We DO have a problem

The number of retractions is way below the level at which they should be occurring. Vested self-interest of authors, institutions and journals mean that where we should have a retraction, we have a correction. These are not corrections of mistakes, but of misconduct/fraud. If our undergraduate students produce work of this sort, they get a zero. We should also consider the effect on our graduate students and postdocs. Out comes a paper in their field, they read it and get totally depressed. Why? Because some fraudster has got a paper in a “major” journal (aka one that guarantees a thesis or a tenured position) and it is clearly wrong, e.g., re-used data, copied and pasted, for different experimental conditions. Some years later they may see a “correction”. What do they do? Stay in science, remaining true to the messiness of data, become tempted to cheat or leave through disillusion? We are killing off the lifeblood of science through pandering to vested self-interest and turning a blind eye to corruption.

This is an issue of corruption. This is the correct word to use.

The cure?

There is only one cure, democracy. This means openness and transparency. I publish a paper, you have access to the raw data and are free to comment on it. If the paper is flawed, then it is retracted. If someone is incompetent, so they can talk, but actually have no understanding of the experiment, then they will find they have no place in science. We are a long way from that, but moving towards it, slowly.

While many keep their heads below the parapet and a significant number practice fraud, a growing number of people are taking action in various ways.
Below, some interesting recent posts I have come across on the problem science faces with misconduct and fraud.
Curt Rice has an excellent post on “Why you can’t trust the quality of science“

And another on “Open Evaluation: 11 sure steps – and 2 maybes – towards a new approach to peer review“

More recently, Amanda Alvarez has a post on “Steering clear of the iceberg: three ways we can fix the data-credibility crisis in science“

Finally, for those lovers of irony, a recent post on Retraction Watch regarding a “Mega Correction“. The correction is from a researcher whose legal threats closed Science Fraud. If you don’t think there is a problem, read the post at Retraction Watch and look at the paper concerned.

When rigour deserts science we are left with quackery

Update June 5
Standards, who needs them? I am just back from the E-MRS spring meeting in Strasbourg, which was most enjoyable, though someone seems to have forgotten about the “Spring” bit. Meanwhile, out in the world of science we continue to witness ridiculous decisions regarding manipulated and falsified data by journals and a quite stunning self-justification by a materials scientist who looks to be the next serial fraudster.

First up, the much heralded stem cell paper in Cell, three days from submission to acceptance, which readers spotted was full of manipulated images. Cell pulls the “Dictionary of Euphemisms” off the shelf, makes some weak excuses, hoping that we will all move one. Nice posts on Retraction Watch with extended comments here and here.
Second Retraction Watch reports on the outcome of an investigation by McGill of papers published by Maya Saleh. It is worth quoting once again the conclusions regarding a PNAS and a Nature paper of Salaeh’s:

“two figures in [a] Nature paper had been “intentionally contrived and falsified.” One of those figures was duplicated in a PNAS paper, which also contained an image that had incorrectly labeled some proteins“

What happens? Nature issues corrections.

Amazing really. Just think. A student cheats, is formally investigated and found to have indeed cheated. The student is then is allowed to “correct” their work, outside the exam and at their leisure. Makes sense every time.

The materials scientist? None other than Francesco Stellacci. Recall that there have been some serious concerns raised about Stellacci’s work. These were first aired in public with the first post on Raphael’s blog, which accompanied the publication of his article in Small questioning the phase separation of ligands on gold nanoparticles into stripes.
Since, a litany of issues have been raised: image re-use, including the re-use of an image to describe a completely different experiment, stonewalling efforts of third parties to access raw data and so on. Some progress has been made two corrections in journals and the appearance of some (but only some) raw image data.

I have had a look at all the TIFF files. I know I should be examining the original files in Gwiddion, but I also know from the little SPM work I have been involved in (15 years ago looking at fibroblast growth factors on gold 111) that if it isn’t obvious in the TIFF, it isn’t there.

There is nothing in the images provided by Stellacci that supports any sort of structure on the surface of the nanoparticles. There is plenty of noise. How to get the nice images published in a whole series of papers since 2004? Manipulate the images. Simple, easy. One route is explained by Philip Moriarty in a guest post.

This is a fraud, pure and simple. First there is an error. Then the glamour of the error causes temptation and/or self-delusion. This is when the shift occurs from science through to misconduct, which ultimately leads to fraud. Why? Because fraud involves obtaining gain through illicit means. If science has any self-righting capacity, then we can expect investigations at his former employer, MIT, and his current one, EPFL. We may then see the papers retracted in due course. However, there is an alternative, which is a load of corrections and some more entries for the “Thesaurus of Euphemisms“, as seems to be happening at McGill.

Are we wasting out time bringing these problems to the fore? NO. One only has to remember three things:
1. This is public money being spent.
2. The amount of non-reproducible science published, which I posted on recently here.
2. Science fraud has the potential to kill people, see my posts on Anil Potti and the links therein here and here.

Now to the fake blog the reason for this update.
Fake blog here.
Real blog here.
I was quite fascinated, as I read it because I felt that I was getting a first hand insight into the mind of a science fraudster. I went to re-read the interview in the New York Times of Stapel, the fraudulent psychologist by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. The arrogance and method are remarkably similar. The self-justification too. Reading the fake blog I got a feeling I was reading part of the transcript of Stapel’s interview. Attributing it to Stellacci was a guess or a hypothesis. The only new evidence are continued tweets from the fake Raphael Levy, which become ever more bizarre, so nothing to bear on the identity of the author.
So with this lack of evidence, my guess is wrong and I retract it. This is the normal thing to do. Unfortunately it seems very, very difficult for a lot of people to stand up and say, “Yes, that bit is wrong”. They should.

Latest score: EPFL 1- MIT 0

The saga of whether there is any substance in the claims by Stellacci of stripes on nanoparticles and that such stripes impart remarkable properties to these materials has taken a new turn. Readers may remember that important issues have been requests to journals and his previous and current employers, MIT and EPFL, to act on clear cases of data re-use and to enable access to the original data so that they could be subjected to rigorous analysis.

There have been corrections at some journals, including one at PNAS where data were re-used to describe a completely different experiment (here and here).

MIT and EPFL were contacted. MIT, perhaps busy with budget woes, replied within the time they usually come to an initial conclusion that it would now be the end of May before they could do so. At EPFL, though we have no public statement, the wheels of academia would seem turn more effectively. As Raphael posted today on his blog, a portion of the original data have now been made publicly available at an EPFL website.

Given the months of stonewalling by Stellacci on the issue of provision of original data, one can only conclude that the data have appeared through pressure from his employer. So hats off to EPFL (or “chapeau” as they say in the canton of Vaud).

We can contrast this with the sorry state of play elsewhere, some examples, old and new:
I wait for a signal from MIT that anything is happening regarding my request for action.
The Cossu affair at UCL (read the extensive comments on Retraction Watch) does the collective reputation of UK universities no good.
The opaque notices from the Universities where Melendez worked (NUS, Glasgow and Liverpool) regarding fraud (blog post here), which was the subject of an excellent piece by Richard van Noorden.
The opacity of retraction notices, a continued source of frustration at Retraction Watch and the stimulus for my proposed Thesaurus of Euphemisms. A fine collection of these can be found in Ivan Oransky’s excellent presentation at the 3rd World Conference on Research Integrity

I encourage all SPM experts to take a look at these data. If they do not have the time to undertake an extensive analysis, they should at least offer some sort of opinion. Reproducibility in science is poor, e.g., see post on Retraction Watch and article by Ivan and Marcus in Lab Times) and it is up to the community to put their views in public and the originators of the data to defend these.

The score I would wish to see? In Test Cricket, after 5 days of hard play and the scores clearly different, the result is a draw. This should be the outcome, as it would demonstrate that academic integrity is alive and well and that our institutions are worthy of their pedigree.

Stripy nanoparticles: update from MIT ombudsman

The assiduous reader will recall that on March 22 I formally contacted MIT regarding the re-use of images in multiple papers by Francesco Stellacci. This includes one instance of an image being re-used to describe a different experiment, which so far has resulted in a correction.
MIT have got back to me stating that they don’t have a report for me yet (I guess Friday was a deadline for delivery of an interim decision), but will get back to me at the end of May. Like many of us, MIT will have their hands full dealing with financial fallout. Nonetheless, I hope that this does not distract them too much from the necessity to ensure academic integrity. I look forward to hearing from them in due course, though depending on their interim decision, I may be bound by confidentiality.

Thesaurus of Euphemisms

Two recent retractions on Retraction Watch merit more than a passing mention, because they demonstrate, yet again, the wildly different and completely contradictory reactions of individuals and journals to data that turn out to be problematic. In one sense this is an update post on “Chalk and Cheese“, “Re-use of “stripes”“, “Correct correction?” and “Data re-use warrants correction at PNAS: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil“.

What is that mound?

I was at the Chungku restaurant in Liverpool last night – excellent meal and, of course, stupendous views across the Mersey – a little bit of foresight books a window table! My attention was drawn once again to a mound on the other side of the water, which had puzzled me before. Rog was sitting next to me and he is not someone to shrink from a puzzle. I reckoned the mound (or small hill) had to be artificial. Plus in front and down river the waterfront was square, so artificial. Rog looked around on Google maps and reckoned this must have been the site of Bromborough docks.
This morning, perhaps due to being fortified by coffee, Rog solved the mystery. Both hypotheses were true. Bromborough docks, opened in 1931, were closed by an act of Parliament in 1986 and used as a landfill site. The entire site is now being developed as Port Sunlight River Park.

Its Science Jim, but not as we know it

The discussion on publishing models, the problems of peer-review and the lack of reproducibility in science took a new turn last week when Nature Publishing Group stiffened their policies on data integrity.
This is a great move and motivated by concerns over the reproducibility of published work. Indeed I have heard from industry figures as high as “50% of biomedical papers are not reproducible”. Examples include a study by Amgen, which showed that 47 of 53 papers they examined failed the reproducibility test and one by Bayer, where 43 of 47 papers were found not to be reproducible.
The problem is not restricted to clinical science. So a simple question is why? After all, reproducibility is meant to lie at the heart of science. A compelling article in the New York Times, based on an interview with Stapel, the fraudulent Dutch psychologist, provides some key insights. The article, entitled “The mind of a con man” by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee should be compulsory reading.
What follows is not an attempt to place blame, but to see what lessons we can learn. I have selected a few excerpts.