Kate Heffernan, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Boston office, was quoted in Undark, in “The Rise of the Science Sleuths,” by Jessica Wapner.
Following is an excerpt:
On a sweltering day in July 2023, a ragtag group of data wonks sat around a table at U Zlatého Tygra, or the Golden Tiger, a historic bar in Prague’s Old Town. A mild sense of outrage hung in the air between jokes about who among them looked the most Medieval. The group was discussing the issue of manipulated images and fabricated data in scientific publishing. Soon someone was passing around a phone showing a black-and-white image with clear traces of tampering. After a couple more rounds, the group made its way across the ornate cobblestone roads. They brimmed with frustration that, until now, had largely been shared only online. “It’s a toxic dump,” an Italian scientist known to the group by his pseudonym, Aneurus Inconstans, said about science. “It’s not about curiosity anymore, it’s just a career.”
These are the sleuths, as the media often refer to them. They are a haphazard collection of international acquaintances, some scientists and some not, from the United States, Ukraine, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, who are dedicated to uncovering potential manipulation in the scientific literature.
Those present in Prague, and others who couldn’t make the trip, have different strengths and interests. Some are into exposing statistical skullduggery; others are into spotting manipulated images. Some are academics sticking to their field; others more general-interest vigilantes. But all of them are entrenched in an ongoing battle at the heart of science, in which the pressure to publish and the drive for fame and profit have thrown countless images and statistics into question, sometimes cracking pillars of research in the process. The issue is spread across many fields of science, though some have suffered more than others. “The biggest paper in Alzheimer’s disease is a fake,” Inconstans said en route from the bar as the sun set over Old Town. He was sharing an opinion that all the other sleuths had already heard.
The paper in question, published in Nature in 2006, lent credence to a theory that the proliferation of a type of amyloid protein causes Alzheimer’s disease. The amyloid cascade hypothesis, which had all but taken over Alzheimer’s research, has led to billions of dollars going into researching anti-amyloid therapies to slow the disease’s progression.
But a decade and a half later, some sleuths noticed problems with crucial images in that paper. Core data appeared to be fake. Scientists in the field debated about the importance of the paper after the concerns emerged. Some believed that a landmark finding supporting the hypothesis was now unreliable. Others insisted the paper had never been used as proof.
No one could deny, though, that thousands of other publications had cited the research. And, in the sleuths’ eyes, the paper’s popularity made investigating any tampering that much more important. “Part of what we need to do, especially when you’re looking at papers that have been cited, many of them hundreds, and a few of them, thousands, of times, is to make it easier for people to recognize the problems,” said Matthew Schrag, a neurologist who treats Alzheimer’s patients and conducts research on the disease at Vanderbilt University. A correction or a retraction would have served that need and kept with the protocols of science.
Instead, the questions raised about the work revealed cracks that have been slowly eating away at scientific integrity for years. And the sleuths asking those questions would find themselves not just seeking a minor correction but fighting for a greater truth. In a text message to Undark, one man who long went by the pseudonym Smut Clyde before outing himself as David Bimler, a retired perceptual psychologist from New Zealand, wrote: “ We are all idealists and united by a wish for the ideals of science to be more like what they used to be.”
Whether they can do anything about it, though, is another question.
The Prague group had come together at the invitation of Kevin Patrick, a financial adviser in the Seattle area. Unlike the other guests at the Golden Tiger — which, in addition to Bimler and Inconstans, included Elisabeth Bik, well-known for her skill at identifying tampered images, and several others — Patrick didn’t have a scientific background. Though his investing work occasionally required him to pay attention to drug stocks, he says general curiosity years later led him to discover Retraction Watch, a website for tracking problematic and unreliable papers. As he recalls, Retraction Watch soon led him to PubPeer, a site for discussing published research, where he saw example after example of tampered images. …
Universities may also have trepidation about engaging with individuals who call out their researchers on PubPeer or in direct correspondence to the institution. “Researchers are well aware that these types of allegations, whether substantiated or not, can be career-ending,” said Kate Gallin Heffernan, a lawyer who works with institutions on misconduct investigations. She says that even when a researcher provides a satisfactory response, an exchange on PubPeer or X can leave a stain.
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