[bhk]

The ArsTechnica article was about a paper by Morten Oksvold that claimed that 25% of cancer biology papers contain duplicated data.

One nuance is that his approach only focused on one easily identifiable form of fraud: Western blot images that can be shown to be fraudulent because they were copies of images use in different papers. Of all the potential opportunities for fraud, one must think that this must represent just a small portion.

If there are other nuances you care to mention, I'm all ears.

Instead, you refer to an entirely different article, as if the article I cited has no relevant content, which misleads casual readers of this comment stream. To paraphrase your comment in a less misleading way: "Inside this article you can find a link to an entirely different article whose content does not support the headline of the original article."

[tptacek]

Well, one thing you might want to do before doubling down on the Oksvold study is work out the percentage of those papers that were likely to have misused western blot images (it's the bulk of the paper, impossible to miss), and then read the part of the Ars article (again: the bulk of the article) that discusses reasons why different experiments might have identical western blot images (one obvious one being that multiple experiments might get run in the same assay).

Instead, you're repeatedly citing this 25% number as if it was something the paper established. Even the author of the paper disagrees with you.

[bhk]

Double down? Repeatedly? I posted a link to an article with its headline, and only later, when rebutting a comment that implied the article was about something "completely different", I mention that the article is about the Oskvold study and its finding of duplication in 25% of papers. The paper did in fact establish that number (unless you want to quibble about 24% vs. 25%).

Yes, the ArsTechnica headline is poorly written, and not supported by the content of the article, because not all instances of duplication are fraud, but we can clarify that issue by quoting the article itself: "... the fact that it's closer to one in eight should still be troubling."