Jan van Ruitenbeek receives award for his work in promoting scientific integrity
PHYSICS
Leiden physicist Jan van Ruitenbeek has been awarded a prestigious prize by the PubPeer Foundation in recognition of his significant contribution to promoting scientific integrity.
‘In 2023, I read an article by the research group,’ says Professor of Experimental Physics Jan van Ruitenbeek, ‘this group had published extensively in prestigious journals. This study, published in *Nature Chemistry*, immediately raised many questions for me. After a thorough review, we concluded that their research results could not be correct.’
Van Ruitenbeek carried out the initial assessment together with Professor Latha Venkataraman. In doing so, they gratefully drew on the expertise of Elisabeth Bik and Maarten van Kampen in the field of fraud detection. As several errors were discovered in the publications of this research group within a short period of time, Van Ruitenbeek and Venkataraman decided it was necessary to review all of the group’s previous publications. A massive task. They found so many indications of errors that at least sixty of these publications must now be regarded as suspect.
Online platform for post-publication peer review
To bring these facts to the world’s attention, Van Ruitenbeek wrote several posts on PubPeer, a website where scientists can critically discuss each other’s published work. For one of these posts, he is now receiving this international prize – awarded with the support of the Einstein Foundation Award – of 1,000 dollars.
Pubpeer offers a straightforward way to add commentary to published articles that was previously not available.
Why does a scientist like you spend so much time on this?
‘Of course, I’d rather be working on my own research,’ says Van Ruitenbeek, ‘but I also feel I can’t let abuses like this go unchallenged. Errors – or even fraudulent research – can have major consequences. Other scientists try to replicate such results, which fails. This wastes a great deal of time, money and energy. Through our research, we sought to prevent these negative effects.’
The findings of this investigation have enabled the university, with a view to continuous quality improvement and scientific integrity, to take appropriate measures regarding this research group.
Publication of Latha Venkataraman & Jan van Ruitenbeek in Nature Chemistry
Questioning claims of monitoring the Michael addition reaction at the single-molecule level
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-024-01631-9
Accepted: 13 August 2024