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Two quite separate comments on this thread.
1. Often, in response to the referees, I have to change figures.
Maybe group them differently (which means changing letters) or
alter the labelling. I suppose I should go back to the original
images and re-create the entire plate, but if the changes are
minor it's much easier to (for example) black out 'a' and paste
in 'b', or take out an arrow and put in a letter, etc. All these
things would presumably show up as 'fraud' ....
2. A point nobody has yet raised is deconvolution imaging
systems. Clinicians love them, but they have no training in physics
(and, to be honest, not much in science). None of them has the
first idea what the software is doing, just that it's giving them
the pictures they want. How does anyone handle that?
Guy
Optical Imaging Techniques in Cell Biology
by Guy Cox CRC Press / Taylor & Francis
http://www.guycox.com/optical.htm
______________________________________________
Associate Professor Guy Cox, MA, DPhil(Oxon)
Electron Microscope Unit, Madsen Building F09,
University of Sydney, NSW 2006
______________________________________________
Phone +61 2 9351 3176 Fax +61 2 9351 7682
Mobile 0413 281 861
______________________________________________
http://www.guycox.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Cammer
Sent: Monday, 23 June 2008 2:30 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: An alarming amount of image manipulation
Search the CONFOCAL archive at
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In my experience, when somebody shows up with micrographs that have cells pasted in or background "distractions" stamp tooled out and I suggest maybe taking more pictures or doing the experiment again, they complain that this would cost more and delay them. "The data are what they are and I'm just showing people and if I don't make it look good, then they won't publish it." Sometimes junior lab members will go back to their PIs and say that I wasn't helpful; I become the problem. I will not apologize for refusing to use the lasso tool around a band on a gel and S curve adjust it in Photoshop Curves or for refusing to paint out "an anomalous bad cell off in the corner of the image". Yes, both these requests have come through our facility along with a bunch of other egregious ones. Some scientists really feel justified because the competition does it. "Hey, everybody does it," they say. Although, more often (and a search will show that we've discussed this before), people simply don;t understand what they are doing. They simply misuse the tools for making figures. As with example of film, before you can begin to alter images in an intentional manner or make even reasonably good pictures of anything, you need to be at least knowledgeable of darkroom technique. But with the new digital tools, any dummy can be a photographer and can cut and paste and manipulate in complicated ways.
-Michael
> Search the CONFOCAL archive at
> http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
>
> Interesting - especially the statement that images on film cannot be
> doctored. I guess it's irrelevant nowadays, but that is so far from
> the truth.
>
> One funny story - which I've told before but some time ago.
> Many years ago I (with colleagues) published a paper in a well-known
> journal which included a photo of some gels - taken by the
> departmental photographer. One of the gels had cracked when it was
> taken out of the tube, so there was a dark hairline across it in the
> photo. In the published paper that line had disappeared. You can
> hardly accuse me, or my two co-authors, of fraud since this was done
> by the journal's art department without any reference to us!
>
> Guy
>
>
> Optical Imaging Techniques in Cell Biology
> by Guy Cox CRC Press / Taylor & Francis
> http://www.guycox.com/optical.htm
> ______________________________________________
> Associate Professor Guy Cox, MA, DPhil(Oxon) Electron Microscope Unit,
> Madsen Building F09, University of Sydney, NSW 2006
> ______________________________________________
> Phone +61 2 9351 3176 Fax +61 2 9351 7682
> Mobile 0413 281 861
> ______________________________________________
> http://www.guycox.net
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of John Oreopoulos
> Sent: Sunday, 22 June 2008 10:57 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: An alarming amount of image manipulation
>
> Search the CONFOCAL archive at
> http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
>
> I was a bit surprised at the statistics cited in this article:
>
> http://chronicle.com/free/2008/05/3028n.htm
>
> Does this mean that all journals will start hiring image manipulation
> detectives someday? Could be an interesting career.
>
>
> John Oreopoulos, BSc,
> PhD Candidate
> University of Toronto
> Institute For Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering Centre For
> Studies in Molecular Imaging
>
> Tel: W:416-946-5022
>
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_________________________________________
Michael Cammer http://www.aecom.yu.edu/aif/
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