Philip Moriarty is professor of physics at the University of Nottingham.
18 April 2013
We must hold up a mirror to scientific peer review if we are to stamp out fraud and uphold the discipline’s reputation, argues Philip Moriarty…..The website Science-fraud.org was established in July 2012 by the pseudonymous Frances de Triusce (an anagram of “science fraudster”) with the aim of highlighting suspicious papers in the scientific literature. Barely six months later, having brought to light around 500 examples of what might best be called questionable data, and with a daily readership in the thousands, the website was shut down.
Its founder’s true identity had been uncovered - he was Paul Brookes, an associate professor at the University of Rochester Medical Center in the US - and an email had been sent to around 85 scientists whose data had been questioned on the site, encouraging them to sue him for defamation. ……. his final post on the Science Fraud site: “As I have learned the hard way, anyone who dares to stick their neck on the line and question the data of their peers is ostracised, stone walled and subjected to lawsuits.” He went on to argue that the way forward would be to assemble what he called a “coalition of the willing” - to be known as the Association for Anonymous Post-Publication Peer Review - to effectively police the literature, flagging up questionable data and papers…..To Read More….
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