414
submitted 10 months ago by floofloof@lemmy.ca to c/science@lemmy.ml
top 31 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 88 points 10 months ago

California microbiologist Elisabeth Bik, 57, has been sleuthing for a decade. Based on her work, scientific journals have retracted 1,133 articles, corrected 1,017 others and printed 153 expressions of concern…

Incredible, she has some enemies.

[-] lung@lemmy.world 74 points 10 months ago

Hahah what a hobby, using image processing and probably AI to check old papers that predated the tools. Kinda like using DNA to solve old crimes

[-] bl4kers@lemmy.ml 58 points 10 months ago

Why do articles like this feel the need to include the blogger's age?

[-] xkforce@lemmy.world 77 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

To remind other 32+ year olds how little we've accomplished in our lives.

[-] pwalker@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 10 months ago

that was unnecessary, FeelsBadMan

[-] HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago

It's how it made me feel :(

[-] Lord_ToRA@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago

I, 69, don't know.

[-] Jackcooper@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago

32s not even a notable age... If it were 17 or 85 I guess it'd be newsworthy but not 32

[-] bmaxv@noc.social 13 points 10 months ago

@bl4kers @floofloof I think it's interesting that it's just a 30 something dude.

The things he's found aren't super detective stuff either, he's taken an interest, found a few pictures that look suspicious, looked some more and wrote about it. Something anyone can do.

I find that motivating.

[-] pglpm@lemmy.ca 54 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Really embarrassing also for the journals that published the papers – and which are as guilty. They take ridiculously massive amounts of money to publish articles (publication cost for one article easily surpasses the cost of a high-end business laptop), and they don't even check them properly?

[-] onion@feddit.de 19 points 10 months ago

Journals are the cancer of the science world

[-] Akagigahara@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago

Why would they? They get the money. I feel like that system is just prime corruption/malpractice and leads to crap like this.

It's for profit all the way through

[-] moitoi@feddit.de 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You have a lot of shit in the journals. I read about autism for example. I can't count how many article with restrain and basic human right abuse are published. And, it continues in 2024.

It's seriously depressing to see this BS and other pseudo-scientific text published.

[-] JoBo@feddit.uk 14 points 10 months ago

Oh, they don't pay the peer reviewers. That would cut their profit margins waaaay too much.

[-] Haagel@lemmings.world 47 points 10 months ago

That's really embarrassing, but not surprising that a medical institution would lie and cheat. The profit motive is destroying scientific research.

[-] bhmnscmm@lemmy.world 41 points 10 months ago

If you find this interesting, the Freakonomics podcast just put out a really good series on academic fraud. I highly recommend it.

[-] DarthGraben@mander.xyz 9 points 10 months ago

Seconding this recommendation! I caught parts of it on the radio last weekend and the week before. It was way more fascinating than I expected…

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 23 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, announced Jan. 22 it’s requesting retractions and corrections of scientific papers after a British blogger flagged problems in early January.

They use special software, oversize computer monitors and their eagle eyes to find flipped, duplicated and stretched images, along with potential plagiarism.

In a Jan. 2 blog post, Sholto David presented suspicious images from more than 30 published papers by four Dana-Farber scientists, including CEO Laurie Glimcher and COO William Hahn.

The blog post included problems spotted by David and others previously exposed by sleuths on PubPeer, a site that allows anonymous comments on scientific papers.

Technology has made it easier to root out image manipulation and plagiarism, said Ivan Oransky, who teaches medical journalism at New York University and co-founded the Retraction Watch blog.

Some may intentionally falsify data, knowing that the process of peer review — when a journal sends a manuscript to experts for comments — is unlikely to catch fakery.


The original article contains 792 words, the summary contains 158 words. Saved 80%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] ivanafterall@kbin.social 16 points 10 months ago

I thought this was The Onion, at first. It's every internet commenter's dream headline!

[-] Mango@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

I wanna do this detective work for a living!

[-] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago
[-] Mango@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Someone could pay me. I just need enough for training, equipment, and living.

this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2024
414 points (99.8% liked)

Science

13259 readers
70 users here now

Subscribe to see new publications and popular science coverage of current research on your homepage


founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS