Reusing Biopsy Material in New Publications, Image Manipulation and Fraudulent Research Protocols
From The Embassy of Good Science
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Reusing Biopsy Material in New Publications, Image Manipulation and Fraudulent Research Protocols
What is this about?
A scientist at a Danish research centre was accused of acting in a scientifically dishonest manner in a number of research papers. The practices included inaccurate descriptions of research participants, the undisclosed re-use of biopsy material and research subjects from previous studies, the manipulation of images, and the erroneous and misleading presentation of data. The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty for Health and Medical Sciences ruled that scientific dishonesty had been committed in four instances relating to four out of the twelve research papers. This is a factual case.
Why is this important?
For research ethics committees and research integrity offices, this case report demonstrates the value of ensuring that case details are reported accurately, transparently and in significant detail, particularly when appeals are made by defendants regarding previous rulings.
In terms of the specific practices of scientific dishonesty, the case demonstrates that:
- Reusing biopsy material in order to support the conclusions of subsequent studies is a serious breach of good scientific practice if and when readers are not informed that an article is based on the results of previous studies;
- Reusing biopsy material in order to support the conclusions of subsequent studies undermines the validity of these studies when the different studies are based on different population sizes and different methodologies;
- Using the same images to represent different proteins is an instance of image manipulation even when the colours have been changed and the images rotated.
For whom is this important?
What are the best practices?
Good scientific practice involves researchers providing explicit information on the origin of their test material in a way that is clear to readers of the paper.
All authors of a scientific article have responsibility for its overall content, including reading the final manuscript carefully before submitting it to a journal.
