Going through the Motions #2: When EndNote goes horribly wrong

It is not entirely clear how Ralph Lewin -- sole author of "More on Merde" (2001) -- acquired four co-authors, seemingly of Qwghlmian nationality:


The source of this eccentric citation is De Groot et al. (2017), and its relevance to my interests lies in its contribution to the Case of the Coprophagic Arabs. Which is to say: De Groot's paper on fecal microbiota transplants relates on one hand to an advertising hoax (concocted by Rothschild in 1993 to promote the products of a medscam pill-mill), in which Rommel's Afrika Korpsmen self-medicated by eating camel poop, in imitation of the dysentery-cure practices of the local Arabs... And on the other hand, it bears upon the Whackyweedia entry on FMTs, as amended in early 2015 to incorporate Rothschild's fantasy.

Readers may recall some intermediate steps along the fantasy's pathway to general acceptance. Bernhardt (2000) cited Rothschild (1993), either ironically or out of credulity, in a short collection of out-takes from his PhD thesis. The story fitted Lewin's (2001) narrative so he cited Bernhardt. Meanwhile, in a parallel route to legitimacy, Rothschild's fabrication came to the attention of a conspiracy-theorising Alex Jones / David Icke wannabee. Rense added it to his collection of paranoid ideation at the eponymous Rense.com... which is a totally reliable source by the standards of listicle clickbait sites like Cracked and MentalFloss, so they regurged their versions of the story as Irrefutable Fact. In turn, Perkins and DeSalle (2015) took that churnalism and paraphrased it in their book-shaped object from Yale University Press.

So that is the executive summary of a previous post, to which this is the sequel. Those of you who read and remembered it can wake up now.

De Groot et al. (2017) is the most recent of four reviews by FMT specialist Nieuwdorp and his students, all setting the stage with versions of an introductory passage. Smits et al. (2013),

The first known description of human donor feces as a therapeutic agent came from China. In the fourth century, Ge Hong, in the Handbook of Emergency Medicine, prescribed ingestion of feces for a variety of conditions.6 Much later, Ralph Lewin reported that “…consumption of fresh, warm camel feces has been recommended by Bedouins as a remedy for bacterial dysentery; its efficacy was confirmed by German soldiers in Africa during World War II.”⁷ The first use of FMT in mainstream medicine was described in 1958 for the treatment of pseudomembranous colitis (presumably due to Clostridium difficile infection [CDI]) by Eiseman et al.⁸

Nieuwdorp (2014),

The first known description of human donor faeces as a therapeutic agent came from China in the fourth century, when Ge Hong, in the Handbook of Emergency Medicine, prescribed ingestion of faeces from babies (described as ‘yellow soup’) for a variety of conditions². Much later, Ralph Lewin³ reported that ‘… consumption of fresh, warm camel feces has been recommended by Bedouins as a remedy for bacterial dysentery; its efficacy was confirmed by German soldiers in Africa during World War II’. The first use of FMT in mainstream medicine was described in 1958 by Eiseman and colleagues⁴ for the treatment of pseudomembranous enterocolitis, presumably due to CDI.

Van Nood et al. (2014).

INTRODUCTION AND PURPOSE OF THE REVIEW
The first description of the use of human feces as a remedy for disease derives from ancient Chinese history, when feces were prescribed for a variety of conditions according to the Handbook of Emergency Medicine, written by Ge Hong, approximately 1700 years ago [1]. Later, consumption of fresh, warm camel feces was recommended by Bedouins as a remedy for bacterial dysentery; its efficacy was confirmed by German soldiers in Africa during World War II [2]. In modern medical literature, infusion of feces from healthy donors was first reported in 1958, when the surgeon Eiseman described a heroic response in patients with antibiotic-associated diarrhea treated with enemas containing donor feces [3].

In these first three installments, rather than linking to More on Merde, citations [7], [3] and [2] are to Lewin's earlier book Merde, no doubt a fascinating tome but one that only mentions camel dung in a combustive role (i.e. as a cooking fuel), with no mention of its pharmacological properties. Curious minds are wondering whether they always... no... never forgot to check their references.*


In the 2017 version. De Groot et al. fixed this lacuna and cited both of Lewin's works... with the four additional Qwghlmian co-authors, just to be safe. They also referred their readers to the "Great Camel Dung Mystery" chapter of Welcome to the Microbiome, having come across Perkins and DeSalle (2015) and seen it as an independent validating source, rather than as just another rehash of the Rothschild fantasy.

My point -- to the extent that a point is required -- is that the Nieuwdorp group are the missing link between Lewin and the Whackyweedia recension:**

The concept of treating fecal diseases with fecal matter originated in China millennia ago. Fourth century Chinese medical literature mentions it to treat food poisoning and severe diarrhea. 1200 years later Li Shizhen used yellow soup aka golden syrup which contained fresh dry or fermented stool to treat abdominal diseases.[29] 'Yellow soup' was made of fecal matter and water, which was drunk by the patient.[30]
The consumption of "fresh, warm camel feces has been recommended by Bedouins as a remedy for bacterial dysentery; its efficacy probably attributable to the antimicrobial subtilisin produced byBacillus subtilis was anecdotally confirmed by German soldiers of the Afrika Korps during World War II".[31]
The first description of FMT was published in 1958 by Ben Eiseman and colleagues, a team of surgeons from Colorado...

Entrenched in that unassailable bastion, the fabrication continues to pullulate and proliferate and make inroads into across Consensus Reality, like Perytons or some other Borgesian parable, so there is little prospect of ever rounding it up for incarceration within a Fictive Confinement facility. Sbahi & Di Palma (2016), Matijašić et al. (2016) and Gagliardi et al. (2018) are only three recent scrap-booking exercises in the FMT literature to have copy-pasted the Wikipedia passage into their Literature Reviews, and after finding them I lost heart and could not be arsed recording any more.

I am not counting Baktash et al. (2018), who evidently copy-pasted directly from Nieuwdorp, since they cite the wrong Lewin work in imitation of his infelicity.

It is always possible that De Groot et al. (2017) deliberately added Lewin's collaborators Uwlfoh SS, Dgglwlrqdo RU, Derxw L and Duwlfoh W, to see which rivals plagiarise their References section.
* In addition, Van Nood &c with Ref. [2] managed to engarble the book's title and its author's name:

2 Merde LRA. Excursions in scientific, cultural, and socio-historical coprology. New York: Random House Inc.; 1999.

** For incorporating the passage, Wikieditor 'Wuerzele' was recognised as "one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors".