Well Stricker actually has a finding of research misconduct against him  he fudged data to get an NEJM paper that was retracted by his three coauthors when they found out what he did   As a consequence was barred by the ORI from receiving or applying for federal grants for three years in the s  So hes previously gotten into serious trouble for throwing out data that doesnt fit his preferred hypothesis In recent years his publications seem to be almost exclusively lowimpact papers opinion bits and letters related to Morgellons and the related dubious diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease  I suppose its possible that he might be leading his field but if so its taking an awfully long time for anyone to start following  Its looking much more like hes just wandering in the wilderness And the advent of the openpeerreview journals where the journal publicly posts the identities and sometimes the comments of peer reviewers opens a window on at least some mild shenanigans regarding reviewer selection in some of his recent papers  This  F paper has a publishers note about an undisclosed conflict of interest where one of the reviewers was coauthoring another manuscript with the papers authors while reviewing the F paper  And one of the reviewers of the current paper BMC Dermatology  was Robert Bransfield  who is actually acknowledged in the paper   for his contributions  This sort of thing has a couple of likely explanationsStricker et al are deliberately pointing journal editors at very friendly peer reviewers and these mostlycrappy lowimpact journals dont do much due diligence potential conflicts of interest be damned or these papers are so far out on the fringe that its very difficult for journal editors to find anyone who is willing to waste time on reviewing manuscripts on these topics so theyre relaxed about their reviewer standards or both