Great reply jonnyss. Sums up my thinking as well.
MTL, in the best light, is still responsible for a paper with fraudulent data, even if his postdoc did all the photo editing without MTL's knowledge or direction. The postdoc is his trainee, and direct report in business parlance. If he screws up, the professor is still responsible on some level for not properly monitoring or training that person.
And it happened multiple times.
Peer review is simply not designed to pick up things like this. It's done on a volunteer basis in the spare time of usually overworked scientists, who generally trust that people aren't lying about their actual data.
The peer review process could certainly use some changes but that's ancillary to the discussion of MTL's culpability.
MTL, in the best light, is still responsible for a paper with fraudulent data, even if his postdoc did all the photo editing without MTL's knowledge or direction. The postdoc is his trainee, and direct report in business parlance. If he screws up, the professor is still responsible on some level for not properly monitoring or training that person.
And it happened multiple times.
Quote:There is one very good reason to believe that the doctoring of the MTL images was in fact NOT blatant, really hard to miss. As you undoubtedly know, there papers are peer reviewed before publication. NONE of the reviewers raised questions about these figures. If it was so obvious why didn't the reviewers see it? Clearly, the idea that it was obvious is not supported by facts.
Peer review is simply not designed to pick up things like this. It's done on a volunteer basis in the spare time of usually overworked scientists, who generally trust that people aren't lying about their actual data.
The peer review process could certainly use some changes but that's ancillary to the discussion of MTL's culpability.