Clare Francis anonymous whistleblower, Dr.López Otín y...la manipulación

Un informante anónimo, bajo el seudónimo Clare Francis, ha avisado a este diario de la retirada de los ocho estudios de López Otín. La misma persona ha enviado otros siete mensajes diferentes desde 2017 señalando errores en trabajos del científico español. 

El denunciante, siempre en inglés, también acusa de irregularidades a otros investigadores nacionales, ajenos a López Otín. 

Clare Francis es un seudónimo habitual empleado por científicos de todo el mundo para denunciar de manera anónima supuestas malas prácticas de sus colegas. (Más)

 

PubPeer users went from discussing papers to hunting down fraud—and have embroiled the site in the most important internet privacy case you've never heard of.

"Clare Francis." is a pseudonym used by science publishing's greatest gadfly, a person or group that has sent "hundreds" (possibly now thousands) of anonymous tips to journal editors, beginning sometime around 2010. She is so prolific that the publishing giant Elsevier previously revealed that they have special directions to editors in place for evaluating tips originating from Francis—helped along, no doubt, by Francis's propensity to CC the tips to the New York Times. 

As such, the latest legal order has the potential to clear up one of the longest-running mysteries in science publishing, by unmasking the person or persons responsible for the Clare Francis phenomenon.(Más)

In July, Michael Sarr, an editor of the journal Surgery, received an e-mail from an unknown tipster named Clare Francis, alerting him that material from a 2004 paper published in his journal might have previously appeared in Oncogene. “If this was dual publication, we would retract our article and the author would be censored,” said Sarr, who is also a professor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “You bet we looked into it.”

Sarr spoke with the paper’s authors and read both manuscripts carefully. He determined that the “titles looked similar, but they were totally different experiments.” The experience frustrated him. It took Sarr several hours to investigate the claim, and he felt that Francis had accused researchers of fraud without doing enough digging of her own. In an e-mail exchange with Francis, Sarr alleged that she had wasted his time. “Quite frankly, in the future, unless you wish to point out how these articles are exactly the same and unless you do your research, we (at Surgery) are going to ignore any further claims that you send us,” he wrote.

Francis—whose real identity, gender, and occupation remain secret—is notorious among journal editors as a relentless whistleblower. However, she refers to herself more humbly: as an “attentive reader.” In her e-mails alerting editors to possible problems in published papers, she most often details evidence of tampering in figures, including duplication, rotations, and mirror images. And any given accusation can involve multiple papers, incurring dozens of potential problems. While the Surgery case did not result in any journal action, some of Francis’s other tips have been tied to corrections and even retractions. For instance, a 2006 paper in the Journal of Cell Biology was pulled after Francis raised concerns about image manipulation, which the publisher determined were valid.(Más)

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Nature magazine recently published an excellent article on the art of whistleblowing in science: “Research ethics: 3 ways to blow the whistle.”

Reporting suspicions of scientific fraud is rarely easy, but some paths are more effective than others. In this article, they analyzed the effectiveness of three techniques commonly used by individuals to report suspicions of scientific fraud, including anonymity.

One individual working under the pseudonym “Clare Francis” uses this method and has flagged hundreds of suspected cases of potential fraud since 2010. The authors report: Anonymous tipsters are nothing new. But since 2010, someone going by the pseudonym 'Clare Francis' has seriously upped the ante. She or he (or they; many suspect it is a group of people) has sent hundreds of e-mails to life-science journal editors, flagging up suspected cases of plagiarism or instances in which figures appear to be manipulated or duplicated. Her terse, sometimes cryptic complaints have resulted in a handful of retractions and corrections, but editors have felt bombarded by her voluminous notices — many of which, they say, lead nowhere.

Like her or not, Francis has sparked a debate about how editors deal with anonymous tips, which are now poised to grow thanks to the proliferation of websites that allow anyone to publicly air grievances about research papers.

Desde la asociación (Asociación para la Transparencia Universitaria/ATU) insisten en que no acusan de mala praxis académica ni científica a la Universidad ni al investigador, pero sí aprecian ciertos errores en el proceso de rendición de cuentas y acceso a la información científica ante la ciudadanía. «No olvidemos que es dinero público», explican. 

En su cuenta en la red social de Twitter, ATU también ha dejado clara su posición sobre el asunto. Recuerdan el derecho de la ciudadanía a la información científica y académica y alertan de que si no se incorpora a las políticas universitarias, se puede generar desinformación. «Animamos a los rectores e investigadores a satisfacer el derecho de información científica de la ciudadanía como ejercicio de responsabilidad de rendición de cuentas en investigación y Ciencia», apremian en otro de sus mensajes.(Más)