Elisabeth Bik

We're thrilled to announce the Ctrl-Z Award, a US$2,500 prize for researchers “who discover substantial errors in their published work and take meaningful steps to correct the scientific record."
Covered by @nature.com today; read more here: centerforscientificintegrity.org/2026/03/10/a...

Finished AJCR's 2023 volume. Found about 76 papers with concerning images, only using ImageTwin (w/o looking for anything else). The editorial board (including @weldeiry.bsky.social) must be so proud.

Wut?

Science Has a Major Fraud Problem For decades, scientists were above reproach. Not any more. Joe Nocera investigates the murky world of fraudulent research, and the sleuths exposing dishonest science.

Science Has a Major Fraud Problem

'For decades, scientists were above reproach. Not any more. Joe Nocera investigates the murky world of fraudulent research, and the sleuths exposing dishonest science.'

@thefp.com

www.thefp.com/p/science-ha...

Still only one duck 😁

RFK Jr. is definitely coming for your vaccines (part 8): “Massive Epidemic of Vaccine Injury,” ACIP, and a prominent oncologist The MAHA Institute is holding an event called MEVI Roundtable: Massive Epidemic of Vaccine Injury to fear monger about vaccines. Unfortunately, Dr. Wafik El-Deiry, a prominent oncologist-scientist, wi

The MAHA Institute is currently holding an event, MEVI Roundtable: Massive Epidemic of Vaccine Injury to fear monger about vaccines. Unfortunately, @weldeiry.bsky.social, a prominent oncologist-scientist, is lending his scientific respectability to it. sciencebasedmedicine.org/rfk-jr-is-de...

I am always happy to do a pre- check (for a single paper).

Librarian finds ‘preposterous number’ of fake references in paper from Springer Nature journal Gunnar Ridderström/Pexels As a hospital librarian, Jessica Waite is typically successful at tracking down elusive articles for clinicians at Royal Hallamshire Hospital in England. So when a colleag…

This is becoming a bit of a problem for Nature titles...

retractionwatch.com/2026/03/06/l...

Portrait of Elisabeth Bik @elisabethbik.bsky.social

Join us today @cudanlab.bsky.social

for a lecture & discussion with

Elisabeth Bik @elisabethbik.bsky.social

on "Errors and Misconduct in Biomedical Research Images"

🦠🔬🎨

16:00-18:00 Tallinn time UTC+2 🇪🇪🇪🇺🌍
(5 hours from this post).

Details & zoom: cudan.tlu.ee/events/2026-...

Thank you so much for having me on. We had a great discussion!

C8EB3C961F024E46E3FCCE2776AF6B#1 YouTube video by River Valley Technologies

Another depressing set of figures in a paper on Cancer research :-(
A colleague noted that the PubPeer poster and our colleagues spent more time on these figures than the authors did.
youtu.be/m58oMTJ9knY
pubpeer.com/publications...

Is this the correct way to do a corrigendum?

I was tagged in a post (buff.ly/7FdohBx) about a paper (published in Kybernetes, which is published by Emerald Publishing) that had used text from previous papers and a corrigendum had been issued, which said:
🧵

Screenshot from https://www.emerald.com/k/article-abstract/39/1/127/266399/Innovation-approach-to-detect-the-faults-in?redirectedFrom=fulltext showing the landing page of the paper, with title and abstract. No correction statement visible.

Screenshot of search result of the cope website: https://members.publicationethics.org/members?t=kybernetes&sort=score Showing the journal Kybernetes is a COPE member

I don't have access to this paper, but a correct corrigendum should have a separate DOI and be visible from the DOI landing page, both of which are not true.
The journal is a COPE member but does not adhere to its guidelines.

Figure 1. Schematic of the reaction of plasma-generated reactive species with V. cholera and the DNA distortion process.

Stunning discoveries at @mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social !
🦠 Vibrio cholera [sic] has a nucleus
🦠 It performs “signaling to nucleus”
🦠 And contains something called “inter membrane space”

Top-quality peer-reviewed content by @mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social
/sarcasm

www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/12...

Turns out “peer-reviewed” doesn’t mean “permanently correct.”
In OOTL’s newest episode, we sat down with Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, to talk about what happens when science gets it wrong, and why fixing it shouldn’t feel like a scandal.
🎙️ Link in bio.
#science #academia #podcast

No Ti­tle [ just a very brief rant ] by Christoph — We "em­pha­size the un­usual and the un­ex­pec­ted phe­no­me­na for which we have a spe­cial fas­ci­na­tion." And in fact, there are so many ex­cit­ing troves in the re­cent sci­en­…

different title, same authors as in 👇
apparently, they haven't improved their skills

I had the exact same reaction.

A medical journal says the case reports it has published for 25 years are, in fact, fiction A Canadian journal has issued corrections on 138 case reports it published over the last 25 years to add a disclaimer: The cases described are fictional. Paediatrics & Child Health, the journal…

A Canadian journal has issued corrections on 138 case reports it published over the last 25 years to add a disclaimer:

The cases described are fictional.

I am not a professor, 'just' a PhD, but thank you!

The corrected Figure 2 - marked by me with cyan and pink shapes to highlight overlapping areas.

Here they are - three of the six panels are all from the same agar plate. This one was hard to spot by eye - the rotations and mirroring make it hard to see the similarities.

I feel this paper should be retracted, despite the correction. What do you think?

pubpeer.com/publications...

But .... the new panel (top left) still overlaps with the top middle panel. It is just rotated and zoomed in a bit more.
And then I noticed that the bottom middle panel also overlaps with the top middle one.
Can you spot both overlaps?
/

The same figure 2, but the top left panel has been replaced.

Ah yes, too many pictures - always really hard to deal with. We should really feel sorry for the authors. It is so hard to keep track of those six different experiments.....

So, kudos to the authors for finding the correct panel and replacing the top left panel. Here is the corrected Figure 2.

The authors corrected this in February 2023.
"In the original publication [1], there was an error in Figure 2 as published. In Figure 2, due to too many pictures in the data processing process, some pictures were repeated. The corrected Figure 2 appears below."
www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/11...
/

Figure 2, screenshot. We see 2 rows with 3 panels each. Panels show grey background and white little dots, bacterial colonies. I have marked the top left and top middle panels with blue boxes, because they are identical. Legend reads: "Figure 2. The D-alanine demand identification of recombinant L. casei strain pPG-Alr-COE/∆Alr Figure 2. The D-alanine demand identification of recombinant L. casei strain pPG-Alr-COE/ΔAlr W56. The recombinant strains pPG-Alr-COE/ΔAlr W56, pPG-T7g10-PPT/ΔAlr W56, and ΔAlr W56 W56. The recombinant strains pPG-Alr-COE/∆Alr W56, pPG-T7g10-PPT/∆Alr W56, and ∆Alr W56 were streaked on de Man–Rogosa–Sharpe (MRS) plates to detect the demand of D-alanine. “+” were streaked on de Man-Rogosa-Sharpe (MRS) plates to detect the demand of D-alanine. “+” and “ and “-” represent MRS plates with and without D-alanine, respectively; Alr-COE/ΔAlr W56, pPG- −” represent MRS plates with and without D-alanine, respectively; Alr-COE/∆Alr W56, pPG-Alr- Alr-COE/ΔAlr W56; PPT/ΔAlr W56, pPG-T7g10-PPT/ΔAlr W56. COE/∆Alr W56; PPT/∆Alr W56, pPG-T7g10-PPT/∆Alr W56."

An interesting story from the @mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social archives.

First, I found this super easy #ImageForensics duplication in this 2021 Vaccines paper, doi.org/10.3390/vacc...

Shown with blue boxes.

I posted it on PubPeer, in August 2022.

pubpeer.com/publications...
/

Heterodera avenae is also me on PubPeer.

The Misunderstanding of Henrik Thorlacius “Potential repetitive areas presumably arise from the residual bulk image (RBI) phenomenon of the CCD camera, in which structures may be digitally repeated due to charge residues in the camer…

The Misunderstanding of Henrik Thorlacius
forbetterscience.com/2026/03/03/t...

I was delighted to learn that Elisabeth Bik (@elisabethbik.bsky.social) finds inspiration in my work. Thank you, Elisabeth, for the nomination. I truly appreciate your support!

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

‘No one quite like her’: meet the female colleagues who inspire these award-winning women in science To mark International Women’s Day, Nature asked winners of its awards programmes to nominate a colleague who brings out the best in them.

‘No one quite like her’: meet the female colleagues who inspire these award-winning women in science
To mark International Women’s Day, Nature asked winners of its awards programmes to nominate a colleague who brings out the best in them.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Under Review with Dr Elisabeth Bik - Research fraud detection, papermills and that rat. YouTube video by Andy Tattersall

I've been really pleased with the reception of my Under Review podcast. Last week's episode with @elisabethbik.bsky.social has been viewed on YouTube almost 800 times as well as a good number on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l254...

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/u...

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