Swedish plastics study fabricated, panel finds
From The Embassy of Good Science
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Swedish plastics study fabricated, panel finds
What is this about?
t was a Swedish thriller, science style. To get at the truth about an alarming, high-profile Science paper suggesting that tiny bits of floating plastic threaten fish populations, members of a panel at Uppsala University (UU) in Sweden sifted through hundreds of emails, travel documents, receipts, and bank statements. They were attempting to retrace the steps of UU ecologist Oona Lönnstedt, the paper's first author, during six crucial weeks in the spring of 2015. That is when Lönnstedt said she conducted the experiments described in the paper at the Ar Research Station on the Baltic Sea island of Gotland. But whistleblowers accusing her of fraud had alleged that she didn't spend nearly enough time on the island to have gathered the data.
