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Anonymous Peer-review Comments May Spark Legal Battle
sciencehabit writes: The power of anonymous comments — and the liability of those who make them — is at the heart of a possible legal battle embroiling PubPeer, an online forum launched in October 2012 for anonymous, postpublication peer review. A researcher who claims that comments on PubPeer caused him to lose a tenured faculty job offer now intends to press legal charges against the person or people behind these posts — provided he can uncover their identities, his lawyer says.
Seems like he should be suing the place where he worked and not the site and reviewers. Eh I guess you can sue anyone for anything in 'merica
Well, now we know why you're losing your tenure. Stop being such a baby about it. If your research was solid, the scientist should be able to stand behind and defend it. If it was flakey, well hopefully this will keep him from getting other jobs where he can be an incompetent professor.
A list of his articles on PubPeer:
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=sarkar
Conclude from the comments what you will.
For a moment I thought it said PubBeer.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Lawsuits are generally an unreliable alternative to income earned by full time employment. You can't sue "anonymous" any more than an organization should base a hiring decision on "anonymous" references or testimony.
Perhaps, the worst job market in decades is as much to blame as the candidate's desperation to come to terms with the hard reality: there are too many people available for hire, including and perhaps especially, those already employed and willing to jump ship, laterally. It seems "poaching" options are psychologically irresistible to committees who refer or decide hiring candidates that are a safe bet for a covered rear end.
There are two possibilities: He lost his tenure because there was an anonymous, incorrect peer review negative towards him. His work was actually good. In that case he should sue the university to make decisions based on anonymous, incorrect peer reviews.
Or he lost his tenure because there was an anonymous, but correct peer review negative towards him. His work wasn't up to scratch. In that case, his loss is deserved. If faults in his work were not detected in a normal review but only in further review by an anonymous person, these faults are still there and due to him. Suing would be like a criminal who got caught due to an anonymous tip suing the tipster.
I have a real problem with the concept of anonymous peer review without editorial oversight or not included in a due peer review process. That said, I do recognize the interest for post-publication peer review due to lacks in the commonly used review processes, although I do not believe this should be allowed to be done anonymously.
Anonymous review is usual in the peer-review processes of most journals, but these comments are in general non-public or at least reviewed by an editor before publication. Some reviewers choose to do their peer-review work without the cover of anonymity and I encourage this. If you have constructive criticism on the work of an other and can this criticism is well founded, you can very well do it openly.
I believe that the best why to process with peer-review is with a two steps process, where first the submitted paper is published in an open discussion paper. Comments from the official reviewers are public and any one can comment on the papers. Following the peer review process, the paper is published in the official paper which may be with or without open access (I prefer those with open access). Such a process encourages quality and brings the whole community in the peer-review process, but under the oversight of editors.
Something like PubPeer is extremely tricky. It's an open door to abuse and for commenter to wash their dirty linen in public. I don't know if such a platform is a good idea, especially with anonymity. I'd rather have a good review of the peer-review processes commonly used.
People should not be able to hide behind the mask of anonymity! If I correctly accuse someone of being a charlatan, I should be willing to have my mask removed so that the charlatan can attack me and/or my family. It is only right.
Besides, is it fair for someone to be able to snitch on another person, even if that other person is doing something wrong? I say NO!
A person should be able to commit crimes without fearing the possibility that some anonymous coward could expose them for being a criminal.
Probably not a university one would want to work at if they can't spot unsubstansiated comments. Or they were, or there could be many reasons, don't jump to conclusions.
With name like "Fazlul H. Sarkar" what else can you expect? He is just another Indian "specialist" (they are swarming all over IT like a maggots and now branching into science) whose only accomplishments are clever copy&paste from various sources until someone notices plagiarism. I guess next step for him is to play racism card.
That if his accusers went to trial, they wouldn't be able to provide evidence that the researcher was a fraud. Presumably the researcher just wants the names so he can publicly harass them, and isn't willing to take this to trial because he knows that they are right.
I hope most of you learn the real lesson here: Don't attempt to expose people when you know they are publishing falsehoods. Niggas will bust a cap in yo ass if yo do. On an unrelated note, did you know that having a lot of melanin in your body allows you to fly like Superman?
According to this he has put out a lot of papers.
Today, they revealed that the scientist involved is Fazlul Sarkar, a cancer researcher at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Sarkar, an author on more than 500 papers
He got his doctorate in 1978. That would be an average of less than 27 days between papers being published. One must admire someone who can do so much thorough, factual research in such a short time. An average of one paper a month is impressive.
If he had a case, it would be against the people who retracted the job offer.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Perhaps he should have improved his photoshop skills before posting his papers...
See for yourselves!
http://i.imgur.com/nXoyiks.jpg
Sorry for the wall of text... summary and comments :P
From the Science article and PubPeer discussion on the topic, but not the comments on the papers by the aggrieved scientist (Dr Fazlul Sarkar), a broad summary would be that he was a tenured researcher at Wayne State University, who was offered a tenured position at University of Mississippi.
He resigned from Wayne State, then was informed by UoM that the offer was revoked. Dr Sarkur's lawyer comments that the retraction makes it "crystal clear" the retraction is because of the PubPeer comments on approximately 10% of Dr Sarkur's published and peer reviewed papers (more than 50 papers out of more than 500 he is listed as authoring), where the comments indicate that images used in specific papers look remarkably similar to images used in other papers relating to different experiments.
Wayne State agreed to take him back but did not offer him a tenured position. But how many other employees who resign and then say "I changed my mind, can I come back?" would be welcomed back?
Some of the negative comments on those papers then allegedly (I cannot comment directly as I have not read the comments, many of which have apparently been removed by PubPeer moderators) veered into insinuations of deliberate misconduct. Dr. Sarkur's lawyers are, of course, going to claim malice/intent in posts, and their removal is likely legal expedience, not an admission that the posts are inappropriate.
It seems to me that the logical approach would have been for Dr. Sarkur to engage in a process of defending his work against negative comments. Granted, that defense process may take some time - time that is better spend researching cancer cures, or figuring out how he will spend that huge salary he isn't going to get any more (trying not to laugh at this point...).
But according to his lawyer, "his client has no responsibility to critics who refuse to put a name to their accusations" - in other words, anonymous cowards will be ignored. I can sympathize with that approach, but at a time when scientific papers have taken a battering over experimental repeat-ability and interpretation of results, I would assume that anyone publishing a paper who is confident in their work would be willing to defend it, especially in an area with such life-changing possibilities as cancer research.
It is akin to a social media consultant smartening up their LinkedIn profile and then wondering why they do not get a job interview when their Facebook profile is a constant boast about their party lifestyle and their Twitter feed is a racist/homophobic diatribe.
As Dr. Sarkur has a Ph.D., I would assume that he is familiar with the process of authoring a paper or a thesis and then having to defend that work against examination, in a "viva voce" examination where multiple subject matter experts basically poke holes in the work and try to uncover any areas where the preparation and execution is sub-standard. It is just a shame that Dr. Sarkur feels that process need not apply now that he has his Ph.D.
I didn't look too deep into PubPeer, but all the comments I saw were trivialities. I don't think I would ever use the contents of PubPeer for anything.
Not being familiar with the subject, does his work hold up?
I'm not an expert in the field but what I saw of the comments were very specific about reuse of figures and data without citation. They did not appear to be ad hominem at all but evidence based with image comparisons of figures from different papers. I expect that this is why he got into trouble - a relevant expert from the hiring university would be able to easily evaluate the merits of the comments.
Then how do we know he's an actual peer? This is an especially relevant question when it comes to certain scientific issues of an inflammatory politicized nature.
Salaries in the academic world are crazy, and still getting worse - for example, rather than heralding how budget conscious the UC system is, paying chancellors "only" $319K, instead, they "fixed the problem" with a 20% across the board pay raise.
Just in time, I am sure, without making over $380K, I am sure all those administrators would just go work somewhere else and you wouldn't be able to find anyone qualified for such paltry salaries.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Except he can't defend himself against someone who can continue to make post whether or not they are accurate.
He could spend every day., all day trying to defend each time a comment is made. That would be pretty wasteful.
The person making the comment could actually go through normal peer review channels.
BTW AC comment aren't actually peer review.
Have you ever tried to defend yourself against one or more people making AC comments? It is not possible.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's funny when half of the site, known for being openly against anonymous comments... and going so far as to insult them constantly... feels the need to defend the virtues of remaining anonymous against people they dislike.
My experience is that most of the work is done by the first one or two authors under the direct supervision of the last author (there are exceptions when the lab is very big and the PI has delegated most of the supervision to postdocs or staff). Generally, the corresponding author on the paper bears much of the responsibility for the data being published under the assumption that he is supervising the research and is intimately involved in analyzing the results and writing the paper. Many journals now require a statement, which briefly outlines the authors contributions. Having said that it is not unheard of that a student or a postdoc will manipulate data and the PI in his willingness to prove a hypothesis will not be overly critical.
The deeper problem is that there is a huge pressure in the biomedical field to publish often. The PI will not be able to receive grants unless he/she has demonstrated a track record of productivity. If he/she doesn't get grant funding he/she will not be receiving full salary and will not get tenure. At the same time the competition for funding is furious. The percent of applications being funded by NIH are in the low teens and for some NIH institutes they are under 10%. So not only you have to publish, but you have to publish more and in better journals than 90% of the people in the field to be competitive. All this puts huge pressure on the PIs to publish. Few of them publish rubbish and some resort to fraud. Students and postdocs are under similar pressure to be "productive" not only from their PIs, but also because their future prospects depend on the research they publish.
The irony is that the current situation is to a large degree caused by the expansion of the NIH budget in the past. Public and private research institutions rushed to build lab space, recruit scientist and train students to take advantage of the NIH grants (this expansion still continues!). The incentive for the institutions is that they get 40% or more (up to 100%) on top of the grant award as an overhead. So a typical $250K per year grant from NIH will pay directly to the university at least $100K per year in overhead in addition to sponsoring the PI and staff salaries from the direct costs. The NIH budget, however, did not continue to grow rapidly after the initial jump during president Clinton's time in office and has actually shrunk in the past year. The result is that now you have a large number of scientist desperate for grant money and not enough grants to fund even a small fraction of them. The current incentives do not reward the quality of the research, but the speed by which it is done and its quantity. This is a very perverse situation. It also creates a negative feedback loop where the poor quality of the published data prevents people from defining valid hypotheses or identifying viable lines of research. As a result they waste time and are subject to even more pressure to publish junk.
Reason for leaving last job: Anonymous Coward on the Internet called me a moron. Manager took it at face value and terminated me.
Isn't the whole idea of tenure that you have to really fuckup or be trying to get fired to actually get fired?
Editors, pase take editing classes! (not just /, but you gotta start somewhere)
The headline is i tentionally ambiguous and misleading. It would have been correct if you havd specified a SINGULAR or very small set of anonymous reviews may be involved in a legal case, but the headline makes it sound like the very idea of anonymous reviews is coming under attack, and that our right to anonymity is being threatened.
Except he can't defend himself against someone who can continue to make post whether or not they are accurate.
He could spend every day., all day trying to defend each time a comment is made. That would be pretty wasteful.
The person making the comment could actually go through normal peer review channels.
BTW AC comment aren't actually peer review.
Have you ever tried to defend yourself against one or more people making AC comments? It is not possible.
As I mentioned in the post, I have some sympathy for him regarding defending against the AC comments, but he does not appear to have made any attempt to defend the papers' data against any comments, AC or named. Making a cover-all defensive post to engage the named reviews and encourage the AC reviewers to post under their own names would, in my opinion, be a good middle ground between defending against all negative posts or defending against none.
It would also have given him some discussion points with the faculty recruitment people from UoM, which may or may not have helped. But the "I am going to ignore criticism, head in the sand, and then threaten to sue when that criticism causes or plays a part in me not getting a new job" approach is really not good for a researcher in the publish-or-perish world they live in.