Hunting for Fraud Full Time

Bik is a microbiologist who spent nearly 15 years working in a Stanford University laboratory trying to decipher the complexities of the human microbiome. She continued that work in the biotech industry. This year, though, she quit in order to pursue what has become an all-consuming hobby: identifying and calling out research misconduct.

Her specialty, which she stumbled upon by accident, is image manipulation. Bik homes in on telltale signs that an image in a scientific paper has probably been duplicated, reversed, or otherwise altered. Sometimes these are honest errors made by hasty researchers. Other times they’re evidence of fraud.

Bik has spent thousands of hours poring over images, and her efforts have led to some 90 retractions. In a 2016 study in which she, Arturo Casadevall, and Ferric C. Fang examined more than 20,000 papers, they found problems in roughly one out of 25. Those papers were drawn from prestigious journals, including the Journal of Cell Biology and the International Journal of Oncology.

On Twitter, Bik — who describes herself in her bio as “blunt and snarky” — has attracted a sizable following by posting images she’s examining to find out if others see what she sees. Plenty of followers chime in, circling parts of images that appear to be deceptively tweaked. When someone online asked recently whether she uses special software to detect problems, Bik responded “Just my eyes!”

The Chronicle spoke with Bik about her passion for research integrity, quitting her day job, and dealing with criticism.

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What does your inbox look like right now?

People want my advice. They’re like, “Oh, I worked at a company, and I see that this company is doing this research, but I think their method is flawed, and because I know this method very well I don’t think they can ever have obtained the values they claim, and I think they’re committing fraud.” Those things are hard for me to really respond to. It might be that only a person from the inside could see it.

One is from a whistle-blower who says, “I was working in the lab, and they published this paper, but this photo in this paper is not what it is described as. They actually just pulled another photo from another paper that has not been published, so it’s a unique photo, but the photo does not describe that cell line.” I’m getting a couple of those. It just tells me there’s so much fraud going on that is just not possible to find unless you are a person who has worked in that lab. It just shocks me.

Why did you decide to leave both the university and industry to work independently?

Just to be able to do this work full time. It’s nice to have a salary, and it’s nice to have a job and a meaningful position in either an academic group or an industry group. I think for most people, the paycheck is obviously what you need to be able to do your hobbies. I am in a financial situation where I can take at least a year off and do this work full time, and I just felt I can mean so much more for science if I start to do this work.

It’s not going to get me a check, but it needs to be done, and I can do it because I have done this as a hobby for so many years. I really felt much more enthusiastic about doing this work than my paid job.

Is it helpful to not be beholden to an institution?

If you’re a professor somewhere and you see one of your colleagues cheat, if you raise hell you’re going to probably lose your job. There’s so many powerful connections, and people don’t want to have any disturbance. Institutions and journals and publishers tend to want to put things under the rug and not create a stir. In many cases, a person who raises a suspicion — and especially if you’re a younger scientist, if you’re early-career, a graduate student or a postdoc — you’re going to lose that battle. You cannot fight these big-shot people at universities. I’m getting too many emails that confirm this story.

You noted on Twitter recently that you’ve been getting warnings about certain authorities taking actions against you, or trying to mess with your social-media accounts in retaliation for pointing out misconduct. How worried are you that something is going to happen?

I’m a bit worried. I got two or three direct messages from Twitter accounts that I might follow, but I don’t know who they are. They were saying, “Be aware, change your password because the Chinese authorities might send hackers after you.” I was getting a little bit — not panicked, but worried — so I Tweeted, “OK, if my account is gone, then I’ll pop up somewhere else.” But nothing has happened as of now.

Your ability to spot problems with images is uncanny, and I’m sure it’s been sharpened by years in the laboratory. How much of that is an innate ability and how much is experience?

There’s a bit of both, I would say. I’ve always looked at patterns in floor tiles and laminate floors that are not real wood. I always looked and thought, “Is this a real floor, or is this a pattern that is repetitive?” I’ve always sort of done that. Tiles in bathrooms, too. I thought other people did the same thing, but I guess maybe not.

One critique made about those who search for and publicize research fraud is that they’re tearing down fellow scientists rather than contributing their own original work. What do you think of that critique?

If you want to use a construction metaphor, I think you need to tear down to be able to build up something new. That’s how you do it. You cannot just build a new house on a rotten foundation. You have to take care of that. I keep on drawing the analogy with doping and sports, because I feel it’s a similar process. In order to get rid of the doping scandal, certain people had to be exposed, and certain people lost their medals, and certain people lost their reputation. Otherwise it could not have been done.

Some of the criticism directed at you has been pretty obviously sexist.

I think in general if a woman says something critical, she will be regarded as aggressive, compared with a man who points out something critical. I think pretty much any woman will agree with that, and most men will say that it’s not true, so pick your choice. As a woman who will say something authoritative, it’s very easy to be called aggressive, or a bitch, or all kinds of terms. I’ve had that a lot. I try to be polite in what I say, but it’s really hard to be critical as a woman.

How did you get started ferreting out research misconduct?

By accident, I flipped through a Ph.D. thesis and found a blot that was repeated. That was the moment when I thought, “Oh, I guess I see these things. I should actually be really looking for them. Let’s see if I find them in science papers, just for fun.” The first night I started doing it, I found one or two examples. It’s very rewarding. It’s like looking for an Easter egg, and you find one. If you search for an hour and you never find an egg, you’ll quickly give up. But if you find three eggs, you keep on searching.

This article has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Tom Bartlett is a senior writer who covers science and ideas. Follow him on Twitter @tebartl.