National Science Center (NCN), supervised by Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Poland) receive budget of over € 313 Million each year (Public Tax Money) to fund different research projects based on development and advancement of fundamental knowledge in the field of arts and science.

Gregory Franklin, who is employed in Bio-Talent Project (Funded by EU), which is a part of IGR-PAN was also granted three NCN-OPUS Projects (OPUS 2017/25/B/NZ9/00720, OPUS 2016/23/B/NZ9/02677, and OPUS 2016/21/B/ NZ9/01980). The first project is about “Understanding the relevance of pathogenesis-related defense mechanisms in plant recalcitrance against Agrobacterium mediated transformation”, the second project is about “Unravelling the molecular/ genetic network of hyperycin biosynthesis” and the third one is about “Understanding Hypericum perforatum secondary metabolic changes in response to nanoparticles”.  As a principal Investigator of the projects, the money he received to conduct the research within the domain of the approved projects was misused. Corruption was found in the term of out-titled use of money, which was also used for personal development and for the development of relatives. Serious misconduct in the use of public tax money is quite much evident from the investigated examples as quoted below,

1-    Gregory Marslin, who is the younger brother of Gregory Franklin and employed at University of Minho published research article Marslin et al., 2018 as first author in MDPI-Polymers, thanks to Gregory Franklin, who feed him publication charges from NCN-OPUS 2016/21/B/ NZ9/01980 project as corresponding author of the paper. Proof of money utilization is evident in acknowledgement section of this article (Marslin et al., 2018). What was the connection of this paper to NCN-OPUS 2016/21/B/ NZ9/01980 project? Marslin et al., 2018 article is purely based on animal studies which is irrelevant to the project description! What is the connection of Gregory Marslin to NCN-Project or even IGR-PAN? Why IGR-PAN authorities allowed Gregory Franklin to use public tax paid money to feed his relatives and for his personal development? This brotherhood is the exceptional example of mutualism, but unfortunately IGR-PAN looks blind on this or maybe IGR-PAN needs some publications to grow, despite the fact where are they coming from!

Marslin et al., 2018

2-    Gregory Franklin looks like a parasite on NCN projects as a similar example can be seen in Marslin et al., 2017 article published in MDPI-Molecules. This work which does not have any connection to any of the NCN projects or to IGR-PAN was feed by Gregory Franklin from NCN-OPUS 2016/21/B/ NZ9/01980 project and also from EU 7^th Framework Programme (GA621321). Who cares about corruption? IGR-PAN got publication!, Gregory Franklin got publication!, but what NCN got? a perfect dodge!

Marslin et al., 2017

3-    Gregory Franklin not only cheated NCN but equally to the project money from EU 7^th  Framework Programme (GA621321). Karthik Siram, who was a PhD student at PSG College of Pharmacy, India got money for publishing his article related to the “…lymphatic targeting with colloids” (Siram et al., 2016) from EU 7^th  Framework Programme (GA621321). So is it EU 7^th  Framework Programme (GA621321) program who was funding Karthik Siram work in India? Or Bio-Talent Project also need some publications to put dust in the eyes of EU on final report submission in 2019? Or Gregory Franklin was so cleaver to cheat everyone?

 

Siram et al., 2016

        By studying all of the above examples, it is clear that Gregory Franklin lovers like Gregory Marslin and Karthik Siram, other than IGR-PAN and Poland were producing their own publication data and for grabbing publication charges from (NCN) projects they were putting Gregory Franklin as corresponding author. And definitely Gregory Franklin feels proud on that because he got some publications in his profile! Who cares about NCN?

But this exemplary corruption story doesn’t ends up here! We were amazed when we came to know through a reliable source that Gregory Franklin recently hired Karthik Siram as post-doc in one of the NCN-OPUS 2016/23/B/NZ9/02677 project. Interestingly, this NCN-OPUS project is about “unravelling the molecular/ genetic network of hyperycin biosynthesis”, but if you will observe Karthik Siram profile, his work is based on animal studies and drug delivery. So, why he is hired in NCN-OPUS project? I think now we know the answer! Thanks to Gregory Franklin, he not only provided him money from NCN-OPUS projects and EU project (GA621321) to complete his research work in India but also supported him to come to Poland and do more. Like Gregory Marslin, Karthik Siram also got full benefits from Poland public tax money in the form of NCN-OPUS project grants. Marslin and Siram et al., 2018 is also another example of this malfeasance.

According to the project needs, Gregory Franklin was supposed to work in the domain of Hypericum perforatum plant (genetic studies and plant sciences), but unfortunately none of his research article since the award of NCN-OPUS projects is based on the project descriptions. His research articles were on “solubilisation of imatinib mesylate in lipids”, “drug delivery related to hepatotoxicity in wistar rats”, “lipid based albendazole drug cytotoxicity against u-87 mg glioma cell lines”, “curcumin based drugs and their neuroprotective effect”, and  “Quillaja saponin role as emulsification of nano-lipids”. The only thing which he manged to publish to put dust in the NCN eyes was some review articles related to Hypericum perforatum plant, which surely makes no sense in the progress of fundamental research as described in NCN projects. Even in those review articles, you can easily find the taste of brotherhood. The reason for the misuse of NCN projects money is to support his brother Gregory Marslin, and beloved Karthik Siram and to somehow get his name in unrelated work. Why NCN officials did not notice this? and why he applied for such projects when he was not even capable to do work in this domain.

It is much needed that this continuity of corruption needs to be prohibited by NCN officials and EU commission. The projects awarded to Gregory Franklin needs to be immediately reviewed and suspended to stop further misconduct.

We hope that necessary action will be taken with immediate effects.