Hellekant has raised some very important issues.

But his full trust in the conviction that "fortunately science is self correcting", may not always work.

Perhaps the self correcting process goes astray only in very rare, very complex cases. But, when this happens it can give us what I consider the worst goof in the history of science, such as the famous, Nobel Prize winning "discovery" of the honey "dance language"(DL) that never existed.

The "discovery", was first announced by K. v. Frisch in a scientific journal, as presumably already fully properly experimentally confirmed, in 1946. V. Frisch's DL hypothesis turned out , however, to be a stillborn hypothesis, rooted in outright scientific fraud, disguised by a deliberate cover up. The hypothesis was stillborn, because it had already been routed by his own results, obtained in his early study on honeybee-recruitment that long preceded the inception of his sensational DL hypothesis.
Those results were "eliminated" after the inception of that hypothesis, and eventually replaced by the results of later tests, done using a drastically different experimental design, which provided results that fit v. Frisch's expectations from the hypothesis.

The "elimination" fully qualifies as an act of outright scientific fraud. The substitution fully qualifies as a deliberate cover up. V. Frisch was, however, convinced that he acted correctly, valiantly saving The Theory of Evolution from an imaginary severe crisis it would have presumably faced in the absence of a honeybee DL, to provide the only conceivable adaptive value to honeybee-dances, which are not learned, and were, therefore, erroneously assumed to be "instinctive", i.e. genetically predetermined.

The opposition to v. Frisch's DL hypothesis was launched by Wenner & his team, in 1967, when the DL hypothesis had already become a revered ruling paradigm. Because of the cover up to which v. Frisch had resorted, Wenner & his team did not even know at the time that they had simply re-discovered, and published what v. Frisch himself had already discovered and published at least as early as 1923, i.e. that honeybee-recruits use odor, and only odor, until I accidentally stumbled on an 1939 reprint of a little known publication by Frisch (1937), which summarised his whole honeybee-research up to that time, and published the find in 1980.

The scientific self correcting process "worked so well", that instead of being thanked Wenner & his team were quickly turned into pariahs, long before 1980, for daring to question the revered honeybee DL hypothesis.In 1973 the self correcting process "did even better", with v. Frisch being awarded the Nobel Prize for the "discovery" of the incredible honeybee DL.

The critiques of that hypothesis by Wenner & his team, however, launched the honeybee DL controversy, which has been going on by now for over 40 years. The DL controversy actually constitutes the most important reflection of an older, far more important controversy, that concerns the very foundations of the whole field of Biology, i.e. the controversy over the very existence of genetically predetermined traits, known as "instincts" in Behavior. (It is no accident that v. Frisch's Nobel Prize was shared by K. Lorenz & N. Tinbergen, the two co-founders of a general approach to Behavior that is based on the belief in the existence of "instincts'; except that by now no one even knows what an "instinct" is!

When Wenner stated years ago that he did not know whether e would live long enough to see victory, I thought he must have over-reacted.
But I'm not so sure anymore.

Maybe the honeybee DL hypothesis, as well as the belief in the existence of "instincts", will some day be put to rest. Whether we would still be around to witness that, I do not know. That much for the scientific self correcting process!

1. To direct questions to the "scientific Red Cards" team, e-mail to:

2. You can see the list of the articles uploaded by users via this web page:
LINK

If you want to contribute or discuss on the forum, you first have to register.

Scientific results can not be handled like traffic violations! Who is going to decide if it is fraud, simple error, question of interpretation of data or what? And where is the police, the judge, the court, the defense; all necessary parts of a fair justice system? Who is paying for the repository, storing and sorting the information? How do you retrieve and search?
Fortunately science is self correcting and data that can not be repeated have for generation quietly been buried somewhere in a never quoted article or book and should continue to be so.

Following your post I surfed the Internet, found some links, gained access to some comments apparently posted on that website, but I have not been able to access the roster, which is what I want to see.

So how exactly do you access the roster of the "Scientific Red Cards" website?

I tried the Scientific Red Cards web site this afternoon, and it was up and running fine. Thanks,

Alison McCook
Deputy Editor

Since Raman reported he was unable to access the new "Scientific Red Cards" website, I won't even try, until we receive clear instructions about how to access the site. Consequently I have only general comments & questions;

1. How far back does this roster go? Do they include cases like the Piltdown man fraud?

2. Is this new website primarily duplicating what "Scifraud" (to which anyone can subscribe for free), has been doing for many years?

"Scifraud" is a discussion website for cases of scientific fraud, but it also encompasses cases of undue interference with scientific work by Big Government, and Big Business, as well as reports on papers retracted for reasons other than fraud, e.g. errors, unwarranted conclusions, etc., and papers that deserve to be retracted for such reasons.

Judging by active members, most members appear to be scientists, or persons involved in scientific information. There has, however, been very little activity on that website during the past few years.

3. And, yes! One can certainly be sued, with dire consequences.

We know of only one "Scifraud" member, a British citizen, who was sued (for defamation I suppose), in Portugal, (where he was apparently working at the time), as a result of havin posted on "Scifraud" a message in which he stated that some research in genetics, done by some German scientists, was illegitimate.

The lawsuit was launched before "Scifraud" began to keep an Archive. There is very little information about it in the Archive, and I found it impossible to obtain additional information from any source; except that I eventually learned that the research was in behavior.

I have no idea who those German scientists are, what their study was about, what was presumably illegitimate about it, and according to whose law. The sued member explained on "scifraud" that those German scientists gained the right to sue, because "Scifraud" is international, and all they needed to do was show that at least 2 persons read his post.

He also reported on "Scifraud" that the lawsuit caused him considerable financial damage, and emotional anguish, and dragged for very many years, before he was finally found not guilty

There was a direct correlation between the amount of fraudulent papers recently cited; as a direct swap for the stolen hardware not returned as promised, from previous scientists, involved. The scientific muscular community had had a previous meeting before the fraudulent blow out of database and subsequent materials: but nature took it's course - and it ended up on the side of the road with a bunch of scrumpled papers not worth the ink attempted to apply to it.
Should this paticular set of papers continue to be seen as fraudulent : then additional measures will increase the vulerability of VW fraudulent papers; and some additional invasion of privacy fraudulent papers - on topic to be deilvered on Tuesday to legal team. plus additional pointers for great fraud ideas. Legal Team 4 massive ions already from previous attempts to mute self in papers issue. Plus book for publication on all and total ......what a great joke that would be - so additional papers to the value of 1500 mexican pesos shall be recorded and finished with.

This website is a good development to identify scientific fraud, by issuing a RED CARD.

I hope the fraud detection can be expanded to include issuing AMBER CARD for group(s)/lab(s) that indulge in improper citation, non-citation of prior work by other scientists, or disregard for antecedent research, etc as posted by Bob Grant on 25th Nov 2008 in The Scientist -
LINK

In these days of Google searching, no one can pretend ignorance of prior work or publications.

I agree with Anonymous Poster, but wish to add that one should be cautious about defamation suits, which can be filed even if the frauds are proven.

Also, I tried to access the website of "Scientific Red Cards" but failed after waiting and waiting.

I also think it's a good idea. Ideally, being on this list should be about as bad for your career as a Nature/Science paper is good for it. :-)

This will only work if
1) NIH program directors visit this website and use the information in their decisions to exclude funding for those whose work appears there;
2) Scientific editors from top journals are willing to exclude further publications from these labs; And
3) Universities are willing to punish their scientists for misconducts.

Otherwise, such a website is just another blog on the web.