitous directions, — isn't that charming, uh?

— Why can't I work with an another colleague for the same project? — I would be happy to recognize her scientific authority!

Unfortunately this question was too rhetorical (a colleague was surely professional, way more smart and educated than M Lluch Senar, but obviously I had been coerced to recognize only one very particular «scientific» authority», with silent support by that demonstratively totally cowed colleague, so no way it could have been carried out)…
«she has destroyed my career, she will destroy yours!» — Hedgehog is scared by a naked ass! :]
Not exactly everyone is giving in to anything.
Moreover, that self-humiliation of the career race victim was rather a game in pathetic submission under highly positioned henpecked's requirement than really a true and irreparable loss.

---

*) I could do it to save my position at CRG: Spanish law in that case would assess the dismissal as invalidated, yet legitimizing employer's inclination to humiliate an employee and make slanderous statements about her qualities which was a favourite MO of Maria Lluch-Senar and Luis Serrano's so creative and productive tandem.

And of course I didn't say that… —