Eight Fraudulent Cancer Research Studies Contained The Same Copied Results. How Does This Happen?

Last week, a U.S.-based cancer researcher was reading scientific research papers related to their field of study . The scientist started reading a paper about genetic regulation in lung cancer, but quickly realized they had read a very similar paper just a few days before. Except that one was about gastric cancer and upon further investigation, not only were they similar, many of the tables and graphs were practically identical.

The scientist contacted Dr Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist with an unusual talent for uncovering image manipulation, duplication and fraud in scientific papers. Bik has been able to uncover over 2,000 cases of scientific fraud to-date and now does this on a voluntary basis, full-time, also working as a science consultant and running her blog Science Integrity Digest.