Guillaume Cabanac, the fake science tracker

Scientific Journal temper nature, One of the oldest and most famous nicknames in the world disappointment. Literally: “to put an end to the renunciation of deception.” His talents for exposing unreliable publications earned Guillaume Cabanac, 39, a teacher and researcher at the Computer Science Research Institute in Toulouse, a place on a list of Ten people who had the greatest impact on science in 2021 According to the review.

This designation refers to inconsistent combinations of words, symptoms of misconduct and fraud which, unfortunately, pass the filter of some defective or even fraudulent journal, and plague a small part of the scientific literature.

Team of Invisible Detectives

To understand why, you have to put yourself in the shoes of scammers … For them, it is no longer possible to copy simple paste in order to restore paragraphs of serious articles, and initial bricks to create a false one, due to plagiarism detectors.

The trio chose a participatory approach to post-publication re-evaluation. Apparently an invisible college of about fifty “investigators”, researchers and amateurs, defines new tormented expressions that Guillaume Cabanac injects into the program. The articles it contains, which have been flagged as problematic, are then reported on PubPeer.org, a platform run by two CNRS researchers, where scholars from around the world and from all disciplines contribute their expertise by commenting on it for re-evaluation.

In addition, another of their radar detectors has problematic papers, developed in collaboration with Cyril Labbé and Australian researchers, enabling them to point out more than 700 articles on tumors, published between 2014 and 2018, had errors in genetic sequencing To date, it has been cited more than 20,000 times in other scientific articles.

His colleague from Toulouse, CyrilLabbé . often entertains Discover some ‘surreal’ prints. But for Guillaume, discontent often ends in victory … He says. Less than three “pollutions” per 10,000 articles, may not seem like much. corn Do we accept that three out of 10,000 daily flights end in crash?, Guillaume Cabanac insists. The flag is built like a brick house wall. The use of unreliable or even rotten items – and their reuse by the scientific community – could, in the long run, threaten the building! »

Gas scrubbers vs paper mills

This enthusiasm for “cleaning” may have its origins in the researcher’s family and moral values. A grandfather representative of the guild, spurred by the lights of lifelong learning, a Toulouse citizen of humble origins has always been drawn to and believes in culture.The spirit of scienceCloseEthical rules determine the activity of members of the scientific community according to the American sociologist of science Robert K. Merton.especially indifference and organized suspicion.

At DUT in Management Computing, research has caught the attention of Guillaume Cabanac in earnest. His internship as a programmer with a PhD student at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse turned out to be a challenging, motivating and grounding experience. He earned his master’s degree at the university and secured funding for his thesis from the ministry on the collective annotation activity of digital texts, in the same laboratory that received him as a lecturer in 2009, nine months after his defense.

When does science fail to correct itself?

Motivated by interdisciplinarity, social bonds, and human relationships, he approaches researchers in the sociology of science and, in 2016, supports a license to conduct direct research entitled “Scientific Text Questioning”. His research, which requires very few resources, reflects its social origins to him: “All I need is a pencil, a computer and an internet connection!” says to himself full stack (“Versatile” in IT parlance): A researcher, he has ideas. The engineer solves problems. Technician, doing programming and getting his hands dirty digitally. As a teacher, he believes that his courses in front of his students fuel his research.

I saw the current the informationClose“Information” and “epidemic” have shrunk to refer to a deluge of information, many of which turn out to be false or even malicious., The approach of the Toulouse investigator finds more and more echo. Even the French Office of Scientific Integrity (Ofis) is now judging it Post-publish comment activities. located within “The normal activities of the researcher, in the same way as the traditional evaluation activities before peers”, remembers the computer scientist. Excited, he invites everyone to join him to clean up the scientific literature together. ♦