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Nobel Prize winner Gregg Semenza retracts four papers
- kryogen1c 4y agoWhat a curious article. - don't say "there is a concern the figure is wrong". Concern is not the salient point - correctness is. Is the data wrong or right? - why are we focusing on the figures at all? Is the data correct but the figures don't represent? Or is the incorrect data correctly represented by the figures? This is a critical point left unaddressed
- robertlagrant 4y agoAgreed. Also "there is a concern the figure is wrong" is written in the passive voice, which is obfuscatory.
- tgv 4y agoThat is not in the passive voice. Strunk and White really has done a lot of harm.
- jepler 4y agoWith a more conventional sentence structure, the sentence would have answered the question "_who_ is concerned that the figure is wrong?" I'm not enough of a language lawyer in English to say whether this is truly a passive-voice sentence in the most technical of senses, but I think the ancestor post was getting at a valid, er, concern about the writing.
- jcranmer 4y agoCall it the exonerative voice instead of thinking that everything mangled to avoid accusing somebody must be the passive voice. For bonus points, identify the use of the passive voice in the previous sentence--not every use of the passive is exonerative, just as you can be exonerative without using the passive.
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y agoConcerns have been voiced that a lot of harm has been done by Strunk and White.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoSure, you are right that this sentence is not a true passive voice. Instead, it implements the dummy subject [1] construction in English grammar, which shares certain qualities that leads to criticism of writing that uses a lot of the passive voice. E.g. There (dummy subject) <linking verb> <true subject> does not clearly imply who is criticizing what, and tends to diminish the magnitude or details of the nature of the criticism. I don't mean to defend Strunk and White any more than the next guy, but comments like this one make me think the pendulum can also swing back too far. If my pedantry annoys you, please feel free to disregard... I'm cringing at the realization that I just spent the last 5 minutes writing out this comment. [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/dummy-subjects https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/...
- fortran77 4y agoYou cited "British" grammar. That's all well and fine for you people, but here we use American grammar.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoThe construction: “There is a concern…” is perfectly normal in either place. It’s not a dialect difference, I don’t even really understand how you can make this point, unless I’m misunderstanding.
- tgv 4y agoBut not mentioning the actor is what irked the commenters above me. The construction, on the other hand, doesn't matter. It can be done just as easily in an SVO sentence with a "real" agent: "Commenters raised concerns about ...". There, no information about the actor at all. But people like to add some technical detail to their argument, such as stating that the sentence is written in the passive voice, as if that proves their point. Strunk and White (and the countless people that mindlessly copied them) have made the passive voice the perfect candidate for this, to the point where it becomes an accusation, and any accusation of hiding agency is simply called "passive voice." But the analysis that the actor is missing is also shallow. In scientific communication, the actor often doesn't matter. It's the why, the how, the what a paper need to answer, not the who. The authors take responsibility for the (unconfirmed) fault. In that sense, there's little to critique about the passage, whereas the commenter makes it sound like a cover-up. If (s)he wants to know whose concerns they were, just say so, and state the reason, but don't hide it behind a (wrong) technicality. That just makes it look like the pot calling the kettle black.
- robertlagrant 4y agoOr rather, zero harm.
- guenthert 4y agoA lot of scientific communication reads very stilted. Keep in mind those are subject matter experts, not authors of prose or user manuals. Writing doesn't necessarily come easy to them and they might be inexperienced and insecure in it. Unlike many software engineers, researchers (at least in academia) rarely have access to a department of tech writers.
- seibelj 4y agoIt is hard to reproduce the values returned by various instruments. Using modern technology and analytics tools it’s easier to check for fraud in the western blots, so this is where the fraud is often proven. The problem is that this is ipso facto fraud - you can’t say “ohhh I got mixed up and accidentally made an image that perfectly lined up with my conclusions”. If the authors were willing to fraud there then the entire paper should be seen as fraud and the authors responsible shamed because they are undermining the fundamental scientific process.
- helsinkiandrew 4y agoThere is "Possible duplication of data between some of the figures". So some of the plots contain data from more that the column they're meant to be of. For example: Retraction: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2213288119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2213288119 Paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1321510111 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1321510111 This could be a fundamental problem with the experiments that possibly could invalidate the conclusions or just a bug when creating figures for the paper. But if it was the latter surely a correction could be made fairly quickly - which suggests it's the former.
- sdenton4 4y agoThird possibility: they don't have the data on hand anymore to correct the figures with... It was a 2013 paper, after all. In their reaction statement they also provide a new citation which re-ran the experiments: "Confirmatory experimentation has now been performed and the results can be found in a preprint article posted on bioRxiv, ‘Homeostatic responses to hypoxia by the carotid body and adrenal medulla are based on mutual antagonism between HIF-1α and HIF-2α’"
- mkl 4y agoIn many parts of medicine and biology, the data is the figure. The immunoblot assays described as problematic here ("possible duplication of data" in the retraction) are like that.
- dahart 4y ago“Concern” in this context is an Improper Noun of sorts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32673100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32673100 It’s academic speak for ‘I believe this may be incorrect’, and it’s very common to use this word in reviews. The reason “concern” is used over “incorrect” is partly to avoid a direct accusation, which can and sometimes does turn out very bad for the accuser. Note that it was not Semenza who wrote about the “concern”. In addition this word can help establish lack of culpability by the journal and/or publisher after the fact.
- fartsucker69 4y agoaccording to rumors the usage was popularized by scientists working at CERN
- selljamhere 4y agoAnd the rumor continues.
- elashri 4y agoAt CERN, I usually find people using this word more to describe q situation when something is not fully clear more than polite way to say wrong. Usually within the frame of particle physics where heavy statistical analysis is being used.
- cromka 4y agoNot sure if sarcasm (conCERN) or real story?
- everybodyknows 4y agoThe accuser it seems dared only to report under a pseudonym: > the pseudonymous Claire Francis began pointing out potential image duplications and other manipulations in Semenza’s work on PubPeer
- michaelmrose 4y agoThe retraction affirms the claims so it doesn't need anyone's reputation to stand on. Small wonder if the person doesn't want to be known. Groups of people always value community over ethics, correctness, or any other virtue. There is little reason to photoshop the figures risking destruction of reputation unless deeper issues lurk. We are going to see more damning evidence as fast as people can dig through prior results.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- chrisamiller 4y agoThis story lacks a lot of context. This linked article provides some of it: https://forbetterscience.com/2020/10/07/gregg-semenza-real-nobel-prize-and-unreal-research-data/ https://forbetterscience.com/2020/10/07/gregg-semenza-real-n... There's a big range between "grad student loaded the wrong file when making sub-panel 3d" and "explicitly falsified images to support an hypothesis". This article certainly makes it seem like the latter. Science is a human endeavor and there will always be people trying to game the system The good news is, an awful lot of cheaters get caught these days and it's getting riskier all the time.
- WhitneyLand 4y agoYes, and moreover some of the images were not just swapped out with incorrect images. When you take a look it seems inescapable some images were first copied then edited with a tool to move around sub-pieces like blocks in a puzzle, then presented as a different image along side the original. Literally this seems like some kind of Photoshopping rather than misplacing images. Can’t see how this could be done accidentally. Every endeavor has some grift, but this is extensive malfeasance by high ranking cancer scientists, following shortly after it happened in Alzheimer’s research: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32183302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32183302
- kurupt213 4y agoYou don’t retract a paper because the wrong image was included. You issue a correction.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dddddddd111 4y ago
- kurupt213 4y agoPeople cheat to become navy SEALs, why do we think narcissistic academics wouldn’t do the same to achieve preeminence?
- anu7df 4y agoCheat to be a Navy seal? How? Are you talking about the off label viagra usage to pass hell week? Not that I am condoning the practice, but that is not cheating in my books. Desparate yes, dangerous but war is more.
- not-my-account 4y agoOut of curiosity, how would viagra help anyone pass hell week?
- detaro 4y agohttps://www.insider.com/navy-seals-use-viagra-prevent-fluid-build-up-lungs-swimming-2022-8 https://www.insider.com/navy-seals-use-viagra-prevent-fluid-...
- queuebert 4y agoIt's the Navy ...
- landemva 4y agoBetter blood flow increases physical performance.
- openknot 4y agoThe recruits believe it's a treatment for a lung condition where you cough up blood during training. From the NYTimes article: "Many men were coughing up bloody fluid from a condition called swimming-induced pulmonary edema — a potentially life-threatening ailment that is so common among men training in the frigid water at BUD/S that SEALs refer to it casually by the acronym SIPE. "[...] Seaman Mullen showed up for his second attempt at BUD/S in January with fresh determination and a used car. But by the end of the second week, he was spitting up bloody fluid and struggling to breathe. "“I said, go to the hospital right away,” his mother recalled. “He said, ‘No, ma, if you want to go to the hospital, they will make you quit first. Besides, it’s just SIPE.’” "Ms. Mullen said her son, on the advice of other SEAL candidates, started secretly taking the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, which was against Navy rules but used by SEALs as a potential treatment for SIPE. He recovered enough to keep training.""
- ww520 4y agoPubpeer has listed 54 papers under Semenza that are questionable. https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Gregg+Semenza https://pubpeer.com/search?q=Gregg+Semenza [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PubPeer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PubPeer
- pvaldes 4y agoStill Nobel prize so the climbing strategy, whatever it was, worked.
- cromka 4y agoFake it till you Nobel it.
- pvaldes 4y agoAnd then your market brand value skyrocket in the universities, because will increase the university rank, even if you are hired to just sit in a chair and play candy crush all day. So, congratulations to Semenza for hacking the lottery.
- capableweb 4y agoWell, this seems to be the first retraction which happened a couple of days ago. Now there will be a more extensive search through all the rest of the papers with the same authors. Who knows if the Nobel prize will be retracted as well, no matter if they find more problematic papers or not. A bit early to say "it worked" as everything here just happened.
- gameshot911 4y agoI was curious and looked it up - Nobel prizes cannot be retracted.
- capableweb 4y agoSeems you're right, it's not mentioned in the statues that it can be retracted. However, the spirit of the prize seems to be around prize-worthy effort or achievement of the past, like discoveries or inventions. It makes sense that as long as those are truthful, it doesn't get retracted (like the peace prize going to Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, but later she helped with mass killings of Muslim Rohingya). But in the case where the discovery/invention was not truthful and instead made up, there should definitely be a retraction as the discovery wasn't made/invention didn't work.
- killjoywashere 4y agoEvery first year grad student in the sciences should be introduced to Elizabeth Bix, before they have to submit their first manuscript and feel the temptation to try some slight-of-hand with their figures: https://twitter.com/microbiomdigest https://twitter.com/microbiomdigest
- LatteLazy 4y agoThere should really be prizes for finding this stuff. A Nobel prize for integrity?
- dddddddd111 4y ago