Thanks for joining me!
I am Elisabeth Bik, microbiome and science integrity consultant, and this blog will be my new place to talk about science integrity. There might be posts about how to report scientific papers of concern, image issues in biomedical papers, plagiarism, data detectives, conflict of interests, “predatory publishers” (not my term), and many other issues.
I got a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands, and was a staff scientist at Stanford University, Scientific and Editorial Director at uBiome, and a Director of Science at Astarte Medical, all in California, USA.
In addition, I have been actively searching for image duplications in biomedical science papers, and I wrote several publications on this topic:
- Nature: https://www.nature.com/news/problematic-images-found-in-4-of-biomedical-papers-1.19802
- Science: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/730.full
- New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/science/cancer-carlo-croce.html
- Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/more-science-than-you-think-is-retracted-even-more-should-be/2018/12/26/dc14fa98-0950-11e9-a3f0-71c95106d96a_story.html
- Le Monde: https://www.letemps.ch/sciences/labos-petits-arrangements-science
- Retraction Watch: http://retractionwatch.com/2016/04/19/one-in-25-papers-contains-inappropriately-duplicated-images-screen-finds/
Also check out my other blog, MicrobiomeDigest.com, which is currently run by a fantastic team of volunteers. Here, you will find (nearly) daily posts with the latests scientific papers on host-associated or environmental microbial communities.
Science builds upon science. Science should be open for self-correction.
Science Integrity Digest 
Congratulations on this great site and thank you for all you do for science integrity! Your pals at Cell Onion.
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Good luck!
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As the director of a 30 year old documentary THE PROFESSORS NEW CLOTHES about the worlds most prolific science fraud, geologist Professor Gupta, of Chandigarh In Punjab, I was struck by the similarity between his techniques (re-using images of fossils from others’ papers or stealing samples from museums etc) and the persistence of his stellar career – despite the great work of whistleblowers like yourself. Australian Palaeontologist John Talent was, like you, adept at spotting cheating and plagiarism. And my film followed him to India to link up with Indian whistleblowing geologists to confront Gupta . My film was shown on the Discovery Channel and won a Columbus award in the US in 1991 for best science documentary. I had hoped that this would help prevent science fraud, but today, with powerful media actually dedicated to promoting falsehood it’s probably getting worse.
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I thank you for your work and integrity. So sorry to hear about all the flak you receive. Groeten en sterkete uit Ierland.
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The truth is out there. Thanks for ignoring all the jerks and fighting the good fight. Unfortunately it seems that scientists may be as ready to cheat and lie as politicians. We need to be able to trust the science and believe that it is as accurate as current knowledge allows. I always thought it was about advancing knowledge but apparently greed is too powerful a motivator.
Please keep doing what you do. We need more scientists to return to the core principals and not Fox News.
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The world would be a much better place if there were many more of you. Thank you.
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