Two scientists have pointed to signs of what they called “problematic behavior” in several scientific papers co-authored with Mandyam Srinivasan, emeritus professor of visual neuroscience at Queensland University in Brisbane.

The articles deal with the waggle dance of honey bees, a form of communication between bees that plays a crucial role in pollination.

For his work on bees, Dr. Srinivasan has received, among other awards, the Australian Prime Minister’s Prize for Science in 2006, a Distinguished Alumni Award from the Indian Institute of Science in 2009, and Membership of the Order of Australia in 2012.

The waggle dance

Bees use two types of dances to communicate information: the waggle dance – which is at the heart of the new controversy – and the circle dance. The purpose of both dances is for some honey bees to tell others where a patch of flowers with more nectar or pollen is. One bee dances while the others watch it to figure out the direction.

During the waggle dance, the bees move in a roughly figure-eight shape, while during the circle dance, they move in a circle. The waggle dance indicates both the distance and the direction to the bed. The straight line in the roughly figure-eight shape is called the waggle run. The circle dance only indicates the distance to the hive.

The allegations against Dr. Srinivasan are detailed in a report by Laura Luebbert, a geneticist and bioinformatician, and Lior Pachter, the Bren Professor of Computational Biology, both at the California Institute of Technology.

Contributions from 1996 to 2010

The report containing the allegations is titled “The Miscalibration of the Honeybee Odometer.” Dr. Luebbert and Dr. Pachter uploaded it to an internet repository for preprint articles called arXiv (pronounced “archive”) in May 2024. But it wasn’t until Dr. Pachter published a post about their findings on his personal blog and then a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter) in July, including one in which he called the affected articles “garbage,” that the allegations made headlines.

The two scientists claimed in their report that several articles published between 1996 and 2010 and co-authored by Dr. Srinivasan contained “incorrect information” and that “many of them contained duplicated and manipulated data,” as Dr. Pachter wrote on his blog.

Quote from the report: “We examine a number of articles on honey bee odometry and navigation published between 1996 and 2010 and find inconsistent results, duplicated figures, evidence of data manipulation and miscalculations. This suggests that replication of the experiments in question is warranted.”

They published the “code for reproducing the numbers and analyses” in their report on GitHub (under the link https://github.com/pachterlab/LP_2024).

“Pure typos”

Neither Dr. Luebbert nor Dr. Pachter responded to requests for comment. Dr. Srinivasan, however, disagreed with their conclusions. The two scientists “pointed out minor typos, which I regret,” he told this reporter. “But these errors are pure typos: they played no role in the analysis of the data.”

Dr. Srinivasan had left a similar comment on Dr. Pachter’s blog post, to which Dr. Pachter replied: “The issues raised in our arXiv paper concern ten of your papers and do not represent ‘typos and minor oversights.'”

Dr. Srinivasan also assured that “there has been no deliberate falsification or manipulation of data in any of our studies” and that the reasoning behind the allegations was “illogical or flawed.”

“The questions raised by Luebbert and Pachter definitely have no impact on the conclusions of the studies presented in the papers, which have been repeated several times not only in our laboratory but also independently in other laboratories.”

In total, Dr. Luebbert and Dr. Pachter marked ten articles that came from Dr. Srinivasan’s laboratory, which was based in Australia at the time.

“Expression of concern”

The journals they have published include Science and the Journal of Experimental Biology (JEB).

After investigating the complaints, JEB published an “expression of concern for two newspapers to alert readers to data issues” on June 25.

Craig Franklin, Editor-in-Chief of JEB and Professor at the School of Environment at Queensland University in Australia, said: “We have been made aware of a number of potential issues relating to a series of articles published by Professor Mandyam V. Srinivasan in Journal of Experimental Biology. Our Publication Integrity team contacted the authors of the highlighted articles and investigated the issues raised with an expert in the field in accordance with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics.”

“As a result of our investigation, we have published a statement of concerns on two articles to alert readers to issues with the data,” Dr. Franklin added. Details are provided in the journal’s editor’s note. “Our primary goal is always to maintain the integrity of the scientific record, and if further concerns are raised about these or other articles published in JEB, we will investigate the case.”

Dr. Luebbert and Dr. Pachter also pointed to a paper published in 2005, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences because it contained an improbable number. The magazine has since stated that it is investigating the matter.

Sample size in question

Opinions differ on the data discrepancies. Microbiologist and data integrity consultant Elisabeth Bik said: “My short answer would be that it appears that the graphics have been duplicated, but the labels have been changed, which suggests an intent to mislead.”

However, not all ecologists share this view.

“The problem is that Luebbert and Pachter claim that Srinivasan et al. have implausible data in several cases,” said Robert Schuerch, a behavioral ecologist in the Department of Entomology at Virginia Tech in the United States.

“In one of the cases, they claim that the calibration data for how bees convert distance traveled into waggle run duration are improbable, and they cite our (team’s) studies to support their claim.”

“The data that Srinivasan et al. present are extreme compared to our data, but they do not seem impossible to me,” he added. “Given the small sample size they used, it is conceivable that they could reach these conclusions.”

“The methods in the Science The information provided in my paper is very brief and I think a more detailed description of the methods used would provide clarity. However, after more than a quarter of a century, this seems unlikely.”

Odometer unchanged

“I think the same is true of the ‘data duplication’ claim,” added Dr. Schuerch. “The fact that graphics were used in multiple publications is odd in hindsight, but it seems that at the time the authors cited their previous work and explained that they were reusing data. Again, the description of the methods of how this reuse occurred is brief and seems to lack details, so it’s hard to say exactly what happened.”

When asked if the conclusions from Dr. Srinivasan’s work might change, Dr. Schuerch replied, “At least in the case of the odometer, the conclusions would be the same, since others have reproduced these results.”

TV Padma is a science journalist in New Delhi.