DIO Oversight: Forensics

During the 20 years that OSI/ORI have existed, investigators have developed a number of computer-assisted tools and approaches to help strengthen institutional findings.

The following slides will provide a few examples of this.

Detection of Fabricated Detection of Fabricated NumbersNumbers

If sets of transcribed If sets of transcribed numbers are provided as “raw are provided as “raw data” rather than instrument printouts, consider data” rather than instrument printouts, consider whether the numbers might have been fabricatedwhether the numbers might have been fabricated..

Research by ORI and others shows that insignificant (right-most) digits in numbers, if real, e.g. from instruments, are uniformly distributed while numbers made up by people often are non-uniform.

Here is a DIO scan of a spreadsheet submitted by a

respondent that was unaccompanied by

an instrument printout.

Under pressure, he subsequently

provided similar data that was

accompanied by printouts from a

scintillation counter.

The tool used by DIOThe tool used by DIO

The DigiProbe ScreenThe DigiProbe ScreenStart with the numbers copied into a text file

ORI 4/05 6

Data Sets 4-11

Digit

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Fre

quen

cy

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Right-most digit; p = 0.778Second right-most (10s), p = 0.787

Data Sets 1-3 (no counter tapes)

Digit

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Fre

quen

cy

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70 Right-most digit; p = < 0.00001Second right-most (10s), p = <0.00001

Bar graphs effectively illustrate the distribution of digits for the two right most positions for the data sets without counter tapes (left) and those with counter tapes (right).

DIO analysis of the distribution of the two right most digits in data sets 1-11(group V)

Data set Total Digits p value

1 100, 100 <0.00001, <0.00001

2 156, 156 <.00001, 0.00002

3 156, 156 0.02519, 0.00451

4 56, 56 0.57784, 0.47087

5 42, 42 0.22426, 0.22426

6 78, 78 0.46860, 0.57069

7 93, 93 0.27719, 0.97832

8 74, 74 0.07906, 0.51789

9 77, 77 0.33904,0.40441

10 42, 39 0.19768, 0.24219

11 50, 50 0.81654, 0.77919

1-3 412, 412 <0.00001, <0.00001

4-11 512, 509 0.77754, 0.78696

Probabilities obtained with DigiProbe for the 11 assays and for the assays with and without counter tapes grouped together.

ObservationsObservations

The most compelling evidence for misconduct in The most compelling evidence for misconduct in this case was obtained from the fabricated data this case was obtained from the fabricated data sets not examined by the university.sets not examined by the university.

This conclusion is made significantly stronger by the presence of “control data” from companion assays for which counter tapes were available.

In no instance was the distribution of non-leading digits non-uniform when tapes were available, and in each of the three assays without tapes, digits were non-uniform at both positions.

0.010.020.030.040.050.060.070.080.0

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 102 Year Reporting Period ('89-90 to '07-08)

ORI Cases With Questioned Images

Examples of analyzing images

Several examples follow which illustrate how ORI can examine images provided by institutions during their investigation.

Many of ORI’s cases involve images that are duplicated from paper to paper or paper to grant application. This may be duplicate publication, but when such images are said to be the result of different experiments, one of the images, at minimum, has been potentially falsified.

The first example, however, is a little different.

ORI 4/05 11

ORI 4/05 12

Screen shot from Photoshop showing analysis under way – the small circle in the Color Picker is the brush size moved to a color approximately matching the image’s background.

ORI 4/05 13

The result of removing most of the “scribbling.”

Corner of Film

In this case, 1 film was used to represent 2 experiments

the same film used for mouse and mouse Myo D and Myo G

This is why the RIO sent the previous sample to ORI for Review

Scanned film separated by hue

Result: writing in red erased from film then re-labeled