Date: 10/05/2016 11:58:43
From: dv
ID: 887515
Subject: Arsenic DNA paper hoax
This is 3 years old but I did not see it at the time.
I confess, I wrote the Arsenic DNA paper to expose flaws in peer-review at subscription based journals – See more at: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1439#sthash.lU1YRyHx.dpuf
In 2011, after having read several really bad papers in the journal Science, I decided to explore just how slipshod their peer-review process is. I knew that their business depends on publishing “sexy” papers. So I created a manuscript that claimed something extraordinary – that I’d discovered a species of bacteria that uses arsenic in its DNA instead of phosphorus. But I made the science so egregiously bad that no competent peer reviewer would accept it. The approach was deeply flawed – there were poor or absent controls in every figure. I used ludicrously elaborate experiments where simple ones would have done. And I failed to include a simple, obvious experiment that would have definitively shown that arsenic was really in the bacteria’s DNA. I then submitted the paper to Science, punching up the impact the work would have on our understanding of extraterrestrials and the origins of life on Earth in the cover letter. And what do you know? They accepted it!