Microbiologist-turned-integrity expert Dr Elisabeth Bik makes it her job to keep an eye on the scientific community, watching out for plagiarism, research misconduct and a lack of proper evidence.
In the early days of Covid-19, it quickly became clear that it was a science communication crisis as well as a public health crisis.
Misinformation was – and still is – everywhere and scientists had to scramble to disprove certain info put out into the public domain. And this was far from a new problem.
From the climate emergency to the danger of harmful chemicals, scientists have had to work at their communication skills for years in order to make people see the truth of the science they were presenting.
But there’s another layer to that, which is the science has to be trustworthy to begin with. That’s where Dutch scientific integrity expert Dr Elisabeth Bik comes in.
Bik is known for her work detecting photo manipulation in scientific publications and identifying more than 4,000 potential cases of improper research conduct.
In 2021, she was awarded the John Maddox Prize for outstanding work exposing widespread threats to research integrity in scientific papers.