Reporting this story was a sobering experience in many ways. But let me focus on the science side here 1/n sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/r…
The system we rely on to produce knowledge (and not just any knowledge in this case, but knowledge relevant to how millions of people are treated) pretty much failed at every single step: 2/n
A researcher made up whole trials, his co-authors at the very least were complicit by putting their names on his papers without checking anything, peer review failed to spot numerous problems with the studies, journals failed to react to red flags raised after publication 3/n
when evidence of fraud emerged, journals were reluctant and slow to investigate, they only looked at their own little slice of it, not across the literature, institutions were just as slow and maybe even more reluctant to investigate, retractions were slow in coming 4/n
and all the while the fraudulent papers influenced the scientific record, were cited in studies and meta-analyses, led to further research, each fraudulent paper like a stone thrown into a pond, with the waves rippling out further and further. 5/n
Of course there is a bright spot. This story wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the whistleblowers Alison Avenell, Mark Bolland, Andrew Grey and Greg Gamble. They literally spent years of their lives investigating the papers in mind-numbing detail, showing they were fraudulent. 6/n
The story contains little description of the minutiae of their work because it is hard to convey how tedious it is without boring the reader: sending another email to another journal asking them to retract a paper, prodding another institution to investigate, 7/n
reading hundreds of papers, compiling lists of the data to compare across papers, chasing hundreds of citations down. Tedious and frustrating work and as Avenell once told me “No-one ever thanks you for it.” 8/n
As science journalists we tend to focus on exciting new discoveries but the work these researchers have done in pinpointing the fabricated papers and trying to correct the scientific record is at least as important in my mind. So: Thank you! n/n
