Academics are fighting each other in court.
In 2014 Elisabeth Bik became a scientific integrity consultant to fight against academic misconduct.
She's recently had a defamation lawsuit filed against her, on top of threats from social media.
The Data Colada team had a similar case, also fighting a defamation lawsuit, this one from Francesca Gino, a Harvard Professor.
What is the problem?
Academics need money for salaries, equipment, facilities and much more.
Universities receive grants from governments, private companies, and non-profit organizations.
However, grant applications are very competitive.
Grant proposals can be influenced by:
Receiving a grant can positively impact research performance under the grant, and help career advancement.
But, inflating publication and citation numbers can increase the likelihood of grant acceptance.
Which in recent years has increased traction to the motto, publish or perish. Resulting in unintended consequences. Limited value in published research and/or unethical practices.
Unethical practices can lead to academic misconduct like:
Plagiarism.
Probability and/or citation hacking.
Image duplication and/or manipulation.
So-called paper mill businesses are built on misconduct, pumping out hundreds of unethical papers.
Publishing papers with higher error rates.
Those cutting corners argue, it helps get grants and funding for continued research.
However, those like Elisabeth Bik argue it reduces scientific integrity, and is not sound science.
Why does it matter?
Governments and authorities use science and research as evidence for policy change.
President Trump tweeted about hydroxychloroquine, spreading the claim of a COVID-19 treatment, after reading a paper published by Didier Raoult.
However, Elisabeth questioned the trial size, ethics, protocols and unusually quick peer review.
The World Health Organization later advised against using the drug.
On or around the 22nd of May, 2021, Didier filed a defamation lawsuit against Elisabeth for her public statements about his paper.
Even though Didier went through the systematic process of peer review, arguably doing nothing wrong, Elisabeth believed potential unethical practice lead to widespread misinformation.
The increased spread of misinformation due to technology and increased polarization and radicalization of individuals, is an increasing issue.
And as Elisabeth has said:
Who else is helping?
From 2012, the International John Maddox prize, administered by Sense about science in partnership with Nature, has been awarded to those promoting sound science.
Elisabeth won the award in 2021, now identifying over 4000 paper manipulations.
But she’s not alone.
Retraction watch shares examples daily.
PubPeer continues countless post publish conversations about research practices.
VroniPlag Wiki tackling plagiarism in published dissertations.
With many groups looking to uphold integrity by following some core values:
Honesty
Trust
Fairness
Respect
Responsibility
Courage
In essence, upholding moral and ethical behaviour.
However, with academics fighting each other, now more in court, a cultural or systematic shift could be required, changing the way research is conducted and/or published.
Take away
Trustworthy science is the challenge.
Artificial intelligence adding to that challenge.
But with the pressure to publish from institutions not going anywhere.
Pre- and post-review of papers is maybe more important now than ever.
Elisabeth made some suggestions:
Publishers should act faster with retractions and corrections.
Put a greater emphasis on retractions and corrections by publishers.
More reproduction studies should be accepted.
Micro reproduction studies for data or images.
Tools like image twin are emerging to help with image misconduct.
But if we want science to be trusted, I feel there needs to be a culture shift from the top and bottom.
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