Elisabeth Bik
@MicrobiomDigest
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Science integrity consultant, PhD. #ImageForensics Previously @ Stanford and (gasp!) uBiome. She/her. elisabethbik.bsky 🇳🇱🇺🇸
Near San Francisco, CA
Joined October 2013
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Pinned Tweet
Hi everyone! I am Elisabeth Bik, PhD, a science integrity consultant and volunteer.
In this thread for
#YoungScientistNetworking
(invited by
@QuantumTessera
), I will tell a bit about my somewhat unusual career.
/
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Vaccines work.
Despite what thousands of paid Twitter blue checks might want you to believe, vaccines work.
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I am ringing the alarm.
We have now found >400 papers that all share a very similar title layout, graph layout, and (most importantly) the same Western blot layout.
This is a massive
#PaperMill
of (what we assume) fabricated data.
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Someone in Ohio is shedding new strain of COVID into sewers, professor says
Johnson, with the help of his Twitter followers and U.S. Census data, have narrowed down the list of possible infected people to about 1,600
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A new thread about a series of papers in legitimate scientific journals, all from the same author.
These papers have all been peer-reviewed, but no editor or peer reviewer noticed a huge problem.
Warning: this might make your jaw drop.
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Today, I present to you The Paper With More References Than Words.
It has 182 words and 212 references.
All references are from the first author.
Who works at a university that does not appear to exist.
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I am so, so, so grateful for this incredible honour. Thank you so much
@senseaboutsci
and
@SpringerNature
❤️
The John Maddox Prize 2021 goes to Elisabeth Bik,
@MicrobiomDigest
, Microbiologist and Science Integrity Consultant
@SpringerNature
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From a paper published in
@nature
yesterday by
@HarvardMed
scientists.
I just reported it to the EiC, with shaking hands and pounding heart because scary to see that this passed
#peerreview
and editorial screening in such a high impact journal.
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Much excitement about the paper on
#Hydroxychloroquine
treatment of
#COVID19
patients. 20 treated patients all seemed to eliminate virus fast. But 4 patients who did worse (one died) were left off.
See my comments
@PubPeer
:
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If professors keep doxxing and insulting me, instead of addressing the concerns I raised in their papers, that must mean they are sick with fear.
I will not stop what I am doing,
@IHU_Marseille
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Professor Raoult, with almost a million followers, just retweeted a France Soir piece full of false and insinuating things about me, so I’m gonna set my account to private mode until this new wave of hate is gone. Sending love to my followers. I will not give up, folks!
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I am taking a year off from paid work to focus more on my science misconduct volunteer work. Science needs more help to detect image duplication, plagiarism, fabricated results, and predatory publishers.
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Yay!
Three years after
@raoult_didier
@Pr_Chabriere_E
and
@IHU_Marseille
filed a complaint against me for harassment and blackmail, the Marseille Procureur tells me today they could not find any grounds for criminal prosecution.
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Sorry, dear tweeps, but I have temporarily set my account to private, after some stock bro posted a hateful video about me on YouTube. My notifications were flooding with unkind messages, so I had to lock the door.
In private mode, you cannot RT, but still like my tweets
❤️❤️❤️
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French trolls are ripping apart my papers, my personal finances, my family, my appearance, and now the society that recently gave me an award.
It tells me again that the scientist whose work I have been critical of - has no answers.
It is not going to stop me.
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It's disappointing to see an article about misconduct for which I was consulted stating that 3 experts took a look at the data, but only mentions 2 of them by name.
Those 2 are both men. I am not mentioned.
One of the 100s of little insults
#WomenInSTEM
have to deal with.
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More than 300
@IHU_Marseille
papers
@PubPeer
with concerns on image duplication, unauthorized human subject research on homeless, minors, people in Africa.
No scientific answers from the institution.
Just ad hominems, insults, and legal threats.
I'm not going to be silenced.
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I just reported a set of 202 papers that were all authored by people from the same university. Image problems, narrow ranges of standard deviations, and plagiarism. Worked on this day and night since August 15.
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How can a professor publish a paper multiple papers per week? It seems impossible that he is really contributing scientifically to these studies.
The incredible case of hyperprolific author Mark Griffiths has been discussed before.
Delighted to see that I had over 5000 citations in a 2-month period on Google Scholar to take me over 125,000 citations and an h-index of 170. Big thanks to all my co-authors
@PsychologyNTU
@NTUNews
@BPSCyberPsych
@ntu_research
@daraghmcdermott
@ProfEdwardPeck
@NTUSocSciences
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I have no desire to pursue a high h index, a paper in a CNS journal, or to run a huge lab.
But I want to help leave the scientific findings of my generation in good shape for the next one.
When it comes to science papers, quality is more important than quantity.
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Please tweeps, help me stay motivated.
I got hundreds of unkind messages today, I have been harassed for months by an
@IHU_Marseille
professor, and the majority of the papers I post here remain untouched by unwilling editors. You need to help me, please.
I can’t do this alone.
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My Dad took his final journey yesterday.
Here are some of my best memories with him.
Love you, papa.
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My full name today is Daenerys Targarybik, First of Her Name, Queen of ImageForensics, Khaleesi of the Great Twitter Sea, Protector of Science, Lady Regent of Microbiology, Breaker of Misconduct, and Mother of Turtles.
Just gave a talk
@PennMedicine
like this!
#HappyHalloween
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This is not great. A
@Nature
paper about SARS-CoV-2 pathogenicity with a possible overlap in photos representing different treatment groups. HT
@RuneLinding
who asked me to look at the paper.
#ImageForensics
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Five years ago, I reported 800 scientific papers with image duplications to journals. As of today, only one third of these have been corrected/retracted.
Journals/institutions are very reluctant to take action.
Maybe posting these duplications in public will help?
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Whoa.
Jaap van Dissel, Infectious Diseases director at the
@rivm
(Dutch NIH/CDC), stated yesterday that the high number of COVID-19 infections in nursing homes might have been caused by staff education level.
What a horrible thing to say.
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Professor
@raoult_didier
just gave a 1.5 hour long interview in which he called me 'une dingue', a crazy woman, who 'failed in her career'.
I really must live rent-free in his head 😉
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Yesterday, we saw the gorgeous
#2019SolarEclipse
.
We had bought tickets to see it at
@ESO
observatory in La Silla, Chile, which would have many activities around the eclipse.
But poor organization and Chile's president ruined part of our fun.
(thread)
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If my Twitter account suddenly goes silent, it might be hacked by order of certain authorities. Getting several warnings that this might occur.
Well, if that happens, it has been fun. I will reappear somewhere else. But I will not be silent. Love you all.
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Twentythree years married to this amazing man ❤️❤️❤️
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The rat with the big balls and the enormous penis – how Frontiers published a paper with botched AI-generated images
@FrontiersIn
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@raoult_didier
If you did not do any of the experiments, nor were involved in the writing of the paper, why were you an author? Can you clarify if this is also the case for any of your other 3499 papers, please?
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It was a busy year:
* 27 invited in-person talks at universities/ conferences * 21 webinars / online panels
* 83 interviews
* 1,121 papers posted
@PubPeer
.
* My work resulted in 48 corrections, 24 expressions of concern, and 145 retractions this year.
I will continue in 2024 ❤️
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Getting lots of "Go Home Gringa" messages from Chilean conservative trolls.
So I decided to stay a couple more days. 🤗
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Wow.
The paper on healing a COVID-19 patient with Traditional Chinese Medicine that I critiqued on PubPeer appears to have copied CT scan images from another paper by another group.
See:
and
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Wow.
The
@IHU_Marseille
is suing me and
@BorisBarbour
for attempted blackmail and extortion.
Meantime
@echabriere
- who blocked me months ago - is doxxing me by tweeting the lawsuit letter with my home address.
I could use some legal help.
L'
@IHU_Marseille
en roue libre...
Ils déposent donc plainte (à confirmer vu la source de l'info) contre
@MicrobiomDigest
et l'administrateur de Pubpeer
@BorisBarbour
.
(et divulguent leurs adresses au passage, j'ai ajouté le flou...)
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A friend of us just passed away from COVID-19 today. Yesterday, I still chatted with her while she was in the hospital. 😢
The virus is real and it kills.
#WearYourMask
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In which my respected colleague Professor Raoult labels me "une cinglée" (a crazy woman) on the national French network
@CNEWS
.
Minutes later he states that it is unacceptable to insult other persons.
Il traite une de ses paires
@MicrobiomDigest
(Elisabeth Bik est microbiologiste ) de cinglée parce qu’elle a mis en évidence ses fraudes avec
@schneiderleonid
().
6 minutes plus tard, il dit que les insultes sont intolérables... 🙄
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The entire academic board of the journal Neuroimage, including professors from Oxford University, King’s College London and Cardiff University resigned after Elsevier refused to reduce publication charges
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Two additional errors made by
@raoult_didier
here.
1. I am not a girl ("fille") - I am a women and a scientist.
2. I have flagged and officially reported 11 papers by DR for integrity concerns and serious errors. In total, 30 DR papers have been flagged on
@PubPeer
.
#FactCheck
@MicrobiomDigest
I think he is talking about you
"I never committed any fraud in my life… Of course, on 3500 [international publi], some mistakes slipped. For now, there is a girl who is hunting me down since I am well known, a headhunter, who managed to find 5 mistakes"
#Raoult
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#ImageForensics
Two sets of API tests (used for the identification of bacterial species by looking at which enzymatic reactions they can perform).
* Top: Escherichia coli.
* Bottom: Shigella dysenteriae
Published by that famous French microbiologist.
Tell me what you see.
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Thank you so much,
@MicrobioSoc
for awarding me the Peter Wildy Prize.
My work on
#SciCom
and in particular that on research integrity comes with a nearly constant stream of insults and threats sent to me.
Thrilled to see that the society recognizes the value of this work. ❤️
The 2021 Peter Wildy Prize Lecture Winner, Elisabeth Bik, will be giving her presentation shortly on how to be an effective 21st century science communicator.
@MicrobiomDigest
#Microbio21
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Dear Tweeps, I present to you the Mysterious Case of the Two Papers With Identical Results.
In this thread, we will learn how identical results can obtained in both Gastric Cancer as well as in Lung Cancer.
HT:
@nirmalya22
and
@SairamJabba
Two papers are identical except cancer disease models
@MicrobiomDigest
. Would you please take a look PMID: 30305431 and PMID: 30117667. Thanks
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Update!
This is a set of (at least) EIGHT papers, from different authors, different hospitals, different cancers, different protein expressions.
But with identical Kaplan-Meier curves, tables values, line graphs.
See e.g.
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Five years ago I found three possibly Photoshopped images in a
@ScienceMagazine
paper by the lab of
@RPlasterk
Yesterday, the paper got retracted.
Here is what happened, and what went wrong or right.
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Here is a summary of some image problems found in papers by the current
@IHU_Marseille
director affiliated with
@univAMU_Europe
- the same person who claimed Hydroxychloroquine was a potent
#COVID19
cure.
(thread).
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As I sit next to my dying dad, I don't have the guts to tell him what a horrible place this world has become.
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One of the world’s most cited scientists, Rafael Luque, suspended without pay for 13 years
The prolific chemist, who has published a study every 37 hours this year, has been sanctioned by the University of Córdoba
@manuelansede
reports
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In my previous lab, two male coworkers wrote a review paper about the topic that a female graduate student was working on - without asking her as a co-author.
It's not misconduct, but I still think they were a**holes.
#WomenInScienceDay2021
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French medical bodies on Sunday called on authorities to punish researcher Didier Raoult for "the largest 'unauthorised' clinical trial ever seen" into the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19
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My hotel floor looks like a beautiful parquet, but upon close inspection these are stone tiles with ..... a repeating pattern.
#BiksBrain
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I’m lucky to have made so many friends here, but right now this doesn’t feel like a safe place to openly discuss big issues. So with a heavy heart, I’m taking some time out from Twitter.
Stay at home, and please be kind to each other. ❤️
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I will forever
#RecallGavinNewsom
as the first Governor who issued a statewide shelter-in-place order and thus saved many lives. He listens to science, is compassionate, and he is the leader we currently need here in California.
I fully support our Governor.
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Wow.
I wish Dr. Raoult and his family all the best in these difficult times.
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Concerns have been raised about a Japanese prince, who published a paper about dragonflies, in which some of the animals appear to be dead and prepped up with pins and wires.
I summarized the concerns on
@PubPeer
.
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Oh for fox' sake,
@SciReports
, this is embarrassing.
For nearly 10 years, I have been reporting image duplications. This should never have passed through your quality control.
You have a quality control, do you?
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Professor
@raoult_didier
, the founder and director of the
@IHU_Marseille
, an infectious diseases institute, states that astrology is a more sensible and efficient way to make predictions in epidemiology than mathematical models
Science has left the IHU building a long time ago.
⛔️ Le directeur d’un institut universitaire déclare que l’astrologie est une manière plus sensée et plus efficace pour réaliser des prédictions que les modèles mathématiques en épidémiologie.
#Raoult
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So thrilled to have won the Chris Hawes Award. Thank you all for your support ❤️
Congratulations to Dr Elisabeth Bik, this year's winner of the Chris Hawes Award for Outreach and Education! 🔬🏆👏
Read more:
@MicrobiomDigest
@RMS_EarlyCareer
@lmr_1994
@BioImagingUK
@MicroscopyViews
@MicroscopySoc
@MicroscopyToday
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Update:
I just spoke with a french lawyer who explained me that this document is just a threat, and that there is nothing to be afraid of.
I will not be intimidated by SLAPP-like threats and doxxing by the
@IHU_Marseille
and their professors.
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I am getting so many (anonymous) emails with people who want me to check certain authors or papers that I cannot possibly follow up.
So many names...
And so much hidden pain among honest scientists about these dishonest coworkers.
I need help with this. It is just too much.
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Publishing negative results is good for science
My latest Editorial for
@MicrobioSoc
Access Microbiology, as part of their Negative Results collection.
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Welcome, new troll accounts just created to tweet insults to me.
Not sure what you hope to accomplish with that, because I will not stop my support for research integrity.
Instead of spewing hate, consider a snuggle with your family or pet, or a walk outside 😉
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It is shocking to hear that
@eLife
removed
@mbeisen
as Editor In Chief for retweeting
@TheOnion
's post about the Gaza strip conflict.
IMO it is wrong to censure scientists' respectful opinions about this complex conflict. All lives are precious.
I signed.
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Dear Prof.
@raoult_didier
,
@EChabriere
,
@LeProfessionne9
@cunegonde1944
@Olivierfente
et al.
Let's have a virtual coffee together and discuss our concerns professionally. Happy to talk to you, as long as I can record or stream the meeting and bring some friends.
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Even though I scan the literature for science misconduct or errors, I firmly believe in science.
Almost all scientists are honest and hard-working, and want to understand things and make the world better.
Don't get fooled into thinking that science is broken.
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French scientist who pushed unproven Covid drug faces being pushed out of the infectious diseases institute he founded, amid concerns from key members over its role in feeding conspiracy theories and an investigation by regulators into its clinical studies
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Disappointed to read this article about the
#Microbiome
industry, which mentions 17 men, but not a single woman.
I was interviewed 2h for this article.
Sad that women did not make the cut 😥
#WomenInSTEM
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Science Has a Nasty Photoshopping Problem
* Unfortunately, many scientific journals and academic institutions are slow to respond to evidence of image manipulation — if they take action at all.
My opinion piece
@nytimes
-
#MyGiftArticle
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This is horrible. Secret unconsented experiments in the UK in which women, including pregnant ones, were fed radioactive food without them knowing they were exposed to radiation.
You can’t believe how kind the British are.
Every morning, a van pulls up outside your house in Coventry.
A friendly man brings you a freshly-baked flatbread to eat.
It’s just for you,not anyone else in your family.
Every afternoon he comes back to make sure you’ve eaten it.
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Hey
@nytimes
- you could play a huge role in the portrayal of women in science.
How about rewriting this story and actually name the woman who did the study, instead of 2 male scientists who were not even involved?
Her name is Lisa Neu.
@lisa_nueva
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My inbox is full of requests to look at papers, to send in slides for upcoming presentations, to fill out complicated forms, requests for new talks, bios, headshots, interview questions, or opinions.
But my dad passed away 1 year ago, and I just want to be alone 😢
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Whoa.
Manuscript sent to
@ScienceDirect
's International Journal of Hydrogen Energy gets desk-rejected because it did not have enough citations from its own journal.
That is one way to get an impact factor of 7.
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There are so many people asking me for help, but I simply cannot help you all. I am so sorry. I have to take care of myself first.
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Impact factor abandoned by Dutch university in hiring and promotion decisions
Faculty and staff members at Utrecht University will be evaluated by their commitment to open science.
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The amount of tech bros who publicly doubt that a woman can be an expert in something is staggering.
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There are too many unpleasant words here, so my account will be private for a while. Maybe even silent.
Please be kind to each other.
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The journal's decision will silence many other scientists - especially early career scientists - who wanted to voice their personal opinion in the Gaza matter.
Therefore, I will resign from my position on the
@eLife
Ethics Committee.
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Tonight, we will be going out to a restaurant for dinner to celebrate I won the
@MicrobioSoc
Peter Wildy Prize.
Eating out for dinner the first time in more than a year!
I am wearing a dress and fancy shoes and earrings, and I am so excited!
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Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate.
And happy and healthy holidays for you all.
🎄❄️☃️🌨️⛪️🎅🏻🎁⛷️🏻⭐️
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A paper used capital T’s instead of error bars. But wait, there’s more!
@Hindawi
has marked it with an expression of concern
@marcusabanks
reports
@RetractionWatch
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Ugh. One of my followers - who has <100 followers himself - just gave me unwanted advice on what I should be posting. He does not want me to 'dilute' my tweets with photos of my travels and lunches.
With all due respect, sir, eff the eff off.
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Lots of you offered help in my quest to make science journal editors take a hard stance on data/image manipulations.
So, starting today, I'll be regularly posting papers reported by me with big concerns, but little action.
Help me by writing an email to the editors.
Thank you ❤️
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Other scientists may spend years of time and huge amounts of research funding trying to build upon false science. “My goal is not to have people disciplined; my goal is to correct the science,” Bik explains.
A great piece
@ozm
by the fantastic
@gemmamilne
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Wow - this professor at
@IHU_Marseille
(who blocked me) is now telling his followers that I have blackmailed his institute. That is a serious accusation, tweeps.
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Scientists discover a new fuel-eating bacterium below car tank lids
A study has found an unknown microbial species that can be easily sourced and has great potential to break down diesel or gasoline-contaminated environments
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New research shows that members of a bee colony all have the same gut microbiome, which controls their smell—and thus their ability to separate family from foe.
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Wow, this is pretty blatant.
Author has gotten acceptance letter for their paper from the journal "Molecular Biology and Evolution", and now authorship positions are being sold on
@facebook
for 5K or more.
#PaperMill
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Harald zur Hausen, 87, Nobelist Who Found Cause of Cervical Cancer, Dies
When he proposed that the human papillomavirus caused cervical cancer, he was ridiculed. He persevered, and today a vaccine exists.
#MyGiftArticle
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This
@IHU_Marseille
supporter is now tagging an international crime unit in an attempt to intimidate me 🤔
It is not going to stop me from giving a talk about
#ResearchIntegrity
in Amsterdam later this week and talking about the Marseille hydroxychloroquine paper.
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