An analysis of hundreds of scientific papers over seven eld has found a gravid number might involve to be retract due to duplicated images . About 35,000 , to be accurate .
publish on the preprint serverbioRxiv , the researchers looked at 960 biomedical paper write from 2009 to 2016 in the American Society for Microbiology ’s diary Molecular and Cellular Biology . Of these they find about 6 pct had been “ inappropriately duplicated ” , using software to spot the images , and extrapolated for their last design .
In other words , a number of document were using images from other research and passing it off as their own . This , of course , leads to enquiry about the veracity of research in the process – and has lead to a issue of retractions already .
The researchers enjoin they reported the 59 example of image duplication to the diary , of which 42 were corrected , 12 had no legal action taken ( due to things such as the testing ground in question close down ) , and five of which were retract .
In an interview with the websiteRetraction Watch , the researchers noted this low rate of recantation was not surprising , because “ most image trouble were the outcome of misplay in piece figures . ”
Elisabeth Bik of uBiome , direct author on the newspaper , added : “ We bank the authors when they said that the duplication was the result of an error . Our goal is to make trusted that the science is right , not to punish .
“ The eccentric that were retracted were the papers where we felt that there were too many mistake to be corrected , or where misconduct was suspected . ”
The squad noted that in anearlier written report , they had used software to analyze 20,000 papers , and discover that 3.8 pct of those contained duplicated images . contract that figure across the almost 9 million biomedical papers issue from 2009 to 2016 , and suggest that up to 11 percent bear error worthy of retraction , they fall to their net shape of 35,000 papers being suspect .
While this is still a lowly fraction of the overall papers , it ’s still obviously a cause for concern . They note that screening for issues before issue , having one investigator foregather the paradigm , or training match reviewers to spot duplications could avail prevent issues like this in future .
“ At the very least , our findings hint the need for both authors and journals to redouble their efforts [ to ] foreclose incompatible image duplicate , ” the team note in their paper .
[ H / T : Retraction Watch / Science Alert ]
