Elisabeth Bik Quit Her Job to Spot Errors in Research Papers — and Has Become the Public Face of Image Sleuthing
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Feature NATURE GABRIELA HASBUN FOR FOR GABRIELA HASBUN SEEING DOUBLE Elisabeth Bik quit her job to spot errors in research papers — and has become the public face of image sleuthing. By Helen Shen 132 | Nature | Vol 581 | 14 May 2020 ©2021 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. ©2021 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. ARE YOU A SUPERSPOTTER? Elisabeth Bik identified five duplicated areas in these cell microscopy images from separate experiments in two figures in a paper. We have simplified the labels. Can you spot the duplications? (Answers overleaf). a b c d 1 2 (2019). , E0214018 14 3 , E91566 (2014); RETRACTION RETRACTION , E91566 (2014); 9 PLOS ONE PLOS ET AL. 4 SOURCE: S. GENG S. GENG SOURCE: the Belgian message. Attached are images or years chasing things which turn out to not of western blots — the results of a common be valid,” he says. test to detect proteins in biological samples Bik is not the world’s only image sleuth, but — from a published research paper. The writer she is unique in how publicly she presents her wants to know: does Bik see anything fishy in work. Many image checkers work behind the this paper? Have these pictures been digitally scenes, publishing their findings in research altered? papers and writing privately to journals; a few Bik, a microbiologist from the Netherlands are hired by journals or institutions. Some who who moved to the United States almost two flag up image problems work under pseudo- decades ago, is a widely lauded super-spotter nyms, preferring not to be identified. But Bik of duplicated images in the scientific litera- posts her finds almost every day on Twitter and ture. On a typical day, she’ll scan dozens other online forums, in the process teaching of biomedical papers by eye, looking for others how to spot duplications and pressur- instances in which images are reused and reported as results from different experi- “The things ments, or where parts of images are cloned, flipped, shifted or rotated to create ‘new’ data she calls out are (see ‘Are you a super-spotter?’; answers over- usually real issues.” leaf at ‘Did you spot them?’). Her skill and doggedness have earned her a ebruary the fourteenth starts like most worldwide following. “She has an uncommon ing journals to investigate papers. In so doing, other days for Elisabeth Bik: checking ability to detect even the most complicated she’s generated an “avalanche of reactions” her phone in bed, she scrolls through manipulation,” says Enrico Bucci, co-founder and awareness about the problem, says Bucci. a slew of Twitter notifications and of the research-integrity firm Resis in Samone, Bik estimates that her discoveries have led to at private messages from scientists seek- Italy. Not every issue means a paper is fraud- least 172 retractions and more than 300 errata ing her detective services. Today’s ulent or wrong. But some do, which causes and corrections — but all too often, she says, first request is from a researcher in deep concern for many researchers. “It’s a her warnings seem to be ignored. Belgium: “Hi! I know you have a lot of terrible problem that we can’t rely on some In April 2019, Bik announced that she had Fpeople asking you to use your magic powers aspects of the scientific literature,” says left her paid job at a biomedical start-up firm to analyse figures, blots and others but I just Ferric Fang, a microbiologist at the Univer- and would pursue image integrity work full- wanted to ask your opinion…” sity of Washington, Seattle, who worked on time, free of charge, for at least a year. A year After pouring a cup of coffee, Bik sits down a study with Bik in which she analysed more on, she shows no signs of changing course — at the long, wooden dining table that serves than 20,000 biomedical papers, finding prob- even though she has faced harassment, and at as her workstation at her home in California. lematic duplications in roughly 4% of them times been overwhelmed with requests. She’s She checks her e-mails on a giant 34-inch (E. M. Bik et al. mBio 7, e00809-16; 2016). “You also shared her files with computer scientists curved monitor, and takes a closer look at have postdocs and students wasting months trying to develop software to spot duplicated Nature | Vol 581 | 14 May 2020 | 133 ©2021 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. ©2021 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. Feature DID YOU SPOT THEM? her collection of nearly 2,000 turtle figurines Here are the duplicated sections Bik saw. — gathered from travels and friends — which she keeps in a wall of glass cabinets. Most a b c d prized of all her spreadsheets, however, is a collection of more than 3,300 questionable papers, most of them flagged because of an 1 issue with their images. (Bik sometimes raises other concerns with papers, such as around plagiarism or conflicts of interest.) On a day without interruptions, Bik can peruse 100 papers or so, adding between 1 and 20 hits to her database (see ‘Advanced 2 super-spotter test’; answers overleaf at ‘Did (2019). , E0214018 14 you spot them?’). A repeated smudge here or there, or a familiar smattering of data points: the visual indicators of duplication leap out at Bik from the screen. The collection is large enough to generate its own leads. It was look- 3 ing at other papers by authors in her mBio data , E91566 (2014); RETRACTION RETRACTION , E91566 (2014); set, for instance, that led Bik last November to 9 a case that generated her widest media cover- PLOS ONE PLOS age so far: a cluster of papers co-authored by Cao Xuetao, a prominent immunologist who ET AL. has advocated for stronger research integrity 4 in China, and who is the president of Nankai University in Tianjin. (Most of the articles listed Cao’s other affiliation, at the National S. GENG SOURCE: Key Laboratory of Medical Immunology in images across millions of papers, although the lead to an in-depth inquiry of the frequency of Shanghai.) Bik and other pseudonymous com- programs will probably always need human problems in biomedical work. They sampled menters flagged apparent issues in more than verification. “I’m enjoying it so much that I 20,621 papers, with Bik screening each — a task 60 papers at PubPeer. feel I just want to keep on doing this,” she says. Fang says only she could do — before passing China’s ministry of education said it would on her finds to Fang and Casadevall for cor- investigate the articles, and Cao replied at Hooked by a double smudge roboration. “It’s like a magic trick,” says Fang. PubPeer that he would re-examine the man- Bik stumbled into image sleuthing around “When it’s pointed out to you how it works, you uscripts, and that he was confident that the 2013, when, as a staff scientist at Stanford Uni- can start to see it.” The team found 782 papers publications remained valid. Some authors versity in California, she read articles about with what they termed “inappropriate” dupli- replied swiftly on the site to point to honest scientific integrity and plagiarism. Out of cations, and Bik notified the relevant journals. errors. In one case, apparent duplicate images curiosity, she googled quotes from her own The team reported the work in 2016 in mBio, at were in fact supposed to represent the same published papers, and quickly found that which Casadevall is editor-in-chief. experiment but were not clearly labelled other authors had lifted text without giving Bik spent so much of her spare time on as such, an explanation that Bik accepts. In credit. “I was hooked. I was angry,” she says. duplicated images that last year she decided another, authors posted raw data and said the “I immediately got fascinated about it, like to leave her job as director of science at Astarte data seemed similar only after being processed how other people get fascinated by reading Medical in Foster City, California. “I realized I for a paper. In still others, authors said there about crimes.” At one point, while examining a was getting more enthusiastic about image had been accidental mistakes, and by May this PhD thesis containing plagiarized text, some- duplication work than my real job,” she says. year, 13 of the flagged papers had received thing even more compelling caught her eye: a “It’s an impressive decision to make,” says corrections, most stating that scientific con- western-blot image with a distinctive smudge. Jennifer Byrne, a molecular biologist at the clusions weren’t affected. (Cao and China’s The same image appeared in another chap- University of Sydney in Australia and herself education ministry didn’t comment further ter, supposedly for a different experiment. a data-integrity sleuth who hunts for faulty for this article.) The chapters had also appeared as research genetic sequences in published papers. “It was Sometimes, Bik’s finds have pointed to articles, with the same errors, Bik saw. She very brave and, to be honest, pretty selfless.” suspected large-scale operations. This year, e-mailed journal editors in January 2014; in Bik does not get paid for most of her work, she and others have flagged a series of more June, she anonymously reported the papers but does some occasional paid consulting, than 400 papers that, they say, contain so many online at PubPeer, a website where scientists and receives modest sums through a Patreon similarities that they could be the product of a can discuss published papers.