Maria Lluch Senar & Luis Serrano Pubul: manipulations and lies, extracts from emails and talks

K. presented the following style of Maria Lluch-Senar's communications to the Conflict Resolution Committee at CRG, she called for it and as she was asked for evidence she highlighted for them the most odd quotes. From her point of view.

They have not found them really abnormal. They rather silently agreed to be sneakily used by this Maria Lluch-Senar' for her dismissal. She have had a correspondence with Juan Valcarcel, genuinely presuming his independence, but no one from the Committee expressed any sorry to her after all.
Juan Valcarcel just told K. quietly and smiling that the dismissal would be illegal and K. could go to the court then. Nice kids, really.
You lose your job, never mind, this is just our game with us playing people.
Moreover, it turned out this Committee was a fake, a set-up: K. called for it and... Boom! In their dismissal note, later to the Court they lied that the Committee was asked to make K. follow the discipline. Isn't it graceful?

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Getting their (Maria Lluch-Senar's & Luis Serrano's) «no one can work with you», «you cannot work with users», «no one can understand what you are doing» and other bullshit like that, just as a way to oppress her, — every time K. heard that she just felt utterly stunned.
(NB: at the same time Maria was blocking any communications with other people in the lab and misleading K. with data sources)
It was told her repeatedly as a method of Maria's stunning intellectual argumentation in response to any technical reasoning too, further absolutely supported by Luis, except only a single one first time (see above) when apparently he dared to openly express his own opinion on the subject (genial Maria' ideas), yet appears that later he was strictly prohibited to be that assertive.
Hopefully he wasn't beaten for that and didn't suffer too much :-|
K. could not get it: how come that people who consider themselves as scientists happened to turn over rabid liars?
What about science they do? If they are lying that at ease…
K:

It should be done this way. Data are normally processed the way I suggest, at least to assure system consistency and data integrity.

Maria:

You have to obey me.
Doesn't matter that it won't work.
Do what I said to do.
This is you who can work with no one.
If you cannot do my way we find someone else who will do what I say
whatever shit I order to do.

— in italics it was said literally.
Again and again. The very same people have been repeatedly requiring to recognize their scientific authority. Franco style? Or what was that?

 There is this a bit nationalistic anecdote which fits very well to the story with this their Maria Lluch-Senar:

— When someone (Frenchman, German, Englishman, Chinese etc) is caught red handed with a freshly robbed thing they:

1) beg a mercy 2) try to get rid of a thing 3) try to run away

— When a Spaniard is caught red handed s/he yells: «you just want to spoil my shiny reputation!»

Sad, but true. Yet another stereotype was confirmed one more (and more, and more…) time.
Whoever lie that much — they are very easy to carry on with all possible manipulations, slandering, reversal off your own claims against you and any vile tactics to take over you by any means.
If they can't fight you, they lie about you.

Support bacteria! — they're the only culture some people have!…

…in their labs

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

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

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, of course. 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?)
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 is desperate to help her). I called for CRG's Conflict Resolution Committee, which 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.

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

Story archive in Dropbox

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

— this was K.'s reply to M Lluch-Senar's email quoted here-above (the one with the red font).

(signatures, K.'s & of Bruna Vives Prat, CRG managing director, are dimmed)
So 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 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 now days. 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 those harassments 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 favourite 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 to 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?)
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, does support scientific fraud of their PI MP Cosma — please see by these links an article of Leonid Schneider and PubPeer comments.