Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest) header
Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest) profile picture

Science integrity consultant, PhD. #ImageForensics #sleuthmaxxing @METRICStanford affiliate / https://teapawt.org/t.co/2xH3WdXTFr / Patreon

San Francisco, CA
Joined October 2013
Photo by Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest)Photo by Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest)Photo by Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest)Photo by Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest)Photo by Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest)Photo by Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest)Photo by Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest)Photo by Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest)Photo by Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest)Photo by Elisabeth Bik (@MicrobiomDigest)
'Elisabeth Bik is a Dutch microbiologist. [...] Then she opened a PhD thesis that had lifted text from somewhere else, and her eye caught something different. A duplicated image. She sat down and went through 20,621 published biomedical papers. By eye.' facebook.com/WeirdbutTruex/p…
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Elisabeth Bik retweeted
Tyler Schultz was one of the Theranos insiders who blew the whistle on Elizabeth Holmes. Today, he has a stern warning for audiences of Nathan Fielder's 'You Can See Everything': Holmes is more dangerous than she appears.

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The Currency of the Journal Article Is Collapsing As an editor I can say that we are being flooded with AI-assisted work. By Anna Wexler theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1…
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Elisabeth Bik retweeted
Lots of debate this week on whether journals should ban AI in peer review. We actually tested this in our new preprint, and the results were pretty clear to me. For context, I've reviewed for most of the big journals and evaluated 1,000 human reviews as an editor. I love to read and evaluate science. TLDR: From now on I won't do any peer review without AI. For clinical trials, I'd even call human-only review dangerous 🧵
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This AI acknowledgement takes the win. From this paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2610.27918.
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Elisabeth Bik retweeted
A study of articles suspected of being associated with “paper mills”in the field of molecular cancer shows the papers cite other paper mill papers to inflate their metrics. These practices can amplify unreliable findings and slow scientific progress. ow.ly/1izn51008lE
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Elisabeth Bik retweeted
Site de pubmed ce matin : quand la terminologie est décidée par executive order !
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Eh, that is called journalistic reporting on facts?
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Elisabeth Bik retweeted
How do you tell if authors fabricated their research results? Sometimes: they just tell you. Read, e.g., this caption carefully. Another banger of a post by my friend Nihar B. Shah on his blog, where he found at least 20+ such #ICLR2027 submissions: researchonresearch.blog/2026…
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Elisabeth Bik retweeted
Today I am sharing a new preprint and accompanying blog post. Hundreds of published papers include impossible western blots showing protein expression in cell lines that have deleted or mutated genes. These clumsy mistakes are widespread and repeated by LLMs.
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Elisabeth Bik retweeted
I know this pic has been posted by others already, but... what on earth @RCPhysicians ?! 😱 #NoMoreManels #DiversityAndInclusion
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"the Editor does not have sufficient evidence to retract the article" What WOULD qualify as sufficient evidence, one might ask. #ImageForensics #ThisImageIsFine doi.org/10.1016/j.jconrel.20… pubpeer.com/publications/981…
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Not sure what new 'sufficient' evidence came to light (perhaps it was just my tweet?), but the article has been retracted: sciencedirect.com/science/ar…
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Elisabeth Bik retweeted
79th retraction for the Marseille "retraction institute." The 66th for Didier Raoult. Lack of ethical approval.
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Journals have retracted four neural tube studies from researchers at The University of Maryland following an internal investigation that identified image duplications and other data integrity issues. By @claulopezneuro thetransmitter.org/academia/…
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Elisabeth Bik retweeted
Most important, we want to get this model into as many scientists’ hands as we can. Today, we’re announcing that 10,000 scientists will get the highest usage tier access to Gemini 4 Argon in Google @antigravity free of charge for 6 months. Apply here: forms.gle/WvmBbPvRbpKG1BPn9
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Elisabeth Bik retweeted
A Wyoming microbiology graduate student from China has been arrested on accusations she poisoned the tea of a colleague who had pending patents and with whom she didn't get along, then tried to flee the country after police questioned her. cbsn.ws/4zxi9t1
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As an Editor, in past ~6mo, we are receiving an avalanche of unsolicited review articles (“scoping” “systematic”, narrative, NOS) on topics and ?s NO ONE EVER has asked and clearly with heavy AI lift. Even the cover letters all read the same…alarming and sad. #publishing
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We're just days away from revealing the shortlist for the 2026 Maddox Prize for standing up for science. While we wait, we're sharing what receiving the award has meant to a select few of our previous winners. The Maddox Prize 2026 is supported by the @royalsociety
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