The issue of the recent request by the University of Minnesota to have
Catherine Verfaillie retract her publication is worse than tragic: it
has all the elements of a Puritanical witch-hunt, and all for the charge
of changing the brightness level of three images. Let me be quick to
say that Morayma Reyes, the graduate student who was picked out for the
"offense," changed brightness levels to conform the image for
publication, exactly what a printer at the printing press would do (but
somehow comes clean), and exactly what I advised her to do.
Believe me, no list of ethical rules by the Microscopy Society could
EVER be written to have changed this outcome--which was clearly an
investigation for political reasons--except one rule: no post-processing
period (which is done anyway at the press: are they accountable, too?).
It is especially disheartening because Dr. Reyes is among the best
researchers I have worked with. I cannot forget the day when she called
me into a room long after regular working hours and asked me to look
through the microscope. I saw a beating heart before this had ever been
done with the use of stem cells. I turned to her and commented, "This
is too large for a rat heart and too small for a rabbit. What is it?"
She smiled triumphantly and said, "We made it on a scaffold."
I agree wholeheartedly with Johan: fight back. Especially for this
so-called violation on research that has since been corroborated by
other labs.
Jerry
Johan Henriksson wrote:
> [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 8 Oct 2008, John Oreopoulos wrote:
>>
>>
>>> My apologies again if this discussion thread becomes heated. I
>>> thought I'd pass on another news bit about image manipulation, this
>>> time revolving around brightness and contrast:
>>>
>>> http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20081008/stemcell_study_081008/20081008?hub=Health
>>>
>>>
>>> Is this not something the journal should specify and the reviewers
>>> should be looking for in the first place? It seems to me again that
>>> all of this could be avoided if the authors simply state and describe
>>> all image manipulations when submitting for publication
>>>
>>> John Oreopoulos
>>>
>>>
>> From the story you reference, the researcher did some minimal image
>> processing that in no way altered the conclusions of the paper, and
>> was hit on a religious objection that has no practical basis. Doesn't
>> sound to clever to me.
>>
>> The position these purists are taking is simply silly. Were the same
>> criteria in place before digital imaging, it would be "unethical" to
>> produce prints from negatives -- or for that matter to even *develop*
>> negatives at all -- since all development and all printing
>> *necessarily* involve "image processing." When was the last time you
>> created a print without affecting contrast and brightness? Never?
>> Hmmm....
>>
> by this logic, the only "ethical" way to include images would be as a
> table of sensor readouts in the supplementary material. I wonder who
> would be happy about that.
>
> my stand point here is firm, any image manipulation is allowed. it is
> better by *default* to assume image processing. but the original image
> should always be made available in that case. the method description
> should come in form of a script to redo the operation using an open
> source package. I think this is how biologists should work with their
> data anyway because it allows them to redo the operation very easily on
> other images. as an additional advantage, checking correctedness can be
> almost automatic, the journal simply reruns the script. the only thing
> left to argue about is the choice of operations, left to the reviewers.
>
> currently we have too many black boxes; deconvolution operations is one
> group of very important but hard to describe algorithms (the number of
> biologists here who has implemented it, raise your hand). I would not in
> any way be satisfied with a method description "was deconvolved with
> XXX" because I most likely do not have the package. you cannot expect a
> reviewer to suddenly shell out 10k usd just to verify a picture.
>
> /Johan
>
>
--
Jerry (Gerald) Sedgewick
Program Director, Biomedical Image Processing Lab (BIPL)
Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota
312 Church St. SE, 1-205 Hasselmo Hall
Minneapolis, MN 55455
(612) 624-6607
[log in to unmask]
http://www.bipl.umn.edu
Author: "Scientific Imaging with Photoshop: Methods, Measurement and Output."
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