A blog about science integrity, by Elisabeth Bik, for Harbers-Bik LLC. Support my work at Patreon.com/elisabethbik
Around 2014-2015, I screened 20,000 biomedical articles for image duplication in 2014-2015. About 4% of those papers, 782 to be exact, contained inappropriate duplications. Together with my coauthors Arturo Casadevall and Ferric Fang, I published that work in mBio in 2016 here. Unfortunately, many of these problematic papers are still not addressed by the journals … Continue reading "Is science…
A 2025 paper published in Ophthalmic Epidemiology is being promoted online as proof that COVID-19 vaccines damage the eyes. Before accepting that conclusion, it was worth looking at the paper itself. A closer look at the article revealed a reused figure published by another group of authors, 59 men plus 69 women in a study … Continue reading "COVID-19-vaccine-induced eye damage? Reused images,…
Early May, I attended the 2026 World Conference on Research Integrity (WCRI) in Vancouver, BC, Canada. This conference is held every two years. In 2024, I went to the WCRI in Athens, Greece, and in 2022 to the one in Cape Town, South Africa. In this post, I will provide a short summary and links … Continue reading "Reporting from the 2026 World Conference on Research Integrity"
On some days, after hours of image scanning, I feel like doing something different. Today, I searched for some scientific papers containing “tortured phrases”. This term was first coined by Guillaume Cabanac et al. in a 2021 preprint. Tortured phrases are bizarrely synonymized versions of standard scientific terms produced when authors run copied text through … Continue reading "The Camel’s Camel"
Over the past couple of days, I have been reviewing a series of Materials Science papers, all co-authored by the same group of researchers from the Universities of Lahore, Chakwal, and Sargodha in Pakistan. While reviewing them, one analytical technique kept standing out for unusual reasons. Materials Science Materials science studies the composition and structure … Continue reading "UnEDXpected…
Good morning from Chicago! We will start Day 3 (last day) of the 10th International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication. @peerreviewcongress.bsky.social / peerreviewcongress.org/peer-review-… #PRC10 <— This hashtag will give you all the posts! You can also click on this feed, created by @retropz.bsky.social: bsky.app/profile/did:… [Day 1] and [Day 2]. Opening It’s 8 am … Continue…
[Day 1] [Day 3] Good morning from Chicago, where we are getting ready for Day 2 of the 10th International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication. peerreviewcongress.org / @peerreviewcongress.bsky.social / #PRC10 The Douglas G. Altman Lecture We will start with the Douglas G. Altman Lecture, by Malcolm MacLeod (online presentation) –@maclomaclee.bsky.social, with “Does the … Continue…
It’s Peer Review Week! A perfect time to post my notes from the 10th International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publication, which was held at the Swissôtel in Chicago, two weeks ago, September 3-5, 2025. This was my first time attending this congress. I tried to live-post all the talks on BlueSky [except for … Continue reading "Peer Review Congress Chicago – Day 1"
“Patients with provocative entrail illness unclassified gave to crisis division a 3-day history of sickness, retching, migraine and irregular stomach torment alongside discontinuous ridiculous stools as of late.” If you cannot wrap your brain around this sentence, don’t worry. Neither can I. Tortured phrases The wording is full of tortured phrases, a specific way of … Continue reading…
Today, 25 July 2025, a preprint was posted claiming that significant gene expression changes were found in individuals with new-onset cancer and other diseases after receiving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, compared to healthy individuals. A preprint is a non-peer reviewed manuscript – a study or hypothesis that has not yet been evaluated by other scientists. These … Continue reading "Preprint claiming…