As a researcher, Mircea Ivan isn’t surprised by the increasing number of scientific papers being questioned or retracted for containing falsified or fabricated information. In a system where getting published often leads to grant funds, job security or acclaim, he believes it makes sense there is growing pressure to be productive, no matter the cost.
But while universities and fee-based research journals line their pockets, often with taxpayer funds, it’s the general public that ultimately suffers, according to Ivan. Case in point: earlier this year, a 2006 landmark paper on Alzheimer’s disease was retracted after a researcher admitted to image manipulation. The paper had influenced additional research and treatments, and its retraction immediately called into question the work built upon it.
Or, consider the 1998 paper published in a scientific journal by gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield that claimed a link between vaccines and autism. The paper, which was found to contain falsehoods, was retracted in 2010, but it continues to influence perceptions about childhood vaccines more than 20 years later.
Most retracted papers don’t have nearly as much impact on the public, but Ivan, a Carmel resident, said their growing numbers indicate a problem with significant scope and potentially dangerous consequences.
“I don’t believe the system, as it is right now, is functional anymore,” Ivan said.
But he is hoping to change that. And he believes his hometown is the perfect place to start.
Ivan, who was recognized for his work that contributed to a former colleague earning a Nobel Prize in 2019, is working to launch an initiative called Agora, named after public spaces used for assemblies in ancient Greece, to bring more transparency – and restore trust – to the scientific publishing process.
“What I’m trying to promote is the transition to a model of publication that can be discussed in the public space,” he said. “Basically, you put your data in the public space and engage people for feedback. So, if we keep (the current system in place), science quality is going to drop to levels that are absolutely unacceptable. Science has to be discussed in a public space. It cannot be driven by profit.”
A faculty member at Indiana University, Ivan said he’s pursuing the Agora initiative as a concerned citizen and not on behalf of his employer. He aims to launch it by forming a group in Carmel dedicated to tackling the problem of scientific integrity and discussing solutions in a roundtable setting. A native of Romania, he has lived in Carmel since 2008 and believes the area has the right demographics to launch the initiative.
“It’s big enough where enough people can get together and discuss these things,” he said. “It’s a very educated place. It’s a place with enough financial resources. But it’s not too big for these kinds of discussions to be diluted.”
Ivan knows change won’t be easy. He’s taking on a well-funded establishment with little interest in reforms. And he is not alone in realizing that speaking out may have consequences of its own.
Former researcher Elisabeth Bik has been at the forefront of efforts to restore scientific integrity, and her work has identified more than 4,000 instances of potential improprieties in scientific papers. Since 2018, she has worked full time as a science integrity consultant and investigator, becoming a target of personal online attacks and legal threats in the process.
The native of the Netherlands stumbled into the field unexpectedly years ago after she Google searched a random sentence from one of her research papers and discovered another scientist had plagiarized it. Less than a year later, she accidentally came across an image of a Western blot protein duplicated in another paper, and she began to realize the extent of the problem was bigger than she thought.
Now her efforts focus on identifying and reporting falsified or fabricated information or images in scientific publications. She estimates that at least 2 percent of published papers have enough concerns that they should be retracted. It’s a number small enough that she said there’s no need for the general public to panic (especially since approved medications and treatments go through much more scrutiny than a typical research paper), but significant enough that it should be concerning to all.
“I would love the general public to be more angry about proven cases of misconduct,” Bik said. “One of the frustrations I feel as a researcher raising concerns about it is the lack of response, or the lack of people who care about it.”
Without public outcry, researchers with ties to questionable or retracted papers often receive little more than a slap on the wrist, if anything, and research dollars – often funded through public funds – continue to flow their way. Many flagged scientific papers are only self-investigated by the researching team’s own institution, as the federal bureau tasked with oversight – The Office of Research Integrity (part of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services) – only has enough staff and funding to handle a handful of cases per year, Bik and Ivan said.
Ivan agrees that the general public will be key to bringing about change.
“Instead of giving money to universities that are going to support careers, they should be people who should be interested to help build the new type of science,” Ivan said. “Otherwise, we’re just going to be generating noise, and our grandchildren are going to look back and say, ‘We’re still dying of Alzhimer’s like before. There’s been no progress whatsoever.’’’
Anyone interested in learning more about Agora and how to get involved in the roundtable discussions may email Ivan at [email protected].
Who is to blame?
With large research teams drafting complex papers, scientific integrity consultant Elisabeth Bik said it can be difficult to determine who is responsible for inserting false or misleading information into published work. But she believes change won’t occur unless there is more accountability at the top.
“We might see a (duplicated) image, but who did it? Was it the grad student desperate to get out of a lab or feeling the boss was putting pressure on them to cheat? Whose fault is it? I think in the end, it’s the professor’s fault or responsibility,” Bik said. “Once somebody has proven to do misconduct, the senior researcher responsible for them – their integrity and mentoring and supervising – they should be held more accountable. But very often, the grad student is thrown under the bus and the professor is still happily receiving awards and grants.”
Ivan Oransky is co-founder of Retraction Watch, a website that tracks and covers scientific retractions and corrections and compiles them in a database. He believes the problem is systemic rather than caused by individuals and said the public can help reform the system by educating themselves on the scientific process rather than basing decisions and opinions on headlines that only tell part of a story.
“The average person should stop paying attention to stories they read or memes they see that seem to reduce a single study into something that’s making one very specific and sharp finding,” he said. “Single-study coverage in general is probably not worth paying attention to.”
