A personal view of how the NanoBubbles subprojects investigate the correction of science

Please note that everyone mentioned here are members of the NanoBubbles project.

The NanoBubbles (NBs) consortium had its 6^th in person meeting, between the 24^th and the 27^th of June 2024, in Ravenstein (The Netherlands). For this workshop, we shared articles draft in advance, and the whole group was expected to read each other papers, that were then discussed during the week. Therefore, a couple of weeks ago I found myself very focused, in deep reading, trying to understand various terminologies. The reasons why I was struggling were mainly that I am not a native English speaker, nor a philosopher or a social scientist.

Then one may wonder why on earth a nanoscientist was reading a text about The four language games of error correction in science, the work of Maximillian Rossman (postdoctoral researcher, Maastricht University).¹ He explains the structure of the speech, and how one can gain credibility based on the use of words (language games). This is closely related to Stefan Gaillard (PhD student, Radboud University) studies on Overpromising in science and technology, as of course the arguments that one uses to convince people of ideas will generate hype, and also hope (for instance, people hoping to be cured from cancer thanks to nanotechnology). Philosophy is also needed to evaluate the structure of arguments and claims.

When talking about tracking claims in the scientific literature, we cannot ignore the relevant contributions of Martin Lentschat (postdoctoral researcher, Université Grenoble Alpes and soon lecturer in Toulouse), applying Natural Language Processing for such purpose. This work is the perfect connection to assimilate the structure of arguments to create a speech and how overpromises are originated. For cases in which claims are made in articles, but the results and conclusion do not match such promises, or if errors in publications are flagged, we should make other people aware of those problems, aiming to correct science through post-publication peer review initiative, for instance (the work I do as postdoctoral researcher at Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, which makes me feel proud to be a scientist). I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Federico Boem (postdoctoral researcher, University of Twente) who worked with me since I started in the project and was always willing to describe concepts from philosophy and show me how to better analyse the articles by applying critical thinking.

One way of making readers aware of problems found in articles is their retraction. However, retractions do not remove articles completely from the literature, as they are cited before being retracted and often continue to be cited even after retraction. In these cases, it is important to consider the retraction reasons (misconduct, data issues…) when deciding on the impact of citations to the retracted articles. Yagmur Oztürk (PhD student, Université Grenoble Alpes) presented her work on this topic.

In the scientific process, cases containing failed information (I would say, in any venue such as articles, conferences, meetings, classes, informal conversation, and so on) may inflate the number of irreproducible studies, advancing the replication crisis, discussed by Maha Said and Mustafa Gharib (postdoctoral researchers, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord). Do not hesitate to read the first pre-registered report from NBs.

One of the reasons of the existence of errors in the scientific literature is the ‘marketization of knowledge’. If a company has as the main objective making money from science, the quality of peer review will be highly affected. Marianne Noël (permanent member, CNRS) made a lot of effort in studying The Markets of Scientific Publications in Chemistry. Also, Maud Bernisson (postdoctoral researcher, Radboud University) reported her investigation on the influence of big pharmaceutical companies on “medical science and its communication” (read Promoting opioids, a story about how to influence medical science and opinions and How an opioid giant deployed a playbook for moulding doctors’ minds).

For investigating how, when and why science fails to correct itself, it is valuable to assess how the scientific community reacts to errors. Frédérique Bordignon (permanent member, Ecole des Ponts) did this with a questionnaire sent to the community of chemists and could identify formal and informal correction practices .

In conclusion, I started in NanoBubbles 2 years and 5 months ago with a mind completely focused in nano. Now I see how much this project made me burst my own bubble. Before this postdoctoral experience, I could never realize that one day I could work in such an interdisciplinary topic (and understand it, even if still in a very naive way in some of its fields). I am grateful to all these members, who are always willing to discuss and motivated to explain me their studies. Further, one of the most important things I learned in this project is how much I still do not know, and this is something that really triggers my passion for science and learning!

This post was written by Nathanne Rost (special thanks to Yagmur Ozturk, Maud Bernisson, Frédérique Bordignon and Raphaël Lévy, who provided feedback).