A prominent Italian pharmacologist under investigation for embezzlement and rigging university contracts has garnered a dozen and a half retractions in the last year for image alterations and duplications. But Salvatore Cuzzocrea, the former rector of the University of Messina, told that he did not agree with the retractions because they were decided "without clear communication", and that none of the papers had problems that he wasn’t able to reply to.
Cuzzocrea, a professor of pharmacology at Messina, is set to face an Italian court over rigging bids for university contracts and is under investigation for allegedly embezzling more than 2 million euros worth of reimbursements. Cuzzocrea said he has had "very few" publications corrected and retracted: "I’m saying "very few" because I published more than 900 papers, and I have only 70 with some problem, and only eight or nine were retracted". In reality, 18 of his papers have been retracted since January last year, and 179 have been flagged on PubPeer.
