Censorship of Academic Papers on Figshare and Zenodo

This page is an investigative evidence record. It does not establish, by itself, that NASA, CERN, Digital Science, Zenodo, Figshare, or any named person coordinated viewpoint-based suppression. It documents removals, search asymmetry, repository-governance concerns, correspondence, DOI records, and open questions requiring itemized disclosure.

Censorship of Academic Papers on Figshare and Zenodo
Subject	Removed, unavailable, or hard-to-find DOI-linked academic and quasi-academic works
Claimant	Andrew Lehti
Central question	Whether open-research repositories preserved Moon-landing-critical scholarship as part of the inspectable research record
Status	Open investigative record

Censorship of Academic Papers on Figshare and Zenodo is a Metopedia investigative evidence page concerning removed, unavailable, or difficult-to-locate DOI-linked research records on Figshare and Zenodo after publication of works critical of NASA’s Apollo Moon-landing record.

The page focuses on Figshare DOI removals, Zenodo spam tombstones, DataCite DOI persistence, FAIR metadata retention, and the treatment of Apollo-critical research across Figshare, Zenodo, ResearchGate, and Academia.edu.

The question is not whether every Apollo-critical claim is correct. The question is whether open-research repositories that advertise preservation, DOI persistence, and accountability should remove controversial research under broad labels such as “spam,” “inappropriate content,” or “terms violation” without preserving item-level metadata and giving an itemized reason for each affected work.

The working thesis is narrow: controversial research can be wrong, weak, speculative, or disproven, but it does not become misinformation merely because it challenges a dominant account. A research record remains useful when it can be inspected, criticized, corrected, retracted, or rejected on stated grounds. If a DOI-linked record disappears without meaningful metadata, the public loses both the claim and the reason for its removal.

How to read this page

This page separates evidence from interpretation.

Level	Meaning	Standard used here
Documented artifact	A DOI, URL, notice, correspondence excerpt, tombstone, search report, or platform statement exists.	Treated as evidence of what was found, displayed, or communicated.
Search finding	A search report states that certain records were found or not found.	Treated as a bounded search result, not proof of absolute absence.
Pattern inference	The assembled record suggests unstable preservation, selective accessibility, or opaque enforcement.	Treated as an investigative inference requiring further verification.
Censorship conclusion	A platform removed work because of its viewpoint or institutional target.	Treated as a hypothesis unless internal records, reproduced searches, or admissions establish motive.

Executive summary

The record supports five findings.

1. Figshare is the strongest removal case. Multiple DOI-linked Figshare records connected to Lehti’s Apollo, image-forensic, and NASA-critical work are reported as removed, unavailable, or displaying terms-violation notices.
2. Zenodo is a weaker but relevant scarcity-and-tombstone case. Searches repeatedly surfaced ordinary lunar-science material, mission-planning material, or misinformation-discussion material, while older Lehti-associated Zenodo records were reported as tombstoned as spam.
3. Later Zenodo exceptions exist. A later search found April 6, 2026 N-K Sciences Zenodo records alleging NASA fake Moon soil samples and Apollo/Artemis fraud. These records show that some Apollo-critical material was accessible on Zenodo, but they do not establish a broad historical archive of such criticism.
4. ResearchGate and Academia.edu provide comparison cases. Search reports found Apollo-critical material on both platforms, including one ResearchGate item that remained visible with a retraction notice rather than disappearing from the record.
5. The key defect is not removal alone. The central defect is the absence of itemized, DOI-level disclosure sufficient to distinguish spam, duplication, copyright, plagiarism, research integrity, legal risk, defamation, privacy, repository scope, or viewpoint-sensitive enforcement.

Core investigative question

A repository may remove files. The issue is whether a DOI-linked scholarly record should remain identifiable after removal.

A removal looks like ordinary moderation when the platform:

• identifies the exact item;
• cites the exact policy clause;
• explains how the item violated that clause;
• preserves DOI metadata;
• sends the DOI to a meaningful tombstone;
• provides an export, appeal, or correction path.

A removal looks like a repository-integrity failure when the platform:

• removes controversial material under broad labels;
• disables an account while obscuring the item-level record;
• fails to identify the affected DOI-linked works;
• strips public bibliographic metadata;
• refuses to provide further information;
• leaves external citations pointing to generic error pages.

The record does not prove that NASA directed the removals. It supports a formal repository-governance question: Are open-research repositories preserving controversial criticism as part of the scientific record, or are they using broad policy discretion in a way that makes controversial records uninspectable?

Repository items identified through search

The count basis is narrow: “Found” means exact title, DOI, or platform-ID mentions across the reviewed research files. It is not a measure of total public availability, search-engine volume, or current accessibility.

Platform	Title / item	DOI / ID	Status	Critical claim type	Found
Figshare	The Silence of Inquiry: Forensic Reflections, A Crisis of Perception, and NASA Under Scrutiny	10.6084/m9.figshare.28078982	Removed	Staged Moon-surface photos, slowed-down motion, forensic critique	16
Figshare	Lunar Image Forensics: A Comprehensive and Comparative Photoelectromagnetic Analysis of Moon Landings	10.6084/m9.figshare.28078943	Removed	PEMi / photo-forensic Apollo-image critique	5
Figshare	Echoclasms in Motion: Echonoscence by Echoclasts…	10.6084/m9.figshare.28030013	Removed	NASA narrative, gaslighting, implausibility critique	5
Figshare / ResearchGate	Image Degradation Analysis / IDA of Lunar Landing Photos	10.6084/m9.figshare.31323694 / RG 400711369	Removed on Figshare; live on ResearchGate	Artificial lighting / studio-light compositing claim	17
Zenodo	NASA FAKE MOON SOIL SAMPLES — Complete Forensic Analysis	10.5281/zenodo.19442363	Live**	Apollo samples alleged to be terrestrial rocks	3
Zenodo	NASA Scientific and Financial Frauds — Complete Exposure Apollo Fake Moon Rocks…	10.5281/zenodo.19442540	Live**	Apollo/Artemis fraud allegation record	5
ResearchGate	Apollo 11 - The Real Story	RG 383213710	Live	Apollo 11 and predecessor missions described as “faked”	1
ResearchGate	Topographic Analysis of Landing Areas of Apollo Moon Missions	RG 321370583	Live	Apollo landscapes alleged to be staged, manipulated, or altered	1
ResearchGate	Image Degradation Analysis	RG 400711369	Live	Artificial light / controlled-environment claim	14
ResearchGate	RETRACTED: Interpreting Locked Photographic Data: The Case of Apollo 17 Photo GPN-2000-00113	RG 349317666	Live but retracted	Apollo 17 image alleged to be composite	1
Academia.edu	Man on the Moon?	Academia 164555065	Live	Concludes astronauts “never went” according to the report	1
Academia.edu	Pruebas de un alunizaje falso	Not shown	Live	Six Apollo missions alleged to be a filmed montage	1
Academia.edu	Critical Analysis of the Account of the U.S. Moon Landings Through the Lens of Michael Cunningham’s Theory of Educide	Academia 129345065	Live	Strong skeptical / narrative-control critique	1
Academia.edu	THE EARTH’S MOON	Academia 115608658	Live	Partial-staging claim; author still says astronauts went	1
Academia.edu	The Technical Feasibility of the Apollo Missions	Not shown	Live	Raises staging/authenticity questions; not strict denial	1

**Reported as available, April 6, 2026.

Reading the pattern

The Figshare set is the strongest removal evidence. Multiple DOI-linked records tied to Apollo imagery, lunar-image forensics, and NASA narrative criticism were identified, and later reports state that those pages displayed removal or access-disabled notices under Figshare’s terms and conditions.

Zenodo is different. The two live Zenodo examples were found only in a later follow-up search and came from the same recent N-K Sciences cluster. They show that some NASA-critical Apollo material was accessible on Zenodo, but they do not establish a broad historical archive of Apollo criticism on that platform.

ResearchGate and Academia.edu are comparison platforms. Similar Apollo-critical or Apollo-skeptical material could be located and retrieved there. One ResearchGate item carried a retraction notice rather than disappearing, which matters because retraction preserves the record while attaching an integrity signal.

Search method and verification protocol

Search method

Searches included platform-domain queries and subject terms such as:

• moon landing hoax
• NASA hoax
• fake moon landing
• staged moon landing
• We Never Went to the Moon
• Bart Sibrel
• Bill Kaysing
• alunizaje falso
• Apollo staged
• artificial lighting Apollo
• exact DOI searches
• exact title searches

For Zenodo and Figshare, the strongest inclusion standard required a platform-hosted DOI record. For ResearchGate and Academia.edu, the reports accepted platform-hosted items even when no DOI was shown, because those platforms are not primarily DOI repositories.

Automated source discovery and verification: Andrew Lehti as a recurring result

AI-assisted search agents, including Google Gemini DeepResearch Pro, were used as indexing and retrieval tools, not as analytical authorities. Their role was to generate leads: DOI strings, titles, platform URLs, item statuses, and possible repository records.

The search was not seeded with Andrew Lehti’s name. Under neutral repository-focused parameters, automated retrieval repeatedly converged on Lehti-associated works, including Image Degradation Analysis and The Silence of Inquiry, as recurring identifiable traces of technical Apollo-critical literature in the Figshare and Zenodo search environment.

This recurrence is not treated as proof that the underlying Apollo-critical claims are correct. Its evidentiary value is narrower: when the repository landscape was queried for Apollo-critical material, Lehti-associated DOI records repeatedly appeared as discoverable leads, while a broad stable corpus of comparable DOI-hosted Apollo-critical literature on Figshare and Zenodo did not appear in the reviewed search record.

Human verification protocol

To reduce the risk of AI hallucination or prompt-shaped interpretation, automated output was treated only as a lead sheet. Each DOI, URL, or platform ID required human verification by direct browser access, DOI lookup, tombstone inspection, landing-page inspection, or capture of the platform notice.

The AI-assisted tools did not decide that a Figshare DOI was removed. Human inspection checked whether the DOI or landing page resolved, whether the page displayed a removal notice, whether the item metadata remained visible, and whether the platform supplied an itemized explanation.

The AI-assisted tools did not decide that a Zenodo record was removed as spam. Human inspection checked the Zenodo landing page or tombstone and recorded whether the page displayed a removal reason such as “Spam.”

This distinction matters because the investigation does not rely on AI narration. It relies on reproducible repository artifacts: DOI resolution, HTTP status, landing-page metadata, tombstone content, removal notices, platform correspondence, and manually inspected search results.

Sources found and not found

Figshare records reported removed or unavailable

DOI	Title	Reported status	Relevance
10.6084/m9.figshare.28078982	The Silence of Inquiry: Forensic Reflections, A Crisis of Perception and NASA Under Scrutiny	Reported as removed or unavailable; one deep-research report stated that the DOI returned HTTP 410 Gone.	Direct Apollo/NASA critique.
10.6084/m9.figshare.28078943	Lunar Image Forensics: A Comprehensive and Comparative Photoelectromagnetic Analysis of Moon Landings	Reported as removed for violating Figshare terms.	Dataset concerning Apollo image forensics.
10.6084/m9.figshare.28030013	Echoclasms in Motion: Echonoscence by Echoclasts: The Education System, NASA, the Seeds of Implausibility and the Echoes of Gaslighting and Narcissism	Reported as removed for violating Figshare terms.	Broader critique including NASA, education, gaslighting, and implausibility.

Additional Figshare items such as 10.6084/m9.figshare.28454402 and 10.6084/m9.figshare.28645382 were reported as displaying similar removal notices, but they are not counted as core Moon-landing records where their titles do not directly establish Apollo relevance.

Zenodo records found

DOI or record	Title or description	Status in investigation	Interpretation
10.5281/zenodo.19442363	NASA Fake Moon Soil Samples — Complete Forensic Analysis	Reported as available, April 6, 2026.	Apollo-critical N-K Sciences record.
10.5281/zenodo.19442540	NASA Scientific and Financial Frauds — Complete Exposure Apollo Fake Moon Rocks…	Reported as available, April 6, 2026.	Apollo/Artemis fraud allegation record.
10.5281/zenodo.6471162	Lehti-associated record	Removal note: Spam record, removed by Zenodo staff.	Reported as Apollo-critical by the investigation, but content cannot be independently inspected from the tombstone alone.
10.5281/zenodo.6345268	Lehti-associated record	Removal note: Spam record, removed by Zenodo staff.	Reported as Apollo-critical by the investigation, but content cannot be independently inspected from the tombstone alone.
10.5281/zenodo.6536389	Lehti-associated record	Removal note: Spam record, removed by Zenodo staff.	Reported as Apollo-critical by the investigation, but content cannot be independently inspected from the tombstone alone.

Sources not found

Search target	Result	Importance
Historical Zenodo DOI-hosted Apollo-denial corpus before April 2026	Not found in supplied reports.	Suggests that Zenodo did not visibly preserve a meaningful historical record of Apollo-critical DOI scholarship in the reviewed searches.
Figshare-hosted accessible DOI corpus of Lehti’s removed Apollo-critical works	Not found; records were reported removed or unavailable.	Supports the Figshare removal and DOI-traceability concern.
Itemized Figshare explanation for each removed DOI	Not found.	Prevents independent evaluation of whether removal was valid.
Itemized Zenodo explanation beyond “Spam” or broad Terms of Use language	Not found.	Prevents evaluation of the spam classification.
Direct evidence that NASA ordered removal	Not found.	Limits the conclusion to repository-integrity and conflict-of-interest inquiry, not proven external command.
Complete internal moderation logs	Not found.	Required to move from pattern inference to established motive.

Why opposing views are part of science

Science is not a loyalty system. It is a method for testing claims against evidence, logic, measurement, replication, and criticism. A claim does not become misinformation merely because it opposes the current narrative. It becomes misinformation when it is knowingly false, deceptively framed, unsupported while presented as established fact, or insulated from correction.

Opposing views can test accepted explanations, reveal missing data, expose weak assumptions, force evidence to be shown rather than invoked, and allow error correction when consensus hardens into doctrine.

A repository does not have to endorse a paper in order to preserve it. Preservation means the claim can be inspected. If the work is weak, the answer is criticism, replication failure, retraction, expression of concern, or a clear research-integrity note. If the work violates policy, the answer is an itemized explanation. Removal without meaningful metadata creates a different problem: the work cannot be examined, and the removal cannot be audited.

Background: when open research disappears

Open research repositories are not ordinary file hosts. They present themselves as part of the scholarly record: places where research can be cited, preserved, inspected, challenged, and revisited. When a repository assigns a DOI, the work becomes more than an upload. It becomes a traceable academic object.

Zenodo describes itself as an open research repository built and operated by CERN and OpenAIRE, with uploads assigned Digital Object Identifiers and stored in CERN’s Data Centre. Zenodo’s public materials state that it was launched through the OpenAIRE project, with CERN providing repository capability.

Figshare describes itself as repository infrastructure for sharing, showcasing, and managing research outputs. Digital Science materials state that Figshare is part of Digital Science and that Figshare provides repository infrastructure for institutions. Figshare also publishes retention and backup representations, including that public items are retained for the lifetime of the repository, that metadata can remain accessible when data are no longer available, and that backups are performed nightly to Figshare-managed AWS S3 buckets with versioning for restoration.

These claims create a public expectation: if research is removed, the removal should be specific, traceable, and reviewable. A DOI-linked work should not vanish behind a generic notice. Readers should be able to know what existed, who created it, what identifier it carried, when it was removed, and why.

Policy framework and broad removal clauses

Zenodo’s Terms of Use include a broad clause stating that CERN may remove or block content and restrict user access at its discretion when it deems content inappropriate, insufficiently protected, interfering with operations, violating terms, or violating applicable law. Zenodo’s policy page states that withdrawal is exceptional, that the reason for withdrawal should be indicated on a tombstone page, and that the DOI and original URL are retained. Zenodo’s help page lists removal reasons including spam, withdrawal/deaccession, takedown requests, copyright infringement, plagiarism, scientific misconduct, violation of terms, personal data, transfer, duplicate submissions, and legal or regulatory compliance.

Figshare’s Terms and Conditions include a “Content You Must Not Submit” section covering rights violations, defamation, privacy violations, illegal content, malware, abusive or harmful content, sensitive personal information, false or misleading content, harm to Figshare or affiliates, AI-generated or duplicate publication content, and acceptable-use violations.

The breadth of these clauses makes itemized explanation essential. A generic reference to a broad policy does not identify the work, the clause, the alleged violation, or the evidence. It does not distinguish plagiarism from spam, copyright risk from defamation risk, duplicate upload from scientific-misconduct concern, or ordinary moderation from viewpoint-sensitive suppression.

Figshare DOI removal case record

Figshare response

Figshare’s response to Andrew Lehti illustrates the central transparency issue. It refers to broad policy categories but does not identify which item violated which clause, what content was considered inappropriate, whether the concern involved copyright, duplication, research integrity, authorship, factuality, platform abuse, or any external complaint.

Figshare response to Andrew Lehti

Date: April 21, 2026
From: Figshare Support
Subject: Account disabled / content removal notice
Evidence status: Author-supplied correspondence

Hello Andrew,

Hello,

We have checked, and your account has been disabled for violating Figshare's Terms and Conditions (https://figshare.com/terms) — please refer in particular to the "Acceptable Use" and "Content You Must Not Submit" sections, which are most likely to be of relevance — for posting inappropriate content (https://help.figshare.com/article/inappropriate-content-on-figshare).

Below, you can also find details of the key principles of our acceptable publication guidelines:

Academic research: Figshare should be used for publishing the outputs of academic research that benefit the research community.

Responsible research practices, research integrity and publication ethics: Figshare should be used for publishing research that is consistent with the principles of responsible research, research integrity and publication ethics, and not work that might undermine such principles.

Non-commercial: Figshare should be used solely for personal, non-commercial scholarly purposes.

Authorship: Figshare should be used to publish work that has been authored by the submitter.

Originality: Figshare should be used to publish the original work of the author not, for example, work that has been copied (plagiarism, self-plagiarism or text recycling) or has already been published already, nor for making repetitive uploads of substantially the same material.

We are unable to provide further information at this time.

Best Regards,

[redacted]

Integrations Engineer at Figshare

store, share, discover research at figshare.com

Email retained by the author. Redactions, if any, are marked with [redacted].

The response gives a policy area but not an accountable decision record. It does not provide an itemized list of affected works, explain whether all removed works violated the same rule, identify a complaint, name the enforcement category, or provide a DOI-level appeal path.

The account-disabled defense and the obligation of DOI persistence

A foreseeable institutional defense is that the removal was account-level rather than item-level. Under this explanation, if an author violates platform terms, the account is disabled and the associated files are removed as an administrative consequence.

That defense may explain loss of hosting access, but it does not resolve the repository-integrity issue. A DOI-linked research repository is not merely a cloud file host. Once a repository assigns a DOI to a work, the upload becomes part of the scholarly reference system. Readers, critics, researchers, and institutions may cite the DOI, inspect the landing page, retrieve metadata, or use the record to understand what existed and what later happened to it.

A platform may revoke future upload privileges. It may restrict file access. It may remove unsafe, unlawful, plagiarized, duplicative, or policy-violating files. But if a DOI was minted and distributed, the scholarly-record question remains: what should the DOI continue to resolve to?

The minimum accountable answer is a metadata-rich tombstone page. Such a page should preserve the bibliographic identity of the removed work while explaining why the file is unavailable. Without that record, readers cannot distinguish between a retraction, copyright complaint, duplicate upload, privacy issue, spam classification, authorship dispute, legal takedown, research-integrity finding, or viewpoint-sensitive removal.

The account-disabled defense therefore fails if it collapses three separate actions into one opaque outcome:

1. disabling the author’s account;
2. removing or restricting access to hosted files;
3. erasing or obscuring the DOI-linked bibliographic record.

The first two actions may be within platform discretion. The third creates a scholarly-record problem.

DataCite DOI persistence and tombstone-page standards

DataCite landing-page guidance states that DOIs should resolve to a landing page containing metadata about the item, that the landing page should include a full bibliographic citation, and that the DOI should be displayed in human-readable and machine-readable form. DataCite’s landing-page guidance also states that when an item has been removed, retracted, or otherwise made unavailable, the landing page should serve as a tombstone page containing enough information to identify the item and confirm that it existed.

DataCite’s support documentation explains that when a DataCite DOI is published in Findable or Registered state, it is registered in the Handle System and cannot be deleted. Crossref applies the same general persistence principle in the broader DOI ecosystem: DOI strings cannot be changed once registered, and DOIs cannot be fully deleted.

The FAIR principles reinforce the same preservation logic. FAIR principle A2 states that metadata should remain accessible even when the data are no longer available.

These standards do not prove why any specific Figshare or Zenodo item was removed. They establish the audit standard by which a removal should be judged. If a DOI-linked item is removed, the repository should preserve the public bibliographic record and explain the unavailability with enough specificity that readers can identify the work and understand the category of removal.

Zenodo spam tombstone case record

Lehti reports that Zenodo gave two different removal signals: a public tombstone classification and an email citing Terms of Use clause 6.

Zenodo tombstone excerpt

Date of removal: June 2, 2022
Platform: Zenodo
Identifier: 10.5281/zenodo.6536389
Evidence status: Author-supplied tombstone excerpt

Gone

The record you are trying to access was removed from Zenodo. The metadata of the record is kept for archival purposes.

Field	Value
Reason for removal	Spam
Removed by	Admin
Removal note	Spam record, removed by Zenodo staff.
Date of removal	June 2, 2022
Identifier	10.5281/zenodo.6536389

Tombstone text retained by the author. It is reproduced here for evidentiary context.

Zenodo correspondence

Date: Not stated in supplied excerpt
From: Zenodo / CERN representative
Subject: Account deactivation under Zenodo Terms of Use
Evidence status: Author-supplied correspondence

Dear Andrew,

You account has been deactivated in accordance with our Terms of Use (https://about.zenodo.org/terms/) that you have accepted by using Zenodo, specifically:

"6. CERN reserves the right, without notice, at its sole discretion and without liability, (i) to alter, delete or block access to content that it deems to be inappropriate or insufficiently protected, and (ii) to restrict or remove User access where it considers that use of Zenodo interferes with its operations or violates these Terms of Use or applicable laws."

Yours sincerely,
Lars

Email retained by the author. Redactions, if any, are marked with [redacted].

The Zenodo tombstone is stronger than a dead link because it preserves a removal classification and identifier. Its weakness is that “spam” is not self-explanatory. If the removed record was non-research abuse, the label may be ordinary enforcement. If the record was a scholarly or quasi-scholarly work, the label requires explanation.

Conflict-of-interest concerns

Zenodo, CERN, NASA, and the U.S. government

Zenodo is operated by CERN and OpenAIRE. CERN and NASA have publicly collaborated on open-science initiatives, including a 2023 CERN-NASA open science summit and a framework agreement concerning open science collaboration. CERN also has documented U.S. government participation and funding support for CERN-related projects, including U.S. contributions to the Large Hadron Collider program through the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation.

The conflict-of-interest question is not whether NASA directly ordered a Zenodo removal. That has not been established. The narrower question is whether a CERN-operated repository that collaborates with NASA on open science should provide heightened transparency when removing academic criticism of NASA-related historical claims.

Figshare, Digital Science, NASA, and U.S. government agencies

Figshare is part of Digital Science, and Digital Science markets research products to institutions, governments, funders, and research organizations. Figshare also publishes guidance directed at U.S. federally funded researchers.

The conflict-of-interest question is not whether Digital Science or Figshare received a specific NASA instruction regarding Lehti’s work. That has not been established. The narrower question is whether a repository provider with government-agency relationships should provide transparent, itemized moderation reasons when removing academic criticism of a major U.S. government agency.

Formal preservation and reinstatement demand to Figshare

Evidence document: The following demand letter is reproduced as part of the evidence record. It is collapsed for readability. It is author-supplied correspondence.

Formal preservation and reinstatement demand to Figshare

Date: April 23, 2026
From: Andrew Lehti
To: Figshare Legal Department, Figshare Support, and Digital Science
Subject: Preservation, reinstatement, data return, DOI status, and itemized disclosure of alleged policy violations
Evidence status: Author-supplied correspondence

Show/hide formal demand letter

To Figshare Legal Department, Support, and Digital Science:

I am the account holder for the Figshare repository and academic papers at issue and the owner of my original submissions and/or the person authorized to upload the included material. Those materials were removed, restricted, or deactivated without prior warning, notice, or meaningful explanation.

A non-exhaustive schedule of affected works and DOI-linked records is attached as Schedule A and incorporated by reference into this demand.

This is a formal demand that you immediately preserve and not alter, delete, overwrite, deactivate, purge, or destroy any data associated with my account, repositories, items, papers, files, versions, metadata, DOI records, landing pages, moderation records, compliance records, support records, internal notes, notices, audit logs, backups, snapshots, and any related correspondence or complaint materials. This preservation demand expressly includes every work identified in Schedule A, along with any associated files, metadata, versions, DOI records, landing pages, backups, audit trails, and moderation or enforcement records.

Your published materials state that user-submitted content remains owned by the user, that Figshare performs nightly backups of data files and metadata, that AWS S3 versioning allows immediate restoration after deletion, that deleted files may be restored for up to 30 days, and that public items are retained for the lifetime of the repository. In light of those published representations, you are on notice to preserve and restore all recoverable material immediately.

I demand the following relief:

1. Immediate reinstatement of my Figshare account and restoration of all removed repositories, papers, files, metadata, item pages, and DOI landing pages.
2. If you refuse reinstatement, a complete machine-readable export of all my account data and all user submissions associated with my account, including but not limited to original uploaded files, all versions, metadata, thumbnails, previews, hashes, identifiers, DOI metadata, publication history, access settings, support history, and any remaining copies in your possession, custody, or control.
3. A complete itemized list of every repository, paper, item, and file removed, blocked, hidden, deactivated, or otherwise affected, including title, internal ID, DOI, date of action, and current status.
4. For each affected DOI, identify the current DOI state, any prior DOI state changes known to you, whether the DOI remains resolvable, and every target URL assigned or used for that DOI, including any tombstone, replacement, or current landing page.
5. Confirm the status of each work listed in Schedule A, including whether it was removed, hidden, suppressed in search, detached from its DOI landing page, metadata-disabled, account-restricted, or otherwise affected, and state the date and reason for each action.
6. The exact policy basis for each action taken, including the precise clause number and text allegedly violated for each item, and a specific explanation of how each item allegedly violated that clause.
7. A statement of whether the action was based on copyright, defamation, privacy, duplicate content, originality, research-integrity concerns, legal threat, or any other internal or external complaint.
8. Preservation and production of all moderation and review decision-path records, including automated originality or AI-detection outputs, duplicate-content flags, abuse or risk flags, moderation queue entries, internal reviewer notes, policy-rule hits, and the identity of each person or system involved in the review or enforcement process.
9. Copies of all notices, complaints, takedown requests, internal determinations, and reviewer decisions that led to the removal, with only the narrowest legally required redactions. For any item withheld in whole or in part, identify the date, sender, recipient, general subject matter, and specific ground for withholding.
10. If any copyright complaint was involved, confirmation of that fact immediately, together with the exact notice received, the date and method by which you contend I was notified, the identity of the designated agent or office that processed the complaint, and the information necessary for me to submit any counter-notice or challenge available under your policy.
11. Confirmation of what data remains in active storage, archived storage, backups, snapshots, or recovery systems, what has been destroyed if anything, when it was destroyed, by whose authorization, and under what policy.
12. In the event of permanent removal, I demand that any affected DOI continue to resolve to a publicly accessible landing page containing the DOI, title, creator, date, sufficient identifying metadata to confirm the existence and identity of the affected work, and a tombstone notice explaining that the content has been removed or access-disabled, rather than to a generic removal page, 404 page, or other dead link, and that the DOI state and target URL be updated accordingly.

The current DOI destination pages are deficient because they do not identify the specific DOI-linked work, do not display the DOI, and do not provide sufficient bibliographic metadata to function as a proper tombstone page.

Because your terms select Massachusetts law, please treat this letter as a formal demand for relief to the fullest extent permitted by Massachusetts law. To the extent applicable, this letter is intended to satisfy the written demand requirement of M.G.L. c. 93A, § 9 by identifying the unfair or deceptive acts or practices relied upon, the injury suffered, and the relief demanded. I request restoration of my account and materials, or, failing that, full return of my data and a complete itemized statement of every alleged violation and every affected paper.

To the extent applicable, this message also constitutes a formal request for access to and a copy of personal data and account-associated records held about me, including the sources, purposes, recipients, transfers, retention information, and all personal data I provided or that is associated with my account, together with any portable export available under applicable privacy law.

Please provide a substantive written response by May 7, 2026 if reasonably possible. For the avoidance of doubt, to the extent M.G.L. c. 93A, § 9 applies, I expressly preserve any applicable thirty-day statutory response and waiting periods measured from the mailing or delivery of this demand. If you contend that any requested material will not be restored or produced, state every ground for refusal in full detail.

If this matter is not resolved promptly, I reserve the right to pursue all available remedies and escalations, including arbitration under the Terms, complaints to relevant consumer-protection, privacy, DOI-registration, and regulatory bodies, and any court proceeding otherwise permitted by law.

Nothing in this letter waives any rights, claims, remedies, or escalation options available to me.

Sincerely,

Andrew Lehti

[redacted]

Letter retained by the author. Redactions are marked with [redacted]. Unrelated email-interface text has been excluded.

Figshare Schedule A: affected works, DOI records, and source work IDs

Evidence schedule: This table is the affected-work schedule attached to Andrew Lehti’s Figshare letter. It is preserved because it identifies DOI-linked Figshare works alleged to have been removed, restricted, deactivated, or otherwise affected.

Figshare Schedule A: affected works, DOI records, and source work IDs

Document type: Attachment / affected-work schedule
Associated letter: Formal preservation and reinstatement demand to Figshare
Evidence status: Author-supplied DOI schedule

Show/hide Schedule A

No.	Title	DOI	Source Work ID	Type	Date
1	AI-Detection Bias and False Positives: Comparing 2016 Human, 2026 AI, and 2007 Student Essays Across Common Detectors	10.6084/m9.figshare.31439995	31439995	Journal article	2026-03-01
2	Image Degradation Analysis (IDA): Forensic Applications for Light Physics, White Paper	10.6084/m9.figshare.31323694	31323694	Journal article	2026-02-12
3	Ancient Latin Translation Fixes and the Reconstructed Relationship Between Rome and Scripture	10.6084/m9.figshare.31272391	31272391	Journal article	2026-02-06
4	Did Russia Admit to the USA landing on the Moon?	10.6084/m9.figshare.30132691	30132691	Interactive resource	2025-09-16
5	An Academic Biblical Reexamination, Part III: Cognitive Biases, Education, and the Amiatinus: How the Bible Became Corrupted, and Why the Bible Never Forbade Homosexuality	10.6084/m9.figshare.30069976	30069976	Journal article	2025-09-07
6	Cognitive Impasse [Visual]: Stages of Mental Rigidity, Dissonance, and Bias	10.6084/m9.figshare.30016195	30016195	Interactive resource	2025-08-30
7	ChatGPT and Grok3: A Comparative Analysis of Response Quality in Cognitive Psychology and Conspiracy Discourse	10.6084/m9.figshare.28729526	28729526	Journal article	2025-04-05
8	The Kardashian By-Product Effect (KBP Effect): Institutionalized Inadequacy and the Rise of Mediocrity Through Systemic Imposition of Inferiority	10.6084/m9.figshare.28645382	28645382	Journal article	2025-03-23
9	An Exploratory [title appears truncated in retrieved record]	10.6084/m9.figshare.28454402	28454402	Journal article	2025-02-20
10	Degradation Analysis of Lunar Landing Photos: Evaluating Authenticity of Light Sources	10.6084/m9.figshare.28225073	28225073	Interactive resource	2025-01-16
11	The Silence of Inquiry: Forensic Reflections, A Crisis of Perception, and NASA Under Scrutiny	10.6084/m9.figshare.28078982	28078982	Journal article	2025-01-16
12	Lunar Image Forensics: A Comprehensive and Comparative Photoelectromagnetic Analysis of Moon Landings	10.6084/m9.figshare.28078943	28078943	Dataset	2025-01-15
13	Echoclasms in Motion: Echonoscence by Echoclasts: The Education System, NASA, the Seeds of Implausibility and the Echoes of Gaslighting and Narcissism; Student Manipulation and the Roots of Evil: Fragility, Conformity, and Mass Violence	10.6084/m9.figshare.28030013	28030013	Journal article	2024-12-30
14	The Reptilian People in Authority: Basilicas, Basilisks, and an Allegory	10.6084/m9.figshare.28016237	28016237	Journal article	2024-12-29
15	Birds of a Feather: Electromagnetic Together.	10.6084/m9.figshare.28092752	28092752	Journal article	2024-12-26
16	Cognitive Impasse and the Puppet Master of Society: A Framework of Mental Rigidity	10.6084/m9.figshare.28014626	28014626	Journal article	2024-12-13
17	Standardized Obedience: The Suppression of Critical Thinking, Innovation, and Creativity in Worldwide Conformity-Driven Education Systems	10.6084/m9.figshare.28015913	28015913	Journal article	2024-12-12
18	The Cycle of Inferiority and Superiority: From Imposition to Projection and Self-Perpetuation	10.6084/m9.figshare.28013819	28013819	Journal article	2024-12-12
19	When Death or Loss Makes Us Laugh: Unraveling the Emotional Paradox and Exploring the Connection Between Grief and Humor	10.6084/m9.figshare.28014581	28014581	Journal article	2024-12-12
20	Familiarity Phenomenon: Autonormia	10.6084/m9.figshare.26826499	26826499	Journal article	2024-12-12
21	PEDOCOLBIBX47: The Bible Never Condemned Homosexuality: An Academic Reexamination, Part II	10.6084/m9.figshare.27936774	27936774	Journal article	2024-12-02
22	Selective-Mindedness: An Introduction and the Illusion of Open-Mindedness	10.6084/m9.figshare.27642519	27642519	Journal article	2024-11-16
23	The Canonical Order of Operations: a Separate Framework	10.6084/m9.figshare.27661734	27661734	Journal article	2024-11-14
24	The Polyhedral Index Partition (PIP) and the Discovery of Pascal’s Dimensions: Enabling Computational Retrieval and Reversibility in High-Index Partition Arrays	10.6084/m9.figshare.27642783	27642783	Journal article	2024-11-11
25	Extrapolative Trial by Error	10.6084/m9.figshare.27643080	27643080	Journal article	2024-11-10
26	Paradox of Proof by Lehti	10.6084/m9.figshare.27613035	27613035	Journal article	2024-11-05
27	Cognitive Impasse: The Self-Perpetuating Cycle of Learned Behaviors and Cognitive Biases	10.6084/m9.figshare.27367785	27367785	Journal article	2024-11-01
28	Utilizing Photoelectromagnetic Degradation Imagery for Enhanced Forensic Assessment	10.6084/m9.figshare.27308148	27308148	Journal article	2024-10-26
29	Polar Jections: Introduction to the Conjective and Perjective Types	10.6084/m9.figshare.27273132	27273132	Preprint	2024-10-21
30	Supplemental Observation on Memory Deterioration Through Repeated Recall of a Childhood Scene	10.6084/m9.figshare.27263862	27263862	Interactive resource	2024-10-20
31	Volume Seven: Kentucky: An Archaic Echo of Con Tacchi?	10.6084/m9.figshare.27229788	27229788	Journal article	2024-10-15
32	Volume Six: Cognitive Defensiveness: Infamicate	10.6084/m9.figshare.27098722	27098722	Journal article	2024-09-25

Schedule retained by the author. Titles, DOI strings, dates, and work IDs are reproduced as an evidence index.

Why this matters

Academic repositories are citation infrastructure. They mediate public access to research, preserve metadata, and shape what future readers can verify. When removals are opaque, three forms of damage occur:

1. Author damage: the author loses access to works, metadata, DOI records, and publication history.
2. Reader damage: readers cannot inspect the removed work or evaluate whether removal was justified.
3. Record damage: DOI-linked scholarship becomes incomplete, misleading, or invisible.

The larger danger is not only that one author loses files. The larger danger is that controversial academic material can be removed under broad administrative labels while the platform continues to present itself as open, persistent, and research-supportive.

Counterarguments and limitations

Several counterarguments remain:

• Figshare and Zenodo may have enforced neutral policies unrelated to viewpoint.
• Some removed works may have violated repository suitability rules even if the author disputes that conclusion.
• Repetitive uploads, duplicate material, formatting, metadata errors, or platform-specific rules could have contributed to enforcement.
• A platform relationship with NASA, CERN, U.S. agencies, or Digital Science does not prove directed removal.
• Search absence does not prove suppression unless the search method is reproducible and comparable across platforms.
• Correspondence, DOI traces, and platform notices document what was communicated, but they do not reveal internal moderation reasoning.
• Search reports may conflict because they used different inclusion rules: DOI-only versus non-DOI, paper-only versus datasets, direct denial versus broader skepticism, and public landing-page metadata versus secondary traces.

These limitations do not erase the accountability question. They define the evidence still needed.

Figshare follow-up response and disputed file-return link

After the preservation and reinstatement demand, Figshare sent a follow-up response stating that the account ban was final, that there was no appeal mechanism, and that the metadata and files were available through an external UploadNow link.

The response is significant for three reasons. First, it confirmed that Figshare would not provide an appeal path. Second, they would not confirm which policy, nor which paper violated their terms. Third, the file-return method itself became a security concern: the provided third-party download link was blocked by Malwarebytes as a Trojan risk, and sandbox analysis of the downloaded file identified the file as malicious.

If this was coincidental, then using such a publicly compromised service to deliver data, when they themselves are a repository raise significant questions.

Figshare follow-up response with external file-return link

Date: April 27, 2026
From: Figshare representative, Integrations Engineer
Subject: Final account ban response and metadata/file return link
Evidence status: Author-supplied correspondence and security screenshots

Hello,

We have checked, and your account has been disabled for violating Figshare's Terms and Conditions (https://figshare.com/terms) — please refer in particular to the "Acceptable Use" and "Content You Must Not Submit" sections, which are most likely to be of relevance — for posting inappropriate content (https://help.figshare.com/article/inappropriate-content-on-figshare).

Below, you can also find details of the key principles of our acceptable publication guidelines:

• Academic research: Figshare should be used for publishing the outputs of academic research that benefit the research community.

• Responsible research practices, research integrity and publication ethics: Figshare should be used for publishing research that is consistent with the principles of responsible research, research integrity and publication ethics, and not work that might undermine such principles.

• Non-commercial: Figshare should be used solely for personal, non-commercial scholarly purposes.

• Authorship: Figshare should be used to publish work that has been authored by the submitter.

• Originality: Figshare should be used to publish the original work of the author not, for example, work that has been copied, plagiarized, self-plagiarized, text recycled, already published, or repeatedly uploaded in substantially the same form.

While Figshare is not responsible for any User Submission, it reserves the right, without notice, at its sole discretion and without liability, (i) to alter, delete or block access to content that it deems to be inappropriate or insufficiently protected, and (ii) to restrict or remove User access where it considers that use of Figshare interferes with its operations or violates these Terms of Use or applicable laws, including upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such User Submission or if Figshare is concerned that the Submission otherwise breaches these Terms.

The banning of your account is final as we don't consider your research material to be conforming to our Terms and Conditions, and there is no appeal mechanism.

Please find attached the metadata and files in the link below:

https://uploadnow.io/f/8FQTt5N

Best Regards,
[redacted]
Integrations Engineer at Figshare

Email retained by the author. Name redacted. The external file-return link is reproduced as evidence and should not be visited or downloaded without sandboxing.

Security and chain-of-custody concern with the UploadNow file-return link

The Figshare follow-up response stated that the account ban was final, that no appeal mechanism was available, and that the author’s metadata and files could be retrieved through an external UploadNow link.

That return method created a separate security and chain-of-custody issue. The link did not point to a Figshare-controlled export page, authenticated repository dashboard, DOI metadata export, institutional support portal, signed archive, or Digital Science domain. It pointed to UploadNow, a third-party file-sharing service.

This matters because UploadNow is not a suitable chain-of-custody channel for returning DOI-linked academic files and metadata. Public malware-analysis and reputation traces show that UploadNow links have been associated with malicious downloads in unrelated cases, including sandbox reports identifying malicious activity, AsyncRAT, and HijackLoader activity. Public user reports also describe UploadNow-linked downloads being blocked or associated with Trojan warnings.

In the author’s verification screenshots, Malwarebytes blocked the supplied UploadNow page as a Trojan risk and displayed the warning:

Website blocked: uploadnow.io
v3.1.7 | Trojan: 2.0.202604270735

Figshare was alerted to the malware-flagged content, and the UploadNow link now resolves to an “expired or invalid” page, preventing full file-by-file verification of the original package.

This does not, by itself, prove that Figshare knowingly sent malware. The safer evidentiary conclusion is narrower: the file-return process was unsafe, nonstandard, and unsuitable for academic repository data. A repository provider handling DOI-linked scholarly records should not require an author to retrieve preserved files and metadata through a third-party file-sharing page with public malware-associated reputation signals.

If the UploadNow link was legitimate, then the method of return was inappropriate for repository data. If the link was compromised, substituted, wrapped by the file host, altered by an advertisement or redirect, or generated through an insecure workflow, then the incident raises separate concerns about chain of custody, data integrity, user safety, and exposure of author data to third parties.

The UploadNow incident therefore strengthens the preservation dispute. It does not need to prove malicious intent to matter. It shows that the return of DOI-linked academic records was routed through a non-institutional file-sharing path with public malware-associated reputation signals, no visible cryptographic verification, no first-party repository export, and no clear chain-of-custody record.

Open investigative questions

The final, unappealable ban, combined with a malware-flagged third-party export path, expands the investigation from routine moderation into enterprise data integrity, DOI persistence, chain-of-custody governance, and repository standards. The following structural questions require public, itemized disclosure:

1. Enforcement triggers and policy application

• Which exact Figshare items were removed, disabled, hidden, or detached from DOI landing pages?
• What specific policy clause was applied to each affected item?
• Was the final, unappealable ban triggered by an automated risk flag, a manual review by Figshare or Digital Science, a contractor review, or an external institutional complaint regarding NASA-critical material?
• Did any copyright claim, defamation concern, privacy issue, research-integrity review, duplicate-content flag, AI-detection flag, or external notification contribute to the enforcement action?
• Why did Zenodo issue both a specific “Spam” classification and a broad “Terms of Use” explanation for the same records?

2. The no-appeal policy and data rights

• How can an open-research repository that mints persistent DOIs state that there is “no appeal mechanism” when automated systems, contractors, reviewers, or external complainants may make an error?
• If an author cannot appeal or securely access the account dashboard, how does Figshare comply with data access, export, and return obligations requiring safe transmission of user data?
• What process exists for correcting mistaken enforcement actions after DOI-linked academic records have been removed?
• What process exists for an author to challenge a removal classification that harms the public bibliographic record?

3. DOI persistence and tombstoning

• Will Figshare and Zenodo ensure that every affected DOI resolves to a specific tombstone page containing the title, creator, DOI, date, item type, and itemized removal reason?
• Were all original files, metadata, thumbnails, hashes, DOI state histories, landing-page histories, and audit logs preserved in the platforms’ backup systems as described in their public service policies?
• If any DOI-linked record was removed from public access, what DOI state was assigned after removal?
• If a DOI no longer resolves to an item-specific page, who authorized that change and under what policy?
• Does the removal preserve the FAIR principle that metadata should remain accessible even when data are no longer available?

4. Chain of custody and the UploadNow malware incident

• Why did a repository backed by Digital Science use a third-party file-sharing service, uploadnow.io, with public malware-associated reports instead of a native, authenticated data-export tool?
• Is the use of uploadnow.io standard operating procedure for offboarding banned researchers at Figshare, or was this an ad hoc workflow used for this account?
• Who generated the UploadNow link: Figshare staff, an automated support workflow, a contractor, UploadNow, or another party?
• Was the malware-flagged payload generated by Figshare, UploadNow, a browser advertisement, a malicious redirect, or a compromised transmission path?
• Were any author files, metadata, DOI records, or account data exposed to UploadNow or other third parties during the export process?
• Did Figshare create and record SHA-256 hashes or another cryptographic manifest before transmitting the export?
• Can Figshare provide a manifest listing every file, filename, size, MIME type, DOI, item ID, and modification timestamp intended for return?
• Will Figshare reissue a clean, non-executable, hash-verifiable export through an official Figshare or Digital Science domain?

5. Institutional conflicts of interest

• Did platform partnerships with NASA, CERN, Digital Science, Springer Nature, U.S. government agencies, or open-science funders create review bias, reputational risk sensitivity, or institutional reluctance to host Apollo-critical material?
• Were any NASA-affiliated, CERN-affiliated, government-affiliated, or institutional actors involved in reporting, reviewing, flagging, or discussing the removed records?
• Did any internal moderation record mention NASA, Apollo, misinformation, reputational risk, institutional trust, or conspiracy-related classification?
• Would the same enforcement standard have been applied to criticism of a less powerful institution?

6. The transparency and standards paradox

• How can repositories claim adherence to “integrity,” “open research,” FAIR principles, DOI persistence, and data standards when their governance allows unitemized removal of DOI-linked records without a specific reason or path for independent audit?
• Does the use of broad discretionary removal clauses undermine a repository’s claim to be a permanent, reliable host for the scholarly record?
• If a repository can remove a DOI-linked record under broad terms language without itemized disclosure, what prevents controversial but legitimate research from being erased under the same mechanism?
• What minimum public standard should distinguish an academic repository from an ordinary commercial file host?
• Should any repository that mints DOIs be required to preserve item-level metadata, DOI state history, removal reason, and appeal history for every removed record?

Investigative conclusion

The evidence supports a serious repository-transparency, DOI-preservation, and data-governance dispute.

Comparison platforms such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu show that controversial Apollo-critical material can remain visible, searchable, and contestable within the research ecosystem. That visibility is not an endorsement of those claims. It is evidence that disputed material can be preserved, criticized, retracted, labeled, or refuted without disappearing from the public record.

Figshare and Zenodo show a different pattern in the supplied record. Figshare hosted DOI-linked Apollo-critical material by Andrew Lehti, after which multiple records were reported removed or unavailable under broad terms language. Zenodo did not yield a visible historical corpus of Apollo-critical DOI literature in extended searches; the accessible Apollo-critical Zenodo cluster found in the later report appears to date from April 6, 2026, while older Lehti-associated Zenodo records were tombstoned as spam.

The Figshare follow-up response added a second issue: data-return security. The response stated that the account ban was final and that no appeal mechanism existed, then directed the author to retrieve metadata and files through UploadNow, a third-party file-sharing service. The link was blocked by Malwarebytes as a Trojan risk, and sandbox analysis of the downloaded file produced a malicious verdict. This does not establish that Figshare knowingly sent malware. It does establish that the return channel was unsafe, nonstandard, and inappropriate for DOI-linked academic records.

The strongest defensible conclusion is that the removals, absence pattern, final-ban response, lack of appeal, DOI-record uncertainty, and disputed file-return method require itemized disclosure, DOI-level tombstone restoration, secure export reissuance, and independent audit. The stronger claim that NASA, CERN, Digital Science, Figshare, or Zenodo coordinated viewpoint-based censorship remains a hypothesis. It is supported by timing, subject matter, search asymmetry, conflict-of-interest concerns, and opaque repository behavior, but it requires internal records, reproduced searches, forensic email/header analysis, verified file hashes, or direct admissions to become established fact.

The scientific standard is simple: if a published claim is wrong, preserve it and refute it. If a record violates academic ethics or law, preserve the metadata and state the violation. If an account is closed, return the author’s files through a secure, auditable, first-party channel. Open science cannot function if repository infrastructure erases disputed records, blocks appeal, obscures DOI history, and abandons chain of custody.

See also

• Cognitive Impasse
• The Silence of Inquiry
• Lunar Image Forensics
• Image Degradation Analysis
• Academic censorship
• Open science
• DOI tombstone pages
• Research integrity