The scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences announced that it will not retract a 2016 article on the behavior of clownfish (anemonefish), despite an independent investigation by the University of Delaware (UD) having identified data discrepancies and evidence of fabrication, leading to the recommendation that the paper be retracted. The journal published an editorial note stating that it had carried out its own investigation and found no evidence of fraud, highlighting that the data discrepancy had been corrected by the authors in 2022.
The article is one of 22 problematic papers relating to studies by UD marine ecologist Danielle Dixson, some of which could not be replicated in new experiments by an international group of researchers. Last August, a paper by the ecologist’s group was retracted by the journal Science (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue nº 319) in response to the university’s independent investigation, which found that Dixson did not have enough time to carry out the experiments described in the article and that the study’s raw data contained more than 100 inexplicable duplications.
There were similar suspicions regarding the Proceedings B article, which claims that clownfish can sense whether coral reefs are bleached or healthy, based on experiments in which the animals were placed in a device called a choice flume that forces them to decide which direction to swim. Dixson reported that the data were collected in 13 days, but investigators determined it would have taken at least 22 days to complete the task. She later submitted a correction to the journal that made the information more plausible, reporting that she used two chutes simultaneously, doubling her observation capacity. “Some issues with the data are likely the result of mistakes or poor data curation, and their correction would not change the conclusions,” the journal editors stated.
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