In recent years, a lot more attention has been paid to image manipulation of manuscripts because of how this has turned into a way that research misconduct takes place. Science should never have an agenda or a way of manipulating the data for its own end. At the end of the day, science should be about getting valuable information that is true.
Startling Statistics
The startling trend that researchers have discovered is that about four percent of science articles were suspiciously altered. The problem comes from the fact that you can easily modify images to change the message entirely. This has led to a lack of scientific integrity that we must watch out for.
Three Types of Image Modification
You have three different types of image modification with some being more acceptable than others. The three types of image modification include:
- Acceptable
- Inappropriate
- Fraudulent
Acceptable is one of the classifications for academic articles that is fine within the scientific community. In these cases, they modify the image because of how it will mean that it meets up to the requirements for the picture format in publication. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to publish it. The second classification is known as inappropriate. In this case, they don’t modify the image or the interpretation of it. What they do, however, is they remove the background noise, or they splice together the microscope fields, which make it look false. Finally, you have the lowest type of fraud that takes place, and this happens when they modify an image to have an impact on the interpretation of the results outright. As a researcher, you must remain ever-vigilant to modifying the results and ensuring that it doesn’t mislead the general public.
More Must Be Done to Stop It
In some cases, image manipulation happens because of how it supports a narrative that someone else wants to give. However, no one should have the right to write over the truth. Websites like Retractions and PubPeer have made it their business to expose some of these image manipulations. In the latest high-profile case of it happening, you have the research group of cell biologists from the Leibniz Institute on Aging. Karl Lenhard Rudolph ran 91 different scientific institutions, and they discovered that they had manipulated eight of the high-impact science and technology articles using manipulated images. The association issued a formal reprimand against Rudolph for allowing this manipulation to take place.
How Can This Practice Be Stopped?
In the case with Rudolph, the institution required that scientists make an agreement in writing that they will follow the best scientific practices. These measures have also been adopted at many research institutions at the universities as well because it upholds scientific integrity and ensures that people follow this code of conduct. Unfortunately, you still have people who don’t follow this practice. The chief responsibility of it lies with the researchers themselves, and they need to remain aware of upholding scientific integrity at all times.
For science and technology articles, we need to do more to combat this disturbing new practice of manipulating science images because of how it can mislead people for its own profits.
There is hope on the horizon. Companies and researchers have begun to develop new algorithms that make detecting this scientific dishonesty easier. Some companies have made this process more automated where they run the images through the computer to understand how it works better. The checks happen sequentially so that they can detect this type of dishonesty.
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