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Request to Falsify Data Published In Chemistry Journal
New submitter Jim_Austin writes "A note inadvertently left in the 'supplemental information' of a journal article appears to instruct a subordinate scientist to fabricate data. Quoting: 'The first author of the article, "Synthesis, Structure, and Catalytic Studies of Palladium and Platinum Bis-Sulfoxide Complexes," published online ahead of print in the American Chemical Society (ACS) journal Organometallics, is Emma E. Drinkel of the University of Zurich in Switzerland. The online version of the article includes a link to this supporting information file. The bottom of page 12 of the document contains this instruction: "Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound, just make up an elemental analysis ..." We are making no judgments here. We don't know who wrote this, and some commenters have noted that "just make up" could be an awkward choice of words by a non-native speaker of English who intended to instruct his student to make up a sample and then conduct the elemental analysis. Other commenters aren't buying it.'"
The beauty of (natural) science is that you can replicate the results. Why spark a debate (which is more in social sciences ballpark) when you can just run the experiments and validate the statement that way? The paper would only omit important analysis steps if a patent is involved, something that the title of the paper does not imply.
Analyze that elemental analysis, if it's obviously fabricated publish short refuting paper in a better journal
Or offer ACS to print it if ACS is the best in the industry, boom name recognition and easy paper.
some commenters have noted that "just make up" could be an awkward choice of words by a non-native speaker of English who intended to instruct his student to make up a sample and then conduct the elemental analysis. Other commenters aren't buying it.
You know what the great thing about science is? We don't have to focus on emotion and rhetoric. We can do the experiment, and see if it would have supported the conclusion. If it would, our societal view of justice compels us to assume they were asking for the valid test results to be included. If it would not have supported the conclusion, then we can call for the author to be sanctioned.
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I would have thought that standard peer review would have caught this - someone reading this, specifically with an eye towards accuracy, should have noticed it well before it made it to print. Whether that would result in just removing the offending text (which, while not completely guilty, definitely sounds bad) or result in actual correction of the experiment, I can't say.
None of the data talked about in the note was used in the final journal submission and the compound the author was referring to was what he claimed was a theoretical intermediate. I am leaning toward a misunderstanding in a hastily written note.
love is just extroverted narcissism
It's not that rare for reviewers to skim the appendix of a paper, and it doesn't necessarily go against their instructions. Appendices tend to be more useful to people who need detailed information about how the results presented in a paper were obtained (typically these are researchers in the same subfield), rather than reviewers or researchers whose work is only moderately related to the paper.
weinersmith
when I was tricked into drinking Hydrogen Hydroxide when I distinctly requested a beaker full of Dihydrogen Monoxide. The cover-up, the pointing of fingers, the falling out of the scientific community. HOYVIN GLAVIN!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Many languages use only one verb for several uses of "make" and "do". English has some odd cases where "make" is used but, from a logical point of view, it would seem that "do" would be more appropriate, making translations more difficult. Thus, instead of "make up an analysis", one could easily imagine someone with a less than perfect grasp of english meaning "do an analysis"
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
That looks like German wording of "make up" = "do", nothing nefarious about it, slow news day?
Or has that already happened?
On numerous occasions politicians have released MS-Word docs, and the full edit history could be retrieved, with occasionally embarrassing results.
I'm not disturbed by the note, and yes it's likely a poor choice of words from a non-English speaker.
Are we now condemning conspiracy to submit fraudulent information? I thought fraud was the bad act.
I've worked with non-English speaking students, and there are a surprising number of awkward constructions that you wouldn't notice as a native speaker.
For example, one multiple-choice optics test question had this answer: "The image is half as large".
The phrase "half as large" translates simultaneously into "big" and "small" at the same time... it was pointed out that many students didn't know what this meant. The first rewrite came out as "half the size", but since many cultures implicitly measure size in terms of area instead of height, lots of people misinterpreted this as well (half the height = 1/4 the area). Having an answer "none of the above" further confused the issue. The test should have been specific in saying "half the height".
I've proofread/edited more than 10 papers written by foreign types, and "twisted meanings" are quite common - phrases that seem syntactically reasonable but which have a different meaning to a native speaker. (I grew up in Amish territory - statements like "Sarah is wonderful sick today" and "throw papa down the stairs his hat" were commonplace.)
I wouldn't think twice about the note in the paper. Unless the researcher actually makes up the analysis out of whole cloth it's not a problem.
Science is about evidence, not hearsay.
Yes, we can do the experiment, but most of the time we don't. Nobody gets grant money for replicating stuff other people have already done. There's no glory in it; the citations, the namings, the prestige will all go to the original experimenter, and grants are very much about glory (to the host institution, of course, not so much for the researcher herself). Yes, the big, important stuff gets replicated, but a dreadfully mundane study of some palladium catalysed reaction is not in that category, and so is unlikely to be replicated. The allegation of "made up" data in this particular paper may prompt somebody to try it in this case, but there will be many more that will slip through.
...they went to publish it, realized they didn't have a supporting NMR, so he told his assistant to make one up.
Here's the rub... what that means to the assistant is, run an NMR; what it means to all the people who don't have a the education to understand what it means, or even what an NMR is, is that they can try to paint science as bad. You cant "make up" an NMR in that way, although you could substitute some other chemical and run the analysis... but why bother? Any lab with an NMR could check your work simply by running the correct NMR; and, running the correct chemical will take exactly as long, and exactly the same amount of effort.
This is basically people who don't have enough education somehow seeing a conspiracy in nothing. I swear, the human race is fucking pathetic sometimes.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I had a manual that described doing a track alignment on a floppy drive. Basically loosen the lock screw, adjust, tighten the screw. But...the author's english was from another continent...
"...when adjustment is complete, screw it up."
The semi-important data would be in the NMR, the elemental analysis would be more of a formality to show they are working with what they said they were working with. I think that is reason to believe they would have worded it in such a way suggesting they needed a real NMR result but some pain in the but boring work they have an expected answer for is to be just made up. Obviously bad practice, probably doesn't have much bearing on the paper itself though, assuming their materials suppliers are trustworthy.
It took balls to say that.
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