Sydney Ideas - Trust and error

Explore what's fuelling this, why it's concerning, and how we can address this issue with science integrity consultant Elisabeth Bik, computer scientist Judy Kay, linguist Nick Enfield and host Jennifer Byrne.

Science builds upon science. But falsified data and fake scientific papers are slipping through into academic journals and institutions, going largely undetected. In the last year, more than 10,000 articles were retracted from journals and research integrity experts think this is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Elisabeth Bik has been described as a "super-spotter" of duplicated images in science (Nature), "biology's image detective" (New Yorker) and "data vigilante" (Vox). A microbiologist by training, Elisabeth Bik spent 15 years in academia and two years in industry, and in 2019 left her paid job to search for and report biomedical articles that contain errors or data of concern. 

In her talk, Elisabeth will show examples of errors or research misconduct, how to report on scientific papers of concern, and how journals and institutions handle such allegations. She will also address the growing problem of paper mills, for-profit networks that produce and sell large amounts of low-quality or fake papers.

Speakers:

• Elisabeth Bik is a Dutch-American microbiologist who has worked for 15 years at Stanford University and two years in industry. Since 2019, she is a science integrity volunteer and consultant who scans the biomedical literature for images or other data of concern. She has reported over 8,000 scientific papers. Her work has resulted in over 1,200 retractions and another 1,000 corrections. For her work on exposing threats to research integrity, she received the 2021 John Maddox Prize.

• Nick Enfield is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney and a member of the Fighting Truth Decay research node at the Charles Perkins Centre. Nick has published widely in linguistics, anthropology, and cognitive science venues, and has written for the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Wall Street Journal, and Science, including his recent books Language vs. Reality, Consequences of Language, and How We Talk. _His next book _What is Truth For? will be published by Bristol University Press in 2025.

• Judy Kay is a Professor of Computer Science. She leads the Human Centred Technology Research Cluster, in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney. A core focus of her research is to create systems and interfaces for personalisation so that people can scrutinise and control them. She has created systems to support people in lifelong, life-wide learning, with new forms of interaction including virtual reality, surface computing, wearables and ambient displays. Her research has been commercialised and deployed and she has extensive publications in leading venues for research in personalisation and human computer interaction.

• Host: Jennifer Byrne is the Director of Biobanking – NSW Health, and Professor of Molecular Oncology in the School of Medical Sciences in the Faculty of Medicine and Health. She leads the PRIMeR group (Publication and Research Integrity in Medical Research) and is based at the NSW Health Statewide Biobank at Camperdown, NSW.