Earlier in the year, I brought up the irreproducibility issue that is apparently rampant in modern biological research, and how it had led to the creation of an anonymous forum where (usually) disgruntled individuals can vent and essentially critique published work online - we are of course talking about PubPeer - well, now the story evolves further with one of the co-founders actually revealing himself to the scientific community. A brave move, perchance.
Until now, PubPeer has thrived because of the anonymity involved, on the part of both creators and contributors alike, given that such critique of an established scientist's work is far from a trivial pursuit, and is not unlikely to cause real recriminations if not actual lawsuits by way of response. From the outside, people often perceive academia as this peaceful, creative ivory tower existing in its own vacuum, with almost no infiltration of the toxic mores from daily life in most other forms of business - but that's simply because that's what academia wants people and governments to believe.
It's all about the funding, people. The public face of academia may be one thing, but rest assured it is rife with the same ruthless ambition, ego, jealousy and rage as any other typical cutthroat business today. It is a star system, with the biggest names becoming celebrities in their own right, albeit generally only inside that ivory tower, as well as inside their own heads. Nobody in the outside world has a clue who they are, and probably could care less, not least as most scientists don't produce anything in an entire career that truly impacts the daily life of Joe Public.
So it's an insular world, its very own galaxy if you will, where the stars are stars, separate from any dark matter, and the money pours in and the experiments roll on. This system has by and large worked very well (depending on where you are placed in it, perhaps), policing itself, but the introduction of PubPeer has introduced a disturbing capacity for scientists at any level to pick apart a piece of published work or even whistleblow on the goings-on in some superstar's publication factory (i.e. laboratory). It seemed that anonymity would be the only way to go, otherwise entire careers could be put in jeopardy for publicly airing dirty laundry that has been historically kept quiet.
Ditto for any accusations that data cannot be repeated, or worse, any claims that there was any degree of fraud involved in the publication of a certain piece of work. This gets us into the dark matter of this scientific galaxy, which PubPeer may be able to expose and likely could cause quite a bit of galactic chaos by doing so, but there is a strong argument that this would be a good thing, and could help clean up the scientific publication process. Just don't get caught doing it, if you intend to pursue a career at a laboratory bench or office!
Given all of the above, I was quite shocked to read this week that the co-founder of PubPeer has decided to "out" himself, and reveal his identity. He is none other than a certain Brandon Stell, a neuroscientist at CNRS, in Paris. The move comes at an interesting time for PubPeer, having exceeded some 35,000 comments on their online journal club, they have now decided to reorganise the outfit as the PubPeer Foundation, a not-for-profit agency of which Stell will be the new president.
Stell is quite open about the fact that it was fear that caused them to be anonymous, in that he didn't want his name associated with PubPeer if it was a disaster, or if the establishment turned fully against it. It was entirely possible that those involved in it would become pariahs of the scientific world and its process, and potentially be excommunicated from it due to their involvement. However, today, after some three years and considerable notoriety (including one lawsuit against it!), in order to grow and sustain itself, the outfit needed to raise money and inevitably some figurehead needed to be identified and attached to the organisation.
No doubt the unmasking of Stell may raise some more accurate guesses as to who the other two co-ounders (known only as George and Richard Smith, respectively) may be, but irrespective of that, it is obvious that PubPeer user anonymity will not be going away anytimg soon. Stell realises that accusations of misconduct come with too heavy a price in the scientific world, which is why whistleblowing is such a rare thing, and the threat of ruining one's career is too real for anonymity to be waived. Hell hath no fury like a scientist scorned and exposed!
PubPeer has the potential to change the way science is reported and published, and may go at least part of the way to resolving the current crisis in modern biology vis-a-vis the reproducibility and actual believability of data typically published in well-respected journals. Academia does not appear to be solely capable of solving this problem, nor even acknowledging that there is a problem, so it's probably preferable that an apparently rogue outfit gets the ball rolling for them. I will end this one with the words of Brandon Stell, himself -
"Post-publication peer review has the potential to completely change the way that science is conducted. I think PubPeer could help us to move towards an ideal scenario where we can immediately disseminate our findings and set up a different way of evaluating significant research than the current system...."
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