A round-up from July, with news articles about science integrity, retractions, sleuthing, artificial intelligence, and more.
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Science Integrity Digest, June 2024
A round-up from last month, with news articles about science integrity, retractions of several highly cited papers in the fields of Alzheimer’s disease and stem cell research, generative AI and misconduct, and another retraction for Didier Raoult.
General Science Integrity News
- An epidemic of scientific fakery threatens to overwhelm publishers. More than 10,000 scientific papers were retracted last year as “paper mills” exploit the system. Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky – Washington Post
- How restorative justice could help to heal science communities torn apart by harassment misconduct– Could a programme used by police to tackle repeat offending be used in academia? Some institutions are keen to find out. – Sarah Wild – Nature Career Feature
- The case for criminalizing scientific misconduct – Since universities and journals have failed to regulate themselves, we should strengthen our external layers of oversight. Below are two complementary ideas – Chris Said
- Pressure From the Top – Chinese institutions and authorities are indeed becoming worried about the increasing flood of low- (or zero-) quality papers that come from all sorts of Chinese sources. – Derek Lowe – In the Pipeline – Science
- 62% of Indians demand mandatory research integrity training for early-career researchers – A survey indicated the need to have broad support for mandatory in-person research integrity training across researcher demographics – Education Times
Highly cited Alzheimer’s paper retracted by Nature
- Daily briefing: Landmark Alzheimer’s paper will be retracted. Senior author plans to retract her team’s highly cited study on the cause of Alzheimer’s disease after acknowledging that the paper contains manipulated images. Plus, why cicadas shriek so loudly and how CO2 helps viruses stay alive in the air. – Flora Graham – Nature Briefing
- Alzheimer’s study pulled over data tampering. American university researchers insist their main findings still stand in dementia paper that had been cited 2,500 times. It is the most-cited paper ever to be retracted, according to Retraction Watch, a group that flags dubious research and regularly finds signs of evidence tampering. – Rhys Blakely – The Times UK
- After Amyloid. Authors of a landmark Alzheimer’s disease research paper published in Nature in 2006 have agreed to retract the study in response to allegations of image manipulation. University of Minnesota (UMN) Twin Cities neuroscientist Karen Ashe, the paper’s senior author, acknowledged in a post on the journal discussion site PubPeer that the paper contains doctored images. – Mike Barr – POZ
- Do we have Alzheimer’s disease all wrong?
Retracted studies and new treatments reveal the confusing state of Alzheimer’s research. The authors of the retracted paper in question, which was published in Nature in 2006 and claimed to identify a specific target for future drug development, agreed to withdraw their research in full, two years after a stunning investigation by Science found that key images had been doctored.
Dylan Scott – Vox - Alzheimer : les dessous de la fraude scientifique derrière l’une des études les plus influentes. Il y a deux ans, un chercheur jusqu’ici inconnu formulait des accusations de fraude contre l’un des articles scientifiques les plus importants au monde. Il vient d’obtenir gain de cause. Antoine Beau – L’Express [In French]
- Retraction, 26 June 2024: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07691-8
Even higher cited stem cell paper retracted by Nature
About 17 years after New Scientist investigators Eugenie Reich and Peter Aldhous revealed problems in a Nature 2002 paper about making adult stem cells pluripotent (see 2007 articles in New Scientist and New York Times and this recent X thread here), and more than four years after I found additional problems in that paper (PubPeer), Nature decided to retract it. Meanwhile, it has been cited nearly 4,500 times.
- Nature retracts highly cited 2002 paper that claimed adult stem cells could become any type of cell. Nature has retracted a 2002 paper from the lab of Catherine Verfaillie purporting to show a type of adult stem cell could, under certain circumstances, “contribute to most, if not all, somatic cell types.”
The retracted article, “Pluripotency of mesenchymal stem cells derived from adult marrow,” has been controversial since its publication. Still, it has been cited nearly 4,500 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science – making it by far the most-cited retracted paper ever. – Ellie Kincaid – Retraction Watch - ‘Dit is heel pijnlijk’: veelbesproken stamcelstudie van Catherine Verfaillie herroepen door vakblad ‘Nature’. Het is de finale klap voor het artikel, waar sommigen al langer vragen bij stelden. Als reden verwijst Nature naar onregelmatigheden in twee afbeeldingen die de Nederlandse Elisabeth Bik, een microbiologe gespecialiseerd in de materie, 4,5 jaar geleden had gesignaleerd.
– Barbara Debusschere – De Morgen [In Dutch] - Intrekken van paper over “baanbrekend ” stamcelonderzoek komt niet helemaal onverwacht voor Catherine Verfaillie – Maxie Eckert – Nieuwsblad [In Dutch]
- Waarom wordt baanbrekend onderzoek van professor Catherine Verfaillie na 22 jaar van tafel geveegd? “Het is een smet op mijn blazoen” – Koen Baumers – Nieuwsblad
- Copy-pasten met Photoshop: ook vakblad Nature trekt paper met “baanbrekend” stamcelonderzoek van Catherine Verfaillie terug – Maxie Eckert – De Standaard
- Paper by researcher Catherine Verfaillie (67) withdrawn by the journal Nature – Leuven Actueel
Other notable misconduct findings
- Faked results lead to retraction of high-profile cancer neuroscience study. An investigation found that the experiments required more animals than the scientists had purchased. Dalmeet Singh Chawla – The Transmitter
- Star botanist likely made up data about nutritional supplements, new probe finds – After 2022 exoneration, fresh inquiry concludes Steven Newmaster fabricated data that questioned quality of echinacea, ginkgo, and other substances – Charles Piller – Science
- Findings of research misconduct have been made against Shaker Mousa, Ph.D., M.B.A., FACC, FACB (Respondent), who was a Professor, Chairman, and Executive Vice President of the Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (ACPHS) – Federal Register
Another retraction for Didier Raoult
The International Journal of Obesity retracted an article on which Didier Raoult was the corresponding and last author, “because the authors could not confirm approval from an appropriate ethics committee to recruit healthy donors to provide samples for use in this research.”According to the Retraction Watch Database, this is his 13th retraction. The paper had been flagged on PubPeer because it was one of five papers with the same local approval number, while it appeared to not have CPP approval (regional IRB-like approval needed in France for human subjects research). Read more about the problems in Raoult’s papers here, here, and here.
Artificial intelligence and science misconduct
A (now-retracted) paper featuring an AI-generated rat with a giant penis has caused a lot of laughs on social media. But AI is capable of making much more believable images. Is the scientific publishing world ready for a tsunami of fake photos and dataset? And how can we use AI tools to actually detect fraud? Also see below in the new publication list.
- Smelling a rat with AI – Judith Hochstrasser – Horizons Switzerland
- Dieses Bild ist gefälscht – Moritz Marthaler – Tagesanzeiger (in German)
- AI vs. AI: How to detect image manipulation and avoid academic misconduct – Deepesh Bodekar – Enago Academy
- Academics despair as ChatGPT-written essays swamp marking season
‘It’s not a machine for cheating; it’s a machine for producing crap,’ says one professor infuriated by rise of bland scripts – Jack Grove – Times Higher Education - Online course provider launches AI plagiarism detection tool – Breccan F. Thies – Gazette
- Springer Nature unveils two new AI tools to protect research integrity – Geppetto and SnappShot playing important role in stopping fake research from being published – Springer Nature press release
- Universities regulate use of AI in writing – More than 80 percent of college students have used AI tools to assist their assignments, according to a survey conducted by China Youth Daily in November. – Zhao Yimeng – China Daily
Science Integrity around the world
- Elite researchers in China say they had ‘no choice’ but to commit misconduct – Smriti Mallapathy – Nature News
- Barriers to Investigating and Reporting Research Misconduct. Between January 2023 and March 2024, the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) convened a working group to explore what barriers there may be to investigating and reporting research misconduct.
- China ramps up fight against online lies and misconduct – Cao Yin – China Daily
Interviews with science sleuths
- Ils traquent les études bancales ou frauduleuses : la croisade des chevaliers blancs de la science. Chiffres tronqués, copier-coller grossiers, textes absurdes écrits par l’intelligence artificielle : des chercheurs traquent dans les études scientifiques les pratiques douteuses de leurs confrères. L’infectiologue Didier Raoult fait régulièrement les frais de leur intransigeance. – Gaël Lombart – Le Parisien
- Frode Scientifica: Una intervista ad Elisabeth Bik – Open Science @UNIMI
New publications and editorials
- Proposed Increases in Government Authority Over Research Misconduct Proceedings – Caron et al., JAMA
- The Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Scientific Content Synthesis for Authors – Chhavi Chauhan – American Journal of Pathology
- The Impact of AI on Academic Research and Publishing – Brady Lund et al., arXiv
- Codes of conduct should help scientists navigate societal expectations – Ambrosi et al. – Humanities & Social Sciences Communications
- Editorial: Adapting to AI – Artificial intelligence tools have the potential to revolutionize how scientists work and publish. We share our ground rules for managing the inherent risks. – Nature Geoscience
Retraction Watch’s Weekend Reads:
- June 1: Weekend reads: Another vaccine-autism retraction; ‘Why We Commit Academic Fraud’; on a psilocybin-depression correction
- June 8: Weekend reads: Major Alzheimer’s paper slated for retraction; research dog breeder pleads guilty; biomedical retractions quadruple
- June 16: Weekend reads: ‘An epidemic of scientific fakery’; death threats for critics; Cleveland Clinic settles mismanagement allegations for $7.6 million
- June 22: Weekend reads: A researcher explains how he publishes every three days; scientific bounty hunters; criminalizing scientific misconduct
- June 29: Weekend reads: Huge cash bonuses for publishing in Nature; Alzheimer’s researcher charged with fraud; fines for buying authorship
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Science Integrity Digest, May 2024
A digest of last month’s news articles, retractions, and scientific publications about science integrity and misconduct. Some articles might be behind a paywall. Let me know in the comments if I missed something!
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The rat with the big balls and the enormous penis – how Frontiers published a paper with botched AI-generated images
A review article with some obviously fake and non-scientific illustrations created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) was the talk on X (Twitter) today.
The figures in the paper were generated by the AI tool Midjourney, which generated some pretty, but nonsensical, illustrations with unreadable text.
It appears that neither the editor nor the two peer reviewers looked at the figures at all. The paper was peer-reviewed within a couple of weeks and published two days ago.
Dear readers, today I present you: the rat with the enormous family jewels and the diƨlocttal stem ells.
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Problems in Harvard Medical School studies include images taken from other researchers’ papers and vendor websites
Over the last week I’ve been analyzing a set of papers from a research group at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which falls under the Harvard Medical School. The papers have the usual image problems we unfortunately encounter so often, such as duplicated photos of mice and overlapping Western blots.
But this set also includes a 2022 paper that appears to have copied/pasted several figure panels from other researchers and even from scientific vendors. Most of these problems were found with ImageTwin or reverse image searches.
Quick links [the spreadsheet and slide have been updated with an additional problem found on Feb 2, 2024]:
- spreadsheet with the
2829 papers found with PubPeer links [Excel file] - slide deck with the
5859 image problems found in the2829 papers [PDF].
See: https://pubpeer.com/publications/FF5706E8826CB8D45481E942A679EE
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January 2024 news
Here is a summary of some recent news articles about problematic science papers and the tools used to detect them.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute problems
The main science integrity story in the past month concerned a set of ~50 papers from four research groups at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) found by molecular biologist Sholto David from Wales. He first blogged about the set on January 2nd in a guest post on Leonid Schneider’s For Better Science site. Using ImageTwin to scan scientific articles, he discovered image duplication problems in about 30 of these papers. His blog post also included issues with papers from the same researchers, previously flagged by other (anonymous) image sleuths on PubPeer.
This story was then reported by Veronica H. Paulus and Akshaya Ravi of the Harvard Crimson, a student-run newspaper, on January 12. A week later, Angus Chen and Jonathan Wosen reported on the case at STAT News.
Typically with such allegations, the institutions issue a standard reply saying they take breaches of scientific integrity very seriously, and that they will investigate – followed by months or years of silence. But this case was different. On January 22, just three weeks after David’s blog post came out, DFCI responded that they had already investigated most of the cases reported by David, and said that 6 papers would be retracted, and another 31 corrected.
Some other coverage of this story:
- Science sleuths are using technology to find fakery and plagiarism in published research – Carla K Johnson – Washington Post
- 32-year-old blogger’s research forces Harvard Medical School affiliate to retract 6 papers, correct another 31 – Carla K Johnson – Fortune
- A prestigious cancer institute is correcting dozens of papers and retracting others after a blogger cried foul – Evan Bush – NBC News
- Top Cancer Center Seeks to Retract or Correct Dozens of Studies – Benjamin Mueller – New York Times
- Errors found in dozens of papers by top scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute – Science News
- Harvard cancer institute moves to retract six studies, correct 31 others amid data manipulation claims – Matt Egan – CNN
Stories about Sholto David
Related to the DFCI story above, several interviews focusing on the work and motivation of Sholto David have been published. Similar to the way in which many other science image-forensics detectives — including myself — work, Dr. David uses both his eyes and software (ImageTwin) to scan scientific papers for image problems. Here are some of the recent profiles:
- From a small town in Wales, a scientific sleuth has shaken Dana-Farber — and elevated the issue of research integrity – Andrew Joseph – STAT News
- A lot of it is sloppiness’: the biologist who finds flaws in scientific papers – Ian Sample – The Guardian
- Dana-Farber retractions: meet the blogger who spotted problems in dozens of cancer papers – Max Kozlov – Nature
- From a small town in Wales, a scientific sleuth has shaken Dana-Farber — and elevated the issue of research integrity – Andrew Joseph – The Boston Globe
Plagiarism in dissertations of high-profile persons
At the beginning of this month Dr. Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard University, resigned from her position after receiving criticism for how she and two other top-university presidents handled a Congress hearing about antisemitism on campus, and also for allegations of plagiarism in her PhD thesis. Most criticisms came from conservative people and news sites, turning plagiarism allegations into a political weapon against ‘wokism’ with undertones of racism (Dr. Gay is Black).
Having said that, the plagiarism allegations were credible and real. And it seems fair to have the same standards for university presidents and professors as universities expect students to adhere to.
Business Insider then reported on a similar case of plagiarism in the Harvard dissertation of designer and artist Dr. Neri Oxman, the wife of billionaire Bill Ackman, who was one of the critics of Dr. Gay’s position. Ackman responded on X with some very long tweets basically arguing that the plagiarism of his wife was ‘good plagiarism’ and that of Dr. Gay ‘bad plagiarism’, without convincing me that there was any difference. Ackman was even threatening to sue Business Insider, adding to the emerging picture that science misconduct cases may no longer be investigated based on legitimate allegations of misconduct, but might instead be dismissed by rich people who can afford expensive lawyers to dismiss such allegations because of ‘defamation’. A worrying development that will not serve scientific integrity.
This week, Harvard’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Sherri A. Charleston was also accused of plagiarism in her PhD thesis.
Additional coverage of this story:
- Harvard’s Claudine Gay was ousted for ‘plagiarism’. How serious was it really? – Andrew Lawrence – The Guardian
- Why some academics are reluctant to call Claudine Gay a plagiarist – Emma Green – New Yorker
- Harvard Defends Its Plagiarism Investigation of Its Former President – Anemona Hartocollis – New York Times
- Bill Ackman’s celebrity academic wife Neri Oxman’s dissertation is marred by plagiarism – Katherine Long and Jack Newsham – Business Insider
- Top Harvard Diversity Officer Sherri Charleston Faces Plagiarism Allegations – Tilyl R Robinson and Neil H Shah – The Harvard Crimson
Some more articles of interest
- Gift authorship common in psychology, survey suggests. New findings from a survey of psychology researchers led by Gert Storms show nearly half of the respondents have encountered unethical authorship practices in studies they have been involved in. – Lori Youmshajekian – Retraction Watch
- Paper Trail. In the latest twist of the publishing arms race, firms churning out fake papers have taken to bribing journal editors. A report on a six-month investigation by Science / Retraction Watch in collaboration with scientific fraud buster Nick Wise – Frederik Joelving – Science
- Exclusive: Paper-mill articles buoyed Spanish dean’s research output. Last year, a professor and dean at a university in Spain suddenly began publishing papers with a multitude of far-flung researchers. His coauthors, until then exclusively national, now came from places like India, China, Nepal, South Korea, Georgia, Austria, and the United States – Frederik Joelving – Retraction Watch
- Whistleblowing microbiologist wins unfair dismissal case against USGS. After Evi Emmenegger reported on breaches of animal welfare and biosafety at the US Geological Survey, she was put on leave and later fired. She sued the agency and was found to have been wrongly terminated. She is now preparing to sue for the legal fees she had to pay, and for compensation for medical and other costs. – Rebecca Trager – Chemistry World.
- In D.C. Defamation Trial, Climatologist Michael Mann Confronts the Climate Deniers Who Maligned His Work. His family was devastated when bloggers seeking to discredit him compared him to a sexual predator, Mann told the court. In 2012, Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn publicly accused Mann, then a professor at Penn State University, of scientific misconduct and fraud. Separate investigations by Penn State and the National Science Foundation cleared Mann of any wrongdoing. – Diane Bernard – Desmog
- Professor suspended over academic fraud allegations. Huazhong Agricultural University has suspended the work of a professor with the last name Huang, who students have accused of academic fraud, according to a notice released by the university on Friday morning. – Liu Kun – China Daily
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A MAGIcal Special ERMPS Issue
The European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences continues to be a safe space for paper mills and very low-quality articles. Its special December issue (Supplement 6) is filled with 16 papers, all written by the same author, who appears to be using the journal as one big advertisement for his MAGI supplement-selling business. No conflicts of interest to declare!
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Investigation finds ‘egregious misconduct’ by CUNY scientist
In a report shared with Science in October 2023, a committee investigating allegations of misconduct by Dr. Hoau-Yan Wang, a professor at the City College of New York (CCNY, which falls under the City University of New York (CUNY)), found evidence that was ‘highly suggestive of deliberate scientific misconduct’. Dr. Wang has been a frequent collaborator with Cassava Sciences (Nasdaq: SAVA), a biotech company working on a drug called simufilam for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Unfortunately, Dr. Wang was unable to provide the committee with any original data or notebooks that could have addressed concerns about his work. Although the suspicions of manipulated images could therefore not be proved, the investigation revealed “long-standing and egregious misconduct in data management and record keeping by Dr. Wang”.
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Two Marseille IHUMI/AMU papers retracted by Scientific Reports
Yesterday, October 30, 2023, Scientific Reports retracted two papers from the group of Didier Raoult. Both papers described studies in which stool samples were taken from malnourished children in African countries, and both were retracted because of the lack of ethical approval from these countries to obtain samples.
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Hindawi’s mass retraction of “Special Issues” papers
Hindawi — and its parent company, Wiley — have recently announced that they will retract hundreds of papers from journals targeted by paper mills. The papers were all published in ‘special issues’, with the guest editors being either asleep at the wheel or perhaps knowingly looking the other way.
In this blog post, I will take an in-depth look at some of these papers.
Science Integrity Digest 