Is it the job of peer reviewers to detect scientific fraud? I've been pondering this question for a while but lately my interest was sparked by the case of a retracted cancer biology paper in the high-profile journal Nature Cell Biology. Written by Taiwanese researchers Shih-Ting Cha et al., the article was published on the 15th August and retracted just three months later, after anonymous posters on PubPeer noticed several anomalies in the results. For instance, there was image duplication: the paper contained identical images that were meant to be of different mice:
Along with other image anomalies found in the paper, these duplications are evidence of either serious errors in manuscript preparation, or fraud. Now, Nature Cell Biology is a peer reviewed journal. Perhaps three or four independent scientific experts reviewed the Cha et al. paper before it was published. Shouldn't they have spotted these problems? Isn't that the ...
