Scientific Misconduct and Social Media: Role of Twitter in the Stimulus Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency Cells Scandal

Sugawara, Yuya; Tanimoto, Tetsuya; Miyagawa, Shoko; Murakami, Masayasu; Tsuya, Atsushi; Tanaka, Atsushi; Kami, Masahiro; Narimatsu, Hiroto

doi:10.2196/jmir.6706

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Additionally, the studies were extensively discussed in Twitter and blogs. A study of the Twitter activity related to STAP cells showed that discussions of possible misconduct took place on Twitter before the discussions in the mainstream media (Sugawara et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Retractions from altmetric and bibliometric perspectives

Shema

Hahn

Mazarakis

et al. 2019

Information - Wissenschaft &Amp; Praxis

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Information. Wissenschaft & Praxis 2019; 70(2-3): 98-110 aléatoire. Un modèle de régression binomial permet d'estimer la probabilité qu'une publication soit retirée pour cause d'inconduite ou d'erreurs. Dans l'échantillon de scores altmétriques élevés, nous avons trouvé une corrélation positive entre les « Altmetric attention Scores » et la probabilité de retrait pour cause d'inconduite ou d'erreurs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Retractions from altmetric and bibliometric perspectives

Shema

Hahn

Mazarakis

et al. 2019

Information - Wissenschaft &Amp; Praxis

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“…The coverage received by the STAP cell case can be attributed to many factors, but the instrumentality of social media cannot be ignored. Although this manuscript was undergoing review, a related study was published that provided rudimentary analysis of the print and social media coverage of the STAP cell case in Japan [ 87 ]. This study confirmed that print coverage tended to lag behind social media coverage—a finding which supports other reports suggesting that news initiated and driven by public interest may indeed influence public opinion [ 9 , 88 ], or at least mainstream reporting.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Response to Scientific Misconduct: Assessing Changes in Public Sentiment Toward the Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency (STAP) Cell Case via Twitter

Gayle

Shimaoka

2017

JMIR Public Health Surveill

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BackgroundIn this age of social media, any news—good or bad—has the potential to spread in unpredictable ways. Changes in public sentiment have the potential to either drive or limit investment in publicly funded activities, such as scientific research. As a result, understanding the ways in which reported cases of scientific misconduct shape public sentiment is becoming increasingly essential—for researchers and institutions, as well as for policy makers and funders. In this study, we thus set out to assess and define the patterns according to which public sentiment may change in response to reported cases of scientific misconduct. This study focuses on the public response to the events involved in a recent case of major scientific misconduct that occurred in 2014 in Japan—stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cell case.ObjectivesThe aims of this study were to determine (1) the patterns according to which public sentiment changes in response to scientific misconduct; (2) whether such measures vary significantly, coincident with major timeline events; and (3) whether the changes observed mirror the response patterns reported in the literature with respect to other classes of events, such as entertainment news and disaster reports.MethodsThe recent STAP cell scandal is used as a test case. Changes in the volume and polarity of discussion were assessed using a sampling of case-related Twitter data, published between January 28, 2014 and March 15, 2015. Rapidminer was used for text processing and the popular bag-of-words algorithm, SentiWordNet, was used in Rapidminer to calculate sentiment for each sample Tweet. Relative volume and sentiment was then assessed overall, month-to-month, and with respect to individual entities.ResultsDespite the ostensibly negative subject, average sentiment over the observed period tended to be neutral (−0.04); however, a notable downward trend (y=−0.01 x +0.09; R ²=.45) was observed month-to-month. Notably polarized tweets accounted for less than one-third of sampled discussion: 17.49% (1656/9467) negative and 12.59% positive (1192/9467). Significant polarization was found in only 4 out of the 15 months covered, with significant variation month-to-month (P<.001). Significant increases in polarization tended to coincide with increased discussion volume surrounding major events (P<.001).ConclusionsThese results suggest that public opinion toward scientific research may be subject to the same sensationalist dynamics driving public opinion in other, consumer-oriented topics. The patterns in public response observed here, with respect to the STAP cell case, were found to be consistent with those observed in the literature with respect to other classes of news-worthy events on Twitter. Discussion was found to become strongly polarized only during times of increased public attention, and such increases tended to be driven primarily by negative reporting and reactionary commentary.

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“…Rumors about data errors, methodological mistakes, and scientific misconduct can spread very quickly on social media such as Twitter (a popular micro-blogging platform, see https://www.twitter.com ) (da Silva Jaime & Dobránszki, 2019 ). Sugawara et al, ( 2017 ) found that discussions on scientific misconduct regarding a study on stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cells in Japan in 2014 occurred on Twitter before they surfaced in newspapers. Retracted publications obtain fewer citations either before or after retraction than non-retracted publications (Sotudeh et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…com) (da Silva Jaime & Dobránszki, 2019). Sugawara et al, (2017) found that discussions on scientific misconduct regarding a study on stimulustriggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cells in Japan in 2014 occurred on Twitter before they surfaced in newspapers. Retracted publications obtain fewer citations either before or after retraction than non-retracted publications (Sotudeh et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can tweets be used to detect problems early with scientific papers? A case study of three retracted COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 papers

Haunschild

Bornmann

2021

Scientometrics

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Methodological mistakes, data errors, and scientific misconduct are considered prevalent problems in science that are often difficult to detect. In this study, we explore the potential of using data from Twitter for discovering problems with publications. In this case study, we analyzed tweet texts of three retracted publications about COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019)/SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) and their retraction notices. We did not find early warning signs in tweet texts regarding one publication, but we did find tweets that casted doubt on the validity of the two other publications shortly after their publication date. An extension of our current work might lead to an early warning system that makes the scientific community aware of problems with certain publications. Other sources, such as blogs or post-publication peer-review sites, could be included in such an early warning system. The methodology proposed in this case study should be validated using larger publication sets that also include a control group, i.e., publications that were not retracted.

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Scientific Misconduct and Social Media: Role of Twitter in the Stimulus Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency Cells Scandal

Cited by 12 publications

References 22 publications

Retractions from altmetric and bibliometric perspectives

Retractions from altmetric and bibliometric perspectives

Public Response to Scientific Misconduct: Assessing Changes in Public Sentiment Toward the Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency (STAP) Cell Case via Twitter

Can tweets be used to detect problems early with scientific papers? A case study of three retracted COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 papers

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