ATGthePodcast 316 - A Conversation with Elizabeth Bik, Science Integrity Consultant and Microbiologist

The following interview is part of the 2025 Charleston Conference Leadership Interview Series. In this series, we sit down with leaders and innovators who are making a real difference in scholarly publishing, libraries, and the broader information world. Each conversation is a chance to hear firsthand how these decision makers tackle new challenges, rethink traditional models, and collaborate across sectors. Today's episode features the next conversation from the 2025 Charleston Conference Leadership Interview Series.  Heather Staines, Senior Consultant, Delta Think, and a Conference Director, talks with Elizabeth Bik, Science Integrity Consultant and Microbiologist. Elisabeth is a prominent microbiologist and renowned investigator into scientific misconduct, particularly the manipulation and falsification of research data. She has uncovered issues in over 7,000 scientific papers, resulting in more than 1,000 retractions. Her work has gained international attention, earning her the 2021 John Maddox Prize. In this conversation, Elizabeth shares with Heather about her early work in the field of microbiology with dolphins and discovering plagiarism of her own work using Google Scholar which began her drive to become a "scientific sleuth." In 2014, she began searching for not only plagiarism but also for images that had been duplicated. In 2019, she quit her job to work full time as a consultant to investigate cases for scientific publishers.   She talks about her frustrations over the slowness in correction or retraction, or complete lack thereof, and says that only about one-third of the papers she identified had been corrected or retracted after 5 years. She also talks about a human using their eyes to find duplications vs. AI tools designed to detect duplications or other problems within scientific papers. Elizabeth says there is often a battle between the tools to find misconduct versus tools to create or enable misconduct, create fraudulent data sets and fake AI photos that are very difficult to detect.  Elizabeth says she will continue to work diligently to raise awareness of scientific misconduct in its many different forms. The video of this interview can be found here: https://youtu.be/kOOtgsI1CUg LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisabeth-bik-4376782/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherstaines/ Twitter: Keywords: #CharlestonConference #AgainstTheGrain #KatinaMagazine #AnnualReviews #LeadershipInLibraries #InnovationInLibraries #TeamWork #Team #ConferenceEvolution #LibraryCommunity #Librarianship #ProfessionalDevelopment #LibrarianJourney #LibraryEducation #InformationAccess #LibraryCommunity #libraries #librarians #libraryCareer #librarySchool #LibraryLove #academic #AcademicPublishing #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication  #learning #learnon #information #leaders #leadership #2024ChsConf ##career #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication #libraries #librarianship #LibraryNeeds #LibraryLove #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #publishing #LibrariesAndPublishers #podcasts