Science in the Grey Zone is a podcast dedicated to explore error correction and the intricate pathways of the scientific publishing system.

This is the final episode of our new season, where we interviewed 17 sleuths at the “Scientific literature decontamination” symposium held in Paris in September 2024. 

Sleuths are good at criticizing and pointing out the wrongdoings in the publishing system, but how can we fix the problem and who should take action? 

We’ll be hearing from Fidelia, Kevin Patrick, Nick Brown, Ivan Oransky, Kaveh Bazargan, David Bimler, Elisabeth Bik, Nick Wise, Solal Pirelli, Reese Richardson, Raphaël Levy, John Carlisle, Lonni Besançon.

Speakers (listed in order of appearance):

• Fidelia,  pseudonyme.
• Kevin Patrick, science sleuth and a financial adviser in Seattle.
• Nicholas Brown, science sleuth. BA in Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Cambridge (UK) & a PhD in Health Psychology from the University of Groningen (Netherlands).
• Ivan Oransky, journalist at New York University’s Arthur Carter Journalism Institute and co-founder of Retraction Watch.
• Kaveh Bazargan, Director of River Valley Technologies.
• David Bimler, science sleuth & retired psychologist formerly based at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand.
• Elisabeth Bik, science sleuth/ research integrity consultant & microbiologist who has worked for 15 years at Stanford University and 2 years in industry.
• Nicholas Wise, fluid dynamics engineer & research integrity manager at Taylor & Francis.
• Solal Pirelli, science sleuth & computer scientist.
• Reese Richardson, PhD candidate working in metascience and computational biology at Northwestern University.
• Raphaël Levy, professor of physics at the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord & coordinating PI of the ERC Synergy grant NanoBubbles (How, when and why does science fails to correct itself?).
• John Carlisle, consultant anaesthetist at Torbay Hospital in Devon and a critic of dubious data in medical trials.
• Lonni Bensançon, science sleuth & Assistant Professor of Visualization at Linköping University, Sweden.

Datasheet

• Narration: Masha Matalaev

• Plot: Mady Barbeitas
• Production: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni - Chakalaka Medialab
• Recording and editing: Martin Arbeláez Tobón, Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni & Guillaume François
• Visual ID: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni

This podcast has been financially supported by 'NanoBubbles: how, when and why does science fail to correct itself', a project that has received Synergy grant funding from the European Research Council (ERC), within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, grant agreement no. 951393.

Science in the Grey Zone is a podcast dedicated to explore error correction and the intricate pathways of the scientific publishing system.

This is the second episode of our new season, in which we  interviewed 17 sleuths at the “Scientific literature decontamination” symposium held in Paris in September 2024. 

In this episode, we ask science sleuths: Why is correcting the literature so difficult? And what are the biggest obstacles to making it happen?

We’ll be hearing from Lonni Besançon, Ivan Oransky, Nick Brown, Jana Christopher, Elisabeth Bik, Jennifer Byrne, David Sanders, Raphaël Levy, David Bimler, Anna Abalkina, Nick Wise, Reese Richardson.

Speakers (listed in order of appearance): 

• Lonni Besançon, science sleuth & Assistant Professor of Visualization at Linköping University, Sweden

• Ivan Oransky, journalist at New York University’s Arthur Carter Journalism Institute and co-founder of Retraction Watch
• Nicholas Brown, science sleuth. BA in Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Cambridge (UK) & a PhD in Health Psychology from the University of Groningen (Netherlands).
• Jana Christopher, leading Image Data Integrity Analyst working for various journals
• Elisabeth Bik, science sleuth/ research integrity consultant & microbiologist who has worked for 15 years at Stanford University and 2 years in industry.
• Jennifer Byrne, Director of Biobanking - NSW Health, and Professor of Molecular Oncology at the University of Sydney, Australia.
• David Sanders, science sleuth & Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University
• Raphaël Levy, professor of physics at the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord & coordinating PI of the ERC Synergy grant NanoBubbles (How, when and why does science fails to correct itself?).
• David Bimler, science sleuth & retired psychologist formerly based at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand
• Anna Abalkina, research fellow at Freie Universität Berlin (Germany). She was recently named one of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2024
• Nicholas Wise, fluid dynamics engineer & research integrity manager at Taylor & Francis
• Reese Richardson, PhD candidate working in metascience and computational biology at Northwestern University.

Datasheet

• Narration: Masha Matalaev
• Plot: Mady Barbeitas
• Production: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni - Chakalaka Medialab
• Recording and editing: Martin Arbelaez, Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni & Guillaume François
• Visual ID: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni

This podcast has been financially supported by 'NanoBubbles: how, when and why does science fail to correct itself', a project that has received Synergy grant funding from the European Research Council (ERC), within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, grant agreement no. 951393.

Science in the Grey Zone is a podcast dedicated to explore error correction and the intricate pathways of the scientific publishing system.

In season 2, we dive into the fascinating world of “sleuths” also known as data or science detectives. Across three exciting episodes, we will explore their endeavor - spotting errors and even fraud in the scientific literature, or, as they say, cleaning and correcting science.

We interviewed 17 sleuths at the “Scientific literature decontamination” symposium held in Paris in September 2024. They revealed how they catch errors —especially cases of fraud— hiding in plain sight.

In this first episode, we explore the common maxim that science is self-correcting. We asked sleuths how they see the issue of correcting errors in science; Can they diagnose the size of this problem?  Are certain fields or countries facing these challenges more than others?

We’ll be hearing from Fidelia, David Sanders, Ivan Oransky, Nick Brown, John Carlisle, Anna Abalkina, Kevin Patrick, Elisabeth Bik & David Bimler.

Speakers (listed in order of appearance): 

• Fidelia - pseudonyme
• David Sanders – science sleuth & Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University
• Ivan Oransky - journalist at New York University’s Arthur Carter Journalism Institute and co-founder of Retraction Watch
• Nicholas Brown – science sleuth. BA in Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Cambridge (UK) & a PhD in Health Psychology from the University of Groningen (Netherlands).
• John Carlisle - consultant anaesthetist at Torbay Hospital in Devon and a critic of dubious data in medical trials
• Anna Abalkina - research fellow at Freie Universität Berlin (Germany). She was recently named one of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2024
• Kevin Patrick – science sleuth and a financial adviser in Seattle
• Elisabeth Bik – science sleuth/ research integrity consultant & microbiologist who has worked for 15 years at Stanford University and 2 years in industry.
• David Bimler – science sleuth & retired psychologist formerly based at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand

Datasheet

• Narration: Masha Matalaev
• Plot: Mady Barbeitas
• Production: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni - Chakalaka Medialab
• Recording and editing: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni & Guillaume François
• Visual ID: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni

This podcast has been financially supported by 'NanoBubbles: how, when and why does science fail to correct itself', a project that has received Synergy grant funding from the European Research Council (ERC), within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, grant agreement no. 951393.

This is the final episode of Season 1 of Science in the Grey Zone in which we explore questions raised in July 2024 at the joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) - EASST-4S  in Amsterdam. In this episode, we’ll talk about simple cases of error.

Some researchers say we need to strengthen or even change the current peer-review system — using platforms like PubPeer to catch errors after publication.

Others argue for stricter oversight of experiments, data, and reporting. Some believe we should tackle overproduction and rethink how researchers are evaluated. Others call for a “cultural change”—but what does that actually mean?

And what about science in industry? How do we ensure corrections there?

We’ll be hearing from Willem Halffman, Maarten Derksen, Bart Penders, Nicole Nelson, Sergio Sismondo, Nicolas Rasmussen, Maha Said and Melina Antonakaki. 

Speakers (listed in order of appearance): 

Willem Halffman

Senior lecturer in Science & Technology Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands and associate member of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy (SKAPE) at Edinburgh University.

Maha Said

Postdoctoral researcher based in Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, cellular biologist. Implicated in the replication sub-project of the ERC Synergy Project NanoBubbles, which is the first formalized replication project in the nanobio-sciences;

Melina Antonakaki

Ph.D. candidate in STS at the Technical University of Munich, developing a dissertation project exploring how visions and applications of regenerative biomedicine obtain social credibility in different political cultures; research on the scientific controversy and replication experiments of the STAP cell phenomenon.

Sergio Sismondo

Professor of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada, and editor of the journal Social Studies of Science

Nicole Nelson

Associate Professor in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. 

Maarten Derksen

Associate Professor of the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen 

Bart Penders

Associate Professor in ‘Biomedicine and Society’ at Maastricht University, Senior Fellowship at RWTH’s Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Cultures of Research’

Nicolas Rasmussen

Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales, Editor in Chief of the Journal of the History of Biology

Datasheet

• Narration: Masha Matalaev
• Plot: Mady Barbeitas
• Production: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni - Chakalaka Medialab
• Recording and editing: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni & Guillaume François
• Visual ID: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni

This podcast has been financially supported by 'NanoBubbles: how, when and why does science fail to correct itself', a project that has received Synergy grant funding from the European Research Council (ERC), within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, grant agreement no. 951393.

What really counts as an error and which errors should be corrected in scientific literature? 

This is the third episode of Science in the Grey Zone in which we present questions raised in July 2024  at the  joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) - EASST-4S in Amsterdam. In this episode, we will talk about simple cases of error. Are errors an inevitable, or even essential, part of scientific research? What can we learn with scientific errors? 

We’ll be hearing from Willem Halffman, Maarten Derksen, Bart Penders, Nicole Nelson, Sergio Sismondo, Nicolas Rasmussen, Maha Said and Melina Antonakaki. 

Speakers (listed in order of appearance): 

Willem Halffman

Senior lecturer in Science & Technology Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands and associate member of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy (SKAPE) at Edinburgh University.

Maarten Derksen

Associate Professor of the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen 

Nicole Nelson

Associate Professor in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. 

Sergio Sismondo

Professor of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada, and editor of the journal Social Studies of Science

Nicolas Rasmussen

Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales, Editor in Chief of the Journal of the History of Biology

Maha Said

Postdoctoral researcher based in Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, cellular biologist. Implicated in the replication sub-project of the ERC Synergy Project NanoBubbles, which is the first formalized replication project in the nanobio-sciences; 

Bart Penders 

Associate Professor in ‘Biomedicine and Society’ at Maastricht University, Senior Fellowship at RWTH’s Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Cultures of Research’

Melina Antonakaki

Ph.D. candidate in STS at the Technical University of Munich, developing a dissertation project exploring how visions and applications of regenerative biomedicine obtain social credibility in different political cultures; research on the scientific controversy and replication experiments of the STAP cell phenomenon.

Cited researchers and references:

•   Sergio Sismondo & Maud Bernisson, How an opioid giant deployed a playbook for moulding doctors’ minds

Datasheet

• Narration: Masha Matalaev
• Plot: Mady Barbeitas
• Production: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni - Chakalaka Medialab
• Recording and editing: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni & Guillaume François
• Visual ID: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni

This podcast has been financially supported by 'NanoBubbles: how, when and why does science fail to correct itself', a project that has received Synergy grant funding from the European Research Council (ERC), within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, grant agreement no. 951393.

In the second episode of Science in the Grey Zone we present questions that arose during a roundtable recorded in July 2024  at the  joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) - EASST-4S in Amsterdam. This episode will specifically explore what a retraction really means and whether it is an effective way to correct the scientific record.

We’ll be hearing from Willem Halffman, Bart Penders, Nicole Nelson, Sergio Sismondo, Nicolas Rasmussen, and Melina Antonakaki. 

-----------

Speakers (listed in order of appearance): 

Willem Halffman. Senior lecturer in Science & Technology Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands and associate member of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy (SKAPE) at Edinburgh University.

Bart Penders. Associate Professor in ‘Biomedicine and Society’ at Maastricht University, Senior Fellowship at RWTH’s Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Cultures of Research’

Sergio Sismondo. Professor of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada, and editor of the journal Social Studies of Science

Nicole Nelson. Associate Professor in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. 

Melina Antonakaki. Ph.D. candidate in STS at the Technical University of Munich, developing a dissertation project exploring how visions and applications of regenerative biomedicine obtain social credibility in different political cultures; research on the scientific controversy and replication experiments of the STAP cell phenomenon.

Nicolas Rasmussen. Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales, Editor in Chief of the Journal of the History of Biology

-----------

Cited researchers and references:

• Derek de Solla Price
• Eugene Garfield
• Sabina Leonelli

-----------

Datasheet

• Narration: Masha Matalaev
• Plot: Mady Barbeitas
• Production: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni - Chakalaka Medialab
• Recording and editing: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni & Guillaume François
• Visual ID: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni



This podcast has been financially supported by 'NanoBubbles: how, when and why does science fail to correct itself', a project that has received Synergy grant funding from the European Research Council (ERC), within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, grant agreement no. 951393.

Science in the Grey Zone is a podcast dedicated to explore error correction and the intricate pathways of the scientific publishing system.

In the first season, we brought insights and the discussion that took place during a roundtable recorded in July 2024 in Amsterdam during the quadrennial joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S).

The roundtable on the obstacles to the self-correction of science in academia and industry brought together seven scholars who have been studying this issue for years, highlighting how errors in science are often part of larger, more complex systems. These systems not only produce and spread errors but can also perpetuate biases and distortions in scientific literature.

“Does science have a correction problem? This is the guiding question of the first episode of Science in the Grey Zone. We’ll be hearing Willem Halffman, Bart Penders, Nicole Nelson, Maarten Derksen, Maha Said, Sergio Sismondo, Nicolas Rasmussen, and Melina Antonakaki. Learn more about the speakers' credentials and the references mentioned in this episode below.

Speakers (listed in order of appearance)

Willem Halffman

Senior lecturer in Science & Technology Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands and associate member of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy (SKAPE) at Edinburgh University.

Bart Penders 

Associate Professor in ‘Biomedicine and Society’ at Maastricht University, Senior Fellowship at RWTH’s Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘Cultures of Research’

Nicole Nelson

Associate Professor in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. 

Maarten Derksen

Associate Professor of the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen 

Maha Said

Postdoctoral researcher based in Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, cellular biologist. Implicated in the replication sub-project of the ERC Synergy Project NanoBubbles, which is the first formalized replication project in the nanobio-sciences; 

Nicolas Rasmussen

Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales, Editor in Chief of the Journal of the History of Biology

Sergio Sismondo

Professor of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada, and editor of the journal Social Studies of Science

Melina Antonakaki

Ph.D. candidate in STS at the Technical University of Munich, developing a dissertation project exploring how visions and applications of regenerative biomedicine obtain social credibility in different political cultures; research on the scientific controversy and replication experiments of the STAP cell phenomenon.

References

• Andrew Abbott, The Problem of Excess
• Donna Haraway
• Website Retraction Watch

Datasheet

• Narration: Masha Matalaev
• Plot: Mady Barbeitas
• Production: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni - Chakalaka Medialab
• Recording and editing: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni & Guillaume François
• Visual ID: Guillermo Vargas Quisoboni

This podcast has been financially supported by 'NanoBubbles: how, when and why does science fail to correct itself', a project that has received Synergy grant funding from the European Research Council (ERC), within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, grant agreement no. 951393.