Elisabeth Bik

Woohoo, looking forward!

A cartoon drawing of a light brown camel with one hump. At the position where one might find an udder, we see a baby camel hanging. It is to illustrate the absurdity of the sentence "The definition and definition of microbes on the camel’s camel is very important ", found in the abstract of a paper about the camel udder microbiome.

New blog post: The Camel's Camel.
Today, I found a beautiful example of synonymized plagiarism involving the microbiome of a camel’s udder.
#TorturedPhrases #ScienceIntegrity #ResearchIntegrity
scienceintegritydigest.com/2026/03/12/t...

Oh, my goodness, take care of yourself first!
Some old reruns would be fine, or a mix.
Get well soon!

Keep calm and be transparent: advice from scientists who retracted their papers Retractions correct the scientific record, but they have stigma attached to them. Some in the research community want that to change.

Keep calm and be transparent: advice from scientists who retracted their papers www.nature.com/articles/d41... @elisabethbik.bsky.social

Mmmm, not sure what you mean.

You got it!
Congrats on winning the second Emoji Award of this round: 🏅

That is correct! Two more in the Mock animal as well.
You won the first emoji award of this round: 🏅
Congratulations!

A collage of four mice, lying on their backs on a raster. Each mouse has a blue signal on their belly, with different shades of blue and cyan indicating different luminescence signal strengths.

Can you spot the #ImageForensics problem here?
(and yes, the taped mice are problematic, too).

Yes, saw it earlier today.
It's not Okay.

Wut? I don’t recall being asked or given permission for this.

Grammarly's AI writing tips claim inspiration from experts who never agreed to participate

the-decoder.com/grammarlys-a...

More scientists/science writers in Grammarly's 'expert review' system: Carl Zimmer, Arthur L Caplan, Shobita Parthasarathy, Maryn McKenna, Carl Bergstrom, Elisabeth Bik, Michael Eisen, Peter Suber, Dennis Overbye, Anna Abalkina, Sheila Jasanoff, Marcus Munafo, Jon Turney, and the list goes on.

Wut? I don’t recall being asked or given permission for this.

Scientific sleuths come in from the cold Research integrity investigators are starting to organize, but the field, and the people, remain idiosyncratic

Research sleuths are starting to organize, but the field, and the people, remain idiosyncratic — my latest for @cenmag.bsky.social:

cen.acs.org/research-int...

@mcintold.bsky.social, @reeserichardson.bsky.social, @elisabethbik.bsky.social, @sholtodavid.bsky.social,
@eugenie-reich.bsky.social

Growing industry of companies offering students help in navigating academic misconduct proceedings operates in ‘regulatory and ethical grey zone’, research finds. Tash Mosheim reports
https://ow.ly/Quyl50YrQHv

Stop the use of AI in war until laws can be agreed Researchers working on the most advanced AI models want rules to be drawn up to minimize the harm the technologies could cause. Their warnings need to be heard.

AI is being used in warfare despite there being no agreed rules for this application.

Researchers working on the most advanced AI models want rules to be drawn up to minimize the harm the technologies could cause.

We agree; read our Nature editorial 🧪 @nature.com

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

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.

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...