Image Search Triggers Italian Police Probe
From The Embassy of Good Science
ResourcesCases
Image Search Triggers Italian Police Probe
What is this about?
The case describes how an image manipulation scandal evolved in Italy. Enrico Bucci's company was offering publication of meta-analysis services. Bucci had detected the images of gel-electrophoresis analysis contained anomalies while conducting a global search to exclude contaminated literature from his database. A list of such papers were authored by Alfredo Fusco. Out of around 300 papers on which Fusco was first or last author, the team found 53 containing gels with potential irregularities, including one from as far back as 1985. After discovering that there was no academic organization in Italy that dealt with such findings, in February 2012 Bucci contacted the Milan police.
Why is this important?
This is a factual story that highlights how new image meta-analysis methods could help to find contaminated scientific literature.
