300+ retractions, image manipulation, and why science should be boring | Mu Yang

Mu Yang is a behavioral neuroscientist at Columbia University, and a scientific sleuth responsible for more than 300 retractions. She led an effort that discovered more than 130 fraudulent papers in the publication record of Eliezer Masliah, former head of the Division of Neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health. Her sleuthing work has been documented in the book "Doctored" by Charles Piller, Science Magazine, and other outlets, and is unpaid.

CONTACT RANDY:

metasciencematters@gmail.com

EPISODE LINKS:

Books: 

Doctored by Charles Piller: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Doctored/Charles-Piller/9781668031254

Unreliable by Csaba Szabo: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/unreliable/9780231216241/

Scientific integrity blogs: 

Dorothy Bishop: https://deevybee.blogspot.com/

Leonid Schneider: https://forbetterscience.com/

Podcasts for critical thinking

Plain English by Derek Thompson: https://www.theringer.com/podcasts/plain-english-with-derek-thompson

The Gray Area by Sean Illing: https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area

The Ezra Klein show (NYT): https://www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-klein-podcast

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Introduction

2:58 - Mu's origin story

4:35 - Moving to Columbia

6:15 - How Mu became a sleuth

8:13 - Reporting her first case

13:09 - Red flags Mu looks for in papers

17:30 - Reductionism in behavioral neuroscience

18:04 - Standardization vs. Generalizability

19:58 - Data sharing standards across fields

21:09 - Difficulties of reporting irregularities in papers, university incentives

23:54 - Allocating time between images, numerical, other kinds of data

24:37 - How she searches through papers

25:45 - Examining the chemistry literature

31:10 - Types of misconduct vary by field, risks of reporting

35:43 - The case of Eliezer Masliah

40:31 - Why demonizing individual scientists isn't productive; the system isn't working

56:59 - Academic incentives for positive data

1:07:31 - Hard to publish null data; "unhealthy codependence" between academia and publishing

1:13:08 - Changing incentives

1:21:42 - Are we even making a dent in the scale of scientific misconduct? 

1:27:35 - Mu's toolkit

1:29:38 - Mu does this work because it's fun!

1:34:38 - Protecting students; telling them that null data is ok

1:37:52 - Evaluating researchers 

1:43:15 - Is peer review still relevant?

1:51:38 - How much better could science be?

1:55:14 - What will science look like in a century?

1:58:13 - Advice and resources for listeners

2:00:54 - Online presence

2:01:35 - Outro