Spot-the-duplicate: the rise of fake images in science Katie Fegan discusses the impact of image manipulation in academic papers, and the whistleblowers fighting for scientific integrity.
M
ove over, Sherlock: the science detectives are in town. Bad science threatens the credibility of academic research. Whether you are an astrophysicist or a microbiologist, chances are you have stumbled across a research paper containing fake images – probably without even realising it. At best, the figures might have been incorrectly labelled, leading to misrepresentation of data (researchers are, after all, only human). At worst, however, entire images may have been manipulated to better fit the hypotheses of the research team. This type of scientific misconduct has grave consequences for the academic community. The conclusions made in fraudulent papers can trick unsuspecting academics into pouring their time and money into research
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that is fundamentally doomed to fail. In 2020, a 2006 paper published in Nature (“Lysyl oxidase is essential for hypoxia-induced metastasis”) was retracted after it was reported for containing “several image anomalies”. By this time, the paper had been cited 970 times. Thanks to websites like PubPeer, the Marples and Poirots of the scientific community are able to bring these suspicious papers to light. Dutch scientist Dr Elizabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest) is arguably the most famous image sleuther: under the hashtag #ImageForensics, she shares examples of doctored images with her 90,000 Twitter followers. Like a reverse game of spot-the-difference, she encourages her followers to highlight all of the duplications they can find. The first person to match her findings wins the coveted gold medal emoji. In some cases, the manipulation is so obvious that it is a wonder the paper
