Group 4 (Hannah Lim, Shayna Chuan, Vanessa Lim, Ong Yu Hann, Shaun Ng)

Did they perform their functions well? Justify your answer.

a) The reviewers

The reviewers failed to perform their functions well because they failed to vet the paper
thoroughly before publishing. Early versions of the work were initially rejected by Science,
Nature and Cell which tell us that there were major problems within the paper, that made it
unfit for publishing and that the reviewers were possibly aware of these problems. Despite this,
only 10 months after the paper was rejected, the paper, which still had many major problems,
was published. This could have been due to the fact that the reviewers were too trusting of
the co-authors of the paper, who were well-respected in their fields. The reviewers were thus
complacent and assumed that given the reputation of the co-authors, the paper would not
have many major flaws or problems. Furthermore, the review process conducted by scientific
publishers is such that only a small proportion of accepted papers is policed. This lack of a
thorough checking system to police for misconduct in papers, means that papers that fabricate
data, such as STAP, can easily go undetected. Overall, the complacency of the reviewers and
the lack of a thorough system for checking papers led to the publishing of a paper that was
marred with fabricated data.

: yes, agreed with the analysis.,

b) The scientific community (post-publication)

The scientific community played their role well in ensuring the paper got retracted. Quickly,
after the paper was published, members of the scientific community actively questioned and
attempted to replicate the experiments in the paper. This could have been due to the fact that
the claims made by the paper were very significant and thus, needed to be verified with
scientific rigour. The scientific community thus took it upon themselves to verify the new
discovery. Upon realising that the experiments could not be replicated, they created noise? so
that attention could be drawn to the invalid data collected within the paper. Members of the
scientific community who noticed that images used in the paper were unusual and possibly
fabricated, raised alarms to inform others that scientific misconduct had been conducted. The
organisation of an inquiry into possible scientific misconduct by RIKEN, the organisation where
the experiments were conducted, also reflects the vigilance of the scientific community against
scientific misconduct. The combined noise? generated by members of the scientific
community helped to police scientific papers to ensure that published papers are valid and
that scientific misconduct does not go unpunished. This thus allowed a bad paper to be
retracted.
Compare/contrast with their counterparts in the arsenate-DNA controversy.

The reviewers in both the arsenate-DNA controversy and in STAP performed their jobs poorly.
In the arsenate-DNA controversy, the lack of a proper reviewing system and the inability of
reviewers to choose appropriate reviewers and thoroughly vet the paper led to flawed scientific
practices passing undetected. (this statement is not very clear)

Whereas in STAP, the lack of a policing system to identify fabricated data and the reviewers
failing to rigorously vet the paper led to scientific misconduct passing undetected. In both
cases, the lack of a thorough and rigorous system to identify flawed papers and the inability
of the reviewers to vet the papers to identify major problems led to the publishing of these
problematic papers.

: I think that although the reviewers in STAP were expert in the Stem Cell (as they refused
publication in the first submission), they performed much poorly compared to the reviewers of
the Ar-DNA. As it appeared that the reviewers of Ar-DNA were not experts in the field
(Astrobiology).

In the case of STAP, the scientific community performed its function better. In STAP, the
scientific community played a major role in identifying scientific misconduct and ensuring that
the paper was retracted. Had the scientific community not replicated the experiments in the
paper and identified the fabricated data in the paper, the paper might not have been retracted
as quickly as it was and alarms may not have been raised. On the other hand, in the arsenic-
DNA controversy, the scientific community as a whole made less noise and only specific
communities such as chemists and biologists detected major problems. Researchers in fields
such as physics failed to identify poor scientific practices within the arsenic-DNA paper and
bought into the paper’s flawed conclusion. (I doubt that physicists will read such paper?, to
add in STAP paper, stem cell scientists were the reader and attempted to replicate the work.
The “noise” was more pronounced in the STAP, due to high importance, potential therapeutics)

Hence, the scientific community in the arsenic-DNA made less cohesive noise, bringing less
immediate attention to the flaws within the arsenic-DNA paper. Overall, the scientific
community in STAP performed its function better in policing and raising alarms in the face of
scientific misconduct as opposed to the arsenic-DNA community in the face poor scientific
practices.

Mark: 7/10