Data Radicals

The Scientific Integrity Crisis with Dr. Elisabeth Bik

Apr 12, 2023

52:23

In a world where technology is constantly evolving and AI is everywhere, it’s all too easy for content to be deceitful, including scientific papers. Capturing source metadata, incentivizing reproducibility, and protecting whistleblowers are steps we can take to ensure science remains honest.

In this episode, Satyen interviews Dr. Elisabeth Bik. Elisabeth is an experienced microbiologist whose groundbreaking work in scientific integrity has led to more than four thousand potential cases of improper research conduct. She also founded the blogs Microbiome Digest and Science Integrity Digest, and was awarded the John Maddox Prize for "outstanding work exposing widespread threats to research integrity in scientific papers" in 2021. Satyen and Elisabeth discuss image manipulation in scientific papers, the impact of AI on scientific integrity, and why paper mills must be stopped.

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“There's people looking at statistical problems or DNA sequences that don't make any sense, and appear to have been made up, or plagiarism. [...] We have a community of people doing this, data detectives or image detectives. And I think what we have in common is a desire to make science better and to flag these papers so that other people can see that there's a potential problem with that paper.” – Dr. Elisabeth Bik

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Time Stamps:

*(01:34): Image manipulation in the context of scientific papers

*(17:41): Elisabeth explains scientific paper mills

*(22:52): Why biomedical research needs to slow down

*(34:20): How Elisabeth manages backlash from scientists

*(46:45): How prevalent fraud is in science today

*(50:32): Satyen’s Takeaways

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This podcast is presented by Alation.

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