About

Elisabeth Bik is a renowned microbiologist and science integrity advocate known for detecting image duplication in scientific publications. Through meticulous analysis, she has exposed thousands of cases of misconduct, fostering transparency and accountability. Despite facing criticism and legal challenges, her work has earned widespread acclaim, including the John Maddox Prize and the Einstein Foundation Award, highlighting her vital role in upholding scientific integrity.

Biosketch

After receiving her PhD at Utrecht University in The Netherlands where she worked on epidemic Vibrio cholerae strains, Elisabeth Bik worked at the Dutch National Institute for Health and the St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein. She worked 15 years in the lab of David Relman in the School of Medicine at Stanford on the microbiomes of humans and marine mammals. In May 2014, she founded Microbiome Digest, an almost daily compilation of scientific papers in the rapidly growing microbiome field. It is now run by a team of volunteers.

From 2016-2018, she worked at uBiome as a Science Editor, and later as the Scientific and Editorial Director. [Note: After she left the company, the uBiome co-founders were indicted by the Department of Justice for insurance and investor fraud. None of the employees, including Bik, was ever charged.] In 2018, she joined Astarte Medical as their Director of Science.

Around 2013, after finding someone had plagiarized text from one of her articles, she became interested in scientific integrity. In 2014, Bik discovered a duplicated blot in a PhD thesis and started focusing on image problems in scientific papers. She published her scan of 20,000 articles, all done in the evenings and weekends in 2016. In March 2019, she quit her job at Astarte and became a Science Integrity consultant.

Previously known as @MicrobiomDigest on X/Twitter, she is now regularly discussing scientific papers on BlueSky, writing for her blog ScienceIntegrityDigest, or searching the biomedical literature for inappropriately duplicated or manipulated photographic images and plagiarized text.

Her work has resulted in 1331 Retractions, 215 Expressions of Concern, and 1074 Corrections (as of December 2024).

For her work on scientific integrity, Bik received the 2021 Maddox Prize and the 2024 Einstein Foundation Award.

Elisabeth Bik.
Photo: Michel N Co, San Jose, CA

How you can help

Due to the overwhelming amount of requests in the past, I will most likely not be able to respond to requests to help. But I have written a couple of How To guides so you can help me by doing the work yourself.

If you suspect plagiarism, here is a guide to some tools to use.

If you see a paper with potentially duplicated images, poorly analyzed data, shoddy methods, conflict of interest, etc., do not send it to me, but please post it on PubPeer. I have written a page on how to post your concerns there.

I also encourage you to write your concerns to the Editor in Chief of the journal in which the paper was published. I have written a How To page on how to do that.

Thank you for understanding!

Speaking opportunities and consultancy work

Although almost all of the work I tweet and post about is without compensation, I am also available as a research integrity consultant to investigate specific allegations of misconduct for research institutions and scientific publishers or to give a second opinion. I will honor any request for confidentiality.

I’d also be very happy to give a (virtual or in-person) seminar on my work as a research integrity volunteer, or on science misconduct in general. I ask for a speaker’s honorarium to cover my time.

My email address is eliesbik@gmail.com

Disclosures and conflicts of interest (2024)

As a science integrity consultant, I regularly do paid consultancy work – since 2019 – for several scientific publishers and research institutions around the world. Almost all these consulting cases are done under confidentiality agreements, so I cannot disclose the details about my clients or the cases I have investigated.

From 2019 on, I have received speaker fees for giving talks at several universities and institutions.

From 2021-2024, I was a member of the eLife Ethics Committee, for which I received an annual stipend.

From 2024 on, I am a Stanford Metric affiliate. This is an unpaid position, but comes with access to Stanford Library and other university tools, such as Eduroam.

I do not own stocks or stock options from my previous employers uBiome or Astarte Medical. I am an author on several uBiome (later: Psomagen) patents. I left uBiome in December 2018, and the company got raided by the FBI in April 2019. I was not involved in the suspected billing fraud, and I was never questioned by the FBI. While two uBiome founders have been charged with defrauding health insurance providers and investors, none of the uBiome employees have been indicted.

I have no financial or financial security ties (no stock options, no longs/short positions) to pharmaceutical, biotech companies, or charitable foundations.

I do have a Patreon account, and that does generate income for me. It is not tied to specific requests to investigate particular papers. Any contribution is welcome. Thank you.

Elisabeth Bik behind her computer at home. Photo credit: Clara Mokri, San Francisco.

Selected press about my work

Sorted in chronological order, the most recent on top.

Selected podcasts about my work:

What People Say

Dr. Elisabeth Bik has a remarkable natural ability to identify both image duplication and image manipulation through visual screening.

Prasad Ravindranath

Bik is a unicorn when it comes to her hobby. Few people have the patience to sift through thousands and thousands of articles looking for tiny discrepancies in figures. Fewer still will subject their retinas to such strain for free. 

Adam Marcus, Ivan Oransky, Retraction Watch, for The Scientist

Elisabeth Bik is the champion spotter of duplicated or altered images

Debora Weber-Wulff
Elisabeth Bik at her home in California, on Nov 4 2021.
CREDIT: Clara Mokri for the Wall Street Journal