Search the CONFOCAL archive at
http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal

So this might be a good time to remind everyone that the Microscopy
Society of America's Education Committee has a subcommittee on the Ethics
of Digital Imaging. Several years ago we tackled this problem
(intellectually) and came up with amazingly straightforward guidelines: 

The only thing you can do to a digital image without reporting it as
manipulation is changing contrast and brightness, and levels/gamma/curves
over the entire image. *Anything* else needs to be reported as an image
manipulation in the Materials and Methods. In addition, the original
(unmanipulated) image must be stored as an uncompressed TIFF on archival
media. It should be available to anyone who requests inspecting the
original. 

We hoped that this would alert (un-educated) researchers to the fact
that Photoshoping an image means changing the data, and they would
educate themselves about image manipulation programs and how they work and
what they are actually dong to an image.

Now, of course there are all kinds of things you can do before
snapping/saving an image, especially with confocal and fluorescence
acquisition software, and we have to rely on people's internal morality
meter... But even there researchers should be able to adequately report
and describe their software and parameters. If they can't, it's probably
more a matter of not understanding what they are doing, a problem that
seems to be rampant these days. Of course, there is also the question of
deliberate fraud, but I suspect that's truly less that is insinuated in
the article and more a question of un-education.

Aloha, Tina

> 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
> 

****************************************************************************
* Tina (Weatherby) Carvalho               * [log in to unmask]           * 
* Biological Electron Microscope Facility * (808) 956-6251                 *
* University of Hawaii at Manoa           * http://www.pbrc.hawaii.edu/bemf* 
****************************************************************************