If you get involved in the peer review process, make sure that you do the job professionally in catching suspected data falsification before publication. One study finds that approximately 1 out of 25 papers contains inappropriately duplicated images.

In the past few days, a case of alleged dodgy data in four papers including one published in a relatively high impact journal, was actively discussed on Twitter. Many academics, including an expert in image integrity wondered how the papers passed three rounds of peer reviews.

https://microbiomedigest.com/2016/06/10/ima...cation-quartet/
by Elisabeth Bik

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archi...tific-publisher
by Derek Lowe

https://forbetterscience.wordpress.com/2016...lls-and-images/
by Leonid Schneider

http://retractionwatch.com/2016/06/10/auth...nt-duplication/
@Retraction Watch

This post has been edited by Critical_Fallacy: Jun 17 2016, 04:05 AM

This is the UM case. This should have been easy to catch because they duplicated the same images multiple times in the same figure.

It's not so easy to catch manipulation in most other cases, especially if it's data manipulation. Experiments can't be replicated easily during the duration of the review period and you have to rely on your experience to figure out if data could possibly be manipulated.

Problems with the current peer review process:
1. Journals are shortening review periods. They are asking for reviews to be completed in 2-4 weeks when they used to give 3-6 months in the past. There's no time to really mull over the results.
2. Senior researchers with experience to catch manipulation aren't reviewing papers. Many pass them off to the post-graduate students to do the reviews for them.
3. Pay to publish journals don't really want negative reviews from reviewers.

Just reviewed a paper last month in a prestigious journal in my field. The paper's claims, methods, and theory was obviously wrong, but out of the three reviewers, one of them gave it a generic review saying he liked the tone of the paper, it was well-written, well-organised, etc. Nothing about the technical (de)merits.

Fortunately, two of us raised the technical issues and the paper was rejected.

I am shocked when UM doing this....

Thanks for the heads-up. So shameful indeed, and UM must take stern action against those folks.

I came across a comment that mentioned another UM individual that is purported to have manipulated images - Prof. Dr. Rosna Binti Mat Taha

Just search for her name in this page, located in one of the comments:
https://forbetterscience.wordpress.com/2016...lls-and-images/

Really shameful.

I guess it's quite common to falsify result, but not to get caught, even in top universities.

A similar news from NTU a group manipulated their results. The lecturer was dislodge and the student was bereaved of his PhD. That shows how stern NTU is against result falsification.

However, for UM they don't really care. I guess this is what the typical conformation of the society. Tidak apa attitude.

I am a strong advocate of anti-falsification. Why falsify if you wanna contribute to the society? If it's just for the sake of publication better not do it