{"id":199024,"date":"2015-08-13T12:41:08","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T15:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=199024"},"modified":"2015-10-06T12:46:24","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T15:46:24","slug":"a-strict-approach-to-scientific-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/a-strict-approach-to-scientific-images\/","title":{"rendered":"A strict approach to scientific images"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-193499\" src=\"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/BoasPraticas-a-663x1024.jpg\" alt=\"BoasPraticas a\" width=\"290\" height=\"448\" \/><span class=\"media-credits-inline\">DANIEL BUENO<\/span>With the dissemination of image-editing software like Photoshop, alterations in photographs and graphics published in scientific articles have become more common.\u00a0 The U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI), which investigates suspected misconduct in research work funded by the federal government, has since the mid-2000s been making available a platform of tools capable of detecting errors in images included in papers.<\/p>\n<p>To deal with the problem, some journals have even called upon experts in forensic imaging who are trained to detect indications of plagiarism and adulteration that often escape the eyes of reviewers.\u00a0 Since 2002, the <em><i>Journal of Cell Biology<\/i><\/em> has had on its team a professional from that field.\u00a0 That year, editor-in-chief Mike Rossner published an article that made recommendations for the treatment of images.\u00a0 \u201cIt is very tempting to use the Photoshop tools.\u00a0 Don\u2019t do it.\u00a0 That kind of manipulation can be detected,\u201d Rossner wrote.<\/p>\n<p>In 2011 the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), based in Heidelberg, Germany decided to retain Jana Christopher, a former translator and makeup artist from the English National Opera Company who specializes in forensic imaging.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t have any scientific training and I don\u2019t understand what the images are trying to say.\u00a0 I don\u2019t need that in order to do my job.\u00a0 I simply check whether the images were illegally duplicated, adulterated, rotated, or amended in some way,\u201d she told the journal <em><i>Nature<\/i><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>In 2014 alone she evaluated about 2,000 images included in more than 350 manuscripts submitted to the four life sciences periodicals published by the organization: the <em><i>EMBO Journal, EMBO Reports, EMBO Molecular Medicine <\/i><\/em>and <em><i>Molecular Systems Biology.<\/i><\/em>\u00a0 Twenty percent of the articles examined by Christopher turned up problems.\u00a0 In many cases, the alterations were harmless: they were used to highlight a fluorescent protein, refine the focus of DNA strips, or do legitimate cropping.\u00a0 But in a small fraction, equivalent to 0.2% of the articles submitted, adulterations that compromised the integrity of the research were detected, causing the manuscripts to be rejected.<\/p>\n<p>Although the papers undergo peer review, it is unlikely that slip-ups in images will be identified during that review.\u00a0 That does not mean, Christopher says, that the work of reviewing manuscripts for scientific journals is poorly done.\u00a0 \u201cThe problems with images are less often noticed because reviewers treat the figures more as illustrations than actual representations of scientific data,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A strict approach to scientific images","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-199024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-practices"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199024"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=199024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}