Scientific sleuths come in from the cold

Leslie McIntosh is on a mission. In the past few years, she has made it her duty to spot weird patterns in scientific papers that often indicate wrongdoing, misbehavior, or even fraud, on a large scale. Her analyses uncover odd trends in several different scientific papers that can suggest research misbehavior by a network of disparate authors. McIntosh, who is vice president of research integrity and security at the scholarly analytics firm Digital Science, met with C&EN in a North London café to explain why data-driven approaches are crucial to this scientific sleuthing and how she hopes to formalize the process—at least to some extent. Some research integrity practitioners agree that standards for their sleuthing work is needed, but others in the idiosyncratic field think the process doesn’t need defining or labeling. Instead, they argue that constructive criticism of researchers and the articles they publish should be considered an integral part of the scientific process—and the responsibility of the academic community as a whole. It’s a healthy debate in a field populated by an eclectic assortment of people, many of whom take pleasure in searching for, and publicizing, scientific fraud. They often labor in isolation on nights and weekends, alongside full-time jobs. Asked why she devotes so much time to sleuthing, McIntosh says, “Science is a pillar of democracy which needs to be defended and strengthened.” Some sleuths embrace data-driven effortsWhile many sleuths still examine one paper at a time to good effect, McIntosh and some others use data-driven approaches to spot patterns across a