I've posted a fair bit here about the problem of disinformation in several areas, including scientific papers. Now a group of publishers has announced standards for images in scientific papers.
Studies suggest that up to one-fifth of published life-sciences papers contain at least one digitally altered image. Researchers might make adjustments for relatively harmless reasons — by increasing the contrast or colour balance to show a key point more clearly, for example. But they can also use image-editing tools to create completely fake results. A photograph of an electrophoresis gel or western blot can be altered by cropping and pasting the bands into different positions, or a microscope image could be photoshopped to remove a particular type of cell.
The Committee on Publication Ethics in Eastleigh, UK, a membership organization for academic publishing, has previously produced flowcharts showing steps that editors can take if a reader or reviewer raises issues with images or data in a manuscript. But now, a working group with representatives from eight publishers, including Elsevier, JAMA, Wiley and Springer Nature, as well as industry group STM, based in The Hague, the Netherlands, have come together to create a set of best-practice recommendations for editors.
Needless to say, this is a good thing. Now if we could just get standards for use of images and videos in political ads.
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