[BostonCard]

Most people are generally trusting and aren’t going to give more of a cursory look to the figures.  There’s a big gap between “so blatantly obvious that anyone can see it” and “so hard to detect that it can only be found with sophisticated software”.  Based on what I’ve read, I think this case falls in that gap; it is visible if you know what to look for and are looking for it, but since MTL is generally a well-regarded scientist and Cell and Science are well-regarded journalists, few people are going to look closely.

But at least a couple people did look closely, and posted their suspicions on pubpeer.  I think the allegations fell into “can someone else look at this; something looks off here” rather than “this is clearly manipulation”, but I do believe that at least a few of them were flagged based on an a human ascertainment.

BC

[BostonCard]

Most people are generally trusting and aren’t going to give more of a cursory look to the figures.  There’s a big gap between “so blatantly obvious that anyone can see it” and “so hard to detect that it can only be found with sophisticated software”.  Based on what I’ve read, I think this case falls in that gap; it is visible if you know what to look for and are looking for it, but since MTL is generally a well-regarded scientist and Cell and Science are well-regarded journalists, few people are going to look closely.

But at least a couple people did look closely, and posted their suspicions on pubpeer.  I think the allegations fell into “can someone else look at this; something looks off here” rather than “this is clearly manipulation”, but I do believe that at least a few of them were flagged based on an a human ascertainment.

BC