Epidemiology of a scientific paper

What did we discuss: How Science shares information? which problems can occur along the way

Example-Werner Bezwoda
-reported his results on a trial for breast cancer patients. The patients in the trial had a bone marrow transplant and where able, to receive a higher dosage of chemotherapeutics. He reported great results

-in 1999 other studies contradicted this. They found out that there is no proof that the study actually happened, and the heavy side affects of that treatment where not reported.

-10 000 patients received this treatment

What motivates Scientists?
-Do good science/help mankind


 * Finances/Grants
 * Career → high social status of Science+ Competition
 * Prestige
 * And more

→It’s all connected

How Science spread?
Official Channels:


 * Journals
 * Books
 * Textbooks
 * Conference proceedings
 * Conferences

they differ in various fields, f.e. Medicine-mostly Journals; Computer science-mostly Conferences

Unofficial Channels:


 * Preprints (paper is ready for proodreading and already published)
 * Blogs
 * Social media (Twitter, Mastodon...)
 * Press release

Social media is very important, discussion on scientific publicating very early on

How do we detect/correct mistakes made in Science?
In Theory:


 * Peer review barrier
 * Letters to editor
 * Papers in response (f.e. criticising the work that has been done)
 * Expression of concern
 * Retraction (when Fraud or mistake was proven it gets removed/corrected)

Peer review barrier

-Peer review is a poor barrier, since reviewers are choosed randomly. Who you will get determines the outcome (we can have sloppy reviewers)

-it was never designed to detect Fraud!

-Example : Brian Wansink: former american professor, which publicated questionable papers, where the Participants procentages did not match up. Peer review could have helped?

Letters to editor

-Can take months, Or not happen at all

-Limited words, Defending party gets usually more Space

Papers in Response

-Incumbent advantage: means there is an advantage of the paper that was published first, other papers have to prove you wrong

-Example: Didier Raoult and Hydroxychloroquine: Trial in Covid-19, Death of Patients were left out of trial → Fraud? every paper that came after this trial, had to justify this paper and proof them wrong

Expression of concern

-If authors disagree, can take years

-Example: Wakefield the Lancet MMR Autism Fraud: he claimed to have found a linkage between enterocolitis and autism. No other scienticsts were able to reproduce his findings. It took 12 years to retract it.

-Retracted papers still cited (even positively)

We dont really know how many Scientific papers are fraudulent!

However, there are a few persons, that tried to proof it:

Elisabeth Bik: found 3,8% that are copy paste (only found this specific type of fraud)

Carlisle: estimated after years of evaluation, 20% showed false data (f.e. same Patient twice etc..)

Consequences of Fraud
Problem: Publicating more, also gets rewarded more. There is a drive to publish a lot. Scientific Journals like surprising claims, and publish more controverse topics.

-What is the difference between big negligence and intent? in the end it does not change the situation for the Patients

-Example: star surgeon Paolo Macchiarini: transplanted Trachea from Cadavers, populated them with stem cells for better outcome of the acceptance of the graft. he published successful operations, but a lot of people died, which was not mentioned. He got a lot of money from funding. People working close with him got fired/sentenced for mentioning the fraud.

What can we do