Elisabeth Bik Profile picture
Science integrity consultant, PhD. #ImageForensics Previously @ Stanford and (gasp!) uBiome. She/her. elisabethbik.bsky https://t.co/V4MR7WVHiT 🇳🇱🇺🇸
11 subscribers
Sep 23 10 tweets 3 min read
Next up at #OpenScienceWeek2024 is @bwmol, who will talk about scientific integrity concerns.
There are many things that can go wrong in scientific publishing.
Clinical trials usually follows certain guidelines - comparing standard treatments to an experimental treatment. Image BM has found several randomized clinical trials where clinical data appears to have been duplicated.
Mentions @JBC13Mar1967 John Carlisle's works who found that many RCTs appear to contain fake data.
There might be thousands and thousands of fake papers.
#OpenScienceWeek2024 Image
Jun 17 6 tweets 4 min read
OMG @Nature just retracted one of the Verfaillie papers @UMNews, 4.5 years after I reported it.
And without letting me know 🤨

nature.com/articles/s4158…
pubpeer.com/publications/D…


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The senior author was the director of the @UMNews Stem Cell Institute, where she left around the time that @paldhous and @EugenieReich wrote a some critical articles @newscientist about her work.


newscientist.com/article/mg1932…
newscientist.com/article/mg1932…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Scien…
Apr 5 6 tweets 2 min read
Jenny P. Berrío and @OKalliokoski did a systematic review of preclinical studies of depression and found that nearly 20% of 588 of those studies contained problematic images.

@Sumeet_kul reports @Nature. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
'These suspicious studies “do actually skew the results”, Kalliokoski says.
One way to clear these muddied waters, says @ABannachBrown, is to publish ‘living’ systematic reviews.' These questionable research practices need bo be caught before they even make it to publication.
Apr 3 49 tweets 22 min read
Hi everyone! I am Elisabeth Bik, PhD, a science integrity consultant and volunteer.
In this thread for #YoungScientistNetworking (invited by @QuantumTessera), I will tell a bit about my somewhat unusual career.
/ I was born in The Netherlands. My father was a family MD with home practice. My mother tutored in Greek and Latin.
In the morning, patients would line up for the walk-in hours, and in the afternoon my dad would drive around town to visit patients at their homes.
Our home:
/ Image
Dec 23, 2023 8 tweets 3 min read
I saw some posts about a paper that claimed to have found the presence of viral or vaccine spike protein in the blood of patients with long COVID. I just wrote a critical review of this paper @PubPeer, but here is a thread as well.

/pubpeer.com/publications/4… 1. The paper was published in European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences - which published hundreds of paper mill articles, including 110 articles of the Stock Photo Paper Mill and 200 in the "Comb/Lego" Paper Mill:

scienceintegritydigest.com/2020/07/05/the…
forbetterscience.com/2021/03/08/tow…
Nov 15, 2023 8 tweets 3 min read
Oh for fox' sake, @SciReports, this is embarrassing.

For nearly 10 years, I have been reporting image duplications. This should never have passed through your quality control.

You have a quality control, do you? Image Same paper, another Figure.
@ImageTwinAI found some issues here. Image
Nov 1, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
@MattNachtrab Hey Matt, your tweet about "some of the truth" contains some false statements.
First, you say I am an "a known short seller" which is incorrect. I have told you many times that I do not hold any position in $SAVA. Thus, you are deliberately spreading false information. @MattNachtrab Second, a leader of an #ImageForensics investigation (e.g. Dr. Shafer) SHOULD talk to ImageForensics experts, especially if they are the whistleblower (e.g. me).
What is inappropriate about that?
Jun 1, 2023 14 tweets 8 min read
Next up #SSP2023
Research Integrity: Stories of learning from overcoming mass retractions, systematic manipulation and research misconduct.
Hannah Smith @WileyGlobal
Yael Fitzpatrick @GazelleInDminor @PNASNews
Luigi Longobardi @LuigiLon @IEEEorg
Mike Streeter @WileyGlobal Image The panelists all introduce themselves - they now work in research integrity at a publisher, but started in very different careers. It is a relatively new type of career, and often started with a volunteer role in ethics.
#SSP2023
Jun 1, 2023 9 tweets 4 min read
Here is an example of a paper with some very serious problems, where it appears the journal @CellStemCell took a very long time to retract: more than 7 years.
HT: @SmutClyde
sciencedirect.com/science/articl… Image Issues with figures from this and three other papers from the same first author have been reported on @PubPeer in November 2015.
pubpeer.com/publications/A…
and e.g.: pubpeer.com/publications/3… Image
Jun 1, 2023 4 tweets 3 min read
After the coffee, I will attend one of the parallel sessions: Charleston Trendspotting: Forecasting the Future of Trust and Transparency.
With Leah Hinds @chsconf and @lisalibrarian and a "Future's Wheel"
#SSP2023 (I am a bit nervous about what a Futures Wheel is and the pieces of paper and markers on some of the tables - if this is too interactive or too buzzwordy, I might run to the nearest #introvert corner).
#SSP2023
Jun 1, 2023 13 tweets 8 min read
Good morning from Portland, OR, from the #SSP2023 @ScholarlyPub, where I will attend the plenary session "The Evolving Knowledge Ecosystem" about the economic pressures and the greatest challenges shaping the scholarly publishing industry. This will be a panel discussion, with @rschon @IthakaSR, @amy_brand @mitpress, Gregg Gordon @SSRN, Julia Kostova @FrontiersIn, and @DrNandiQ @Clarivate
#SSP2023 Image
May 29, 2023 9 tweets 4 min read
French medical bodies on Sunday called on authorities to punish researcher Didier Raoult for "the largest 'unauthorised' clinical trial ever seen" into the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 france24.com/en/europe/2023… You can find the preprint here: medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
I started a @PubPeer comment thread here:
pubpeer.com/publications/4…
and I invite everyone to join the discussion there.
Apr 27, 2023 4 tweets 3 min read
One of these papers is from the Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine and @UnivOfKansas.
Together with earlier retractions from this group of authors, it raises severe concerns about this @NIEHS and Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province-sponsored research. As pointed out by @bsPyt7dmnBKaebN, this 2020 paper shares several figures with a 2014 and a 2020 paper from two different group of researchers.
Here are Figures 1, 2, 3, and 4 from the three papers compared. Blots and plots look identical.
pubpeer.com/publications/D… ImageImageImageImage
Apr 25, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read
Stanford president dodges research misconduct questions
Amid Tessier-Lavigne’s defense, unanswered questions and contradictory statements
@tab_delete writes @StanfordDaily 'He has canceled public appearances, demanded retraction of The Daily’s reporting through his lawyers, deactivated the website for his public office hours and declined to respond to dozens of inquiries.'