Systematic fabrication of scientific images revealed

Abstract

FEBS Press recently received several manuscripts which appear to contain fabricated images. Although the manuscripts were editorially rejected, they caught our attention as all of the Western blots looked unusually uniform, clean and regular. Careful screening revealed that identical sections of empty background were used as a base for multiple Western blots across 12 unrelated submissions, representing irrelative experiments. The individual bands appear to have been inserted as required, to exhibit the alleged experimental results.

Digital magic, or the dark arts of the 21stcentury—how can journals and peer reviewers detect manuscripts and publications from paper mills?

“…At the time of manuscript submission, journals can screen for the features that we have proposed to be associated with mass‐produced manuscripts (Fig. ).…”

“…Furthermore, just as the miller's men in 'Krabat' could be magically transformed into ravens or other animals [1], paper mills could quickly change their operations in response to improved detection of their products. Nonetheless, based on emerging information, journals can and should take a number of concrete steps to recognize, reject, and deter paper mill submissions [9]. At the time of manuscript submission, journals can screen for the features that we have proposed to be associated with mass-produced manuscripts [8,9] (Fig.…”

“…Highly similar manuscripts could also be distributed across different author teams, where manuscript topics such as disease types could be matched to author interests or affiliations, and manuscripts with closely related topics could be submitted to different journals simultaneously . We have also witnessed the submission of identical template‐style manuscripts to multiple journals at the same time, presumably to increase the likelihood that the manuscript will be accepted . This practice could greatly amplify the burden of paper mill manuscripts on journals and peer reviewers.…”

“…We have individually thought and written about paper mills from our different experiences of scientific publishing . While researchers (JB) can encounter snapshots of the emerging literature by peer‐reviewing manuscripts and serving as journal editors, individuals working within scientific publishing (JC) are likely to encounter a broader range of manuscript submissions than any individual researcher.…”

Flagging incorrect nucleotide sequence reagents in biomedical papers: To what extent does the leading publication format impede automatic error detection?

“…Nonetheless, part of the literature is plagued with various errors and questionable statements, as detected by factchecking endeavours and error sleuths (Ledford et al 2017, p. 321). Although individuals manage to visually screen biomedical images from thousands of papers (Baker 2016;Christopher 2018;Van Noorden 2015), the enormous worldwide scientific production calls for automated approaches relying on machine learning, as described by Acuna et al (2018), for instance. These automated approaches include the detection of plagiarism (Citron and Ginsparg 2015), p-value hacking (Nuijten et al 2016), and discrepancies between the claims presented and current knowledge on the topic (Labbé et al 2019).…”