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  • a researcher’s quest to keep his own work from being plagiarized

    a researcher’s quest to keep his own work from being plagiarized

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    Bioinformatician Sam Payne stumbled on a manuscript in March that included figures that, he says, looked identical to those in a paper he published in 2021.Credit: Getty

    When bioinformatician Sam Payne was asked to review a manuscript on a topic relevant to his own work, he agreed — not anticipating just how relevant it would be.

    The manuscript, which was sent to Payne in March, was about a study on the effect of cell sample sizes for protein analysis. “I immediately recognized it,” says Payne, who is at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. The text, he says, was similar to that of a paper1 he’d authored three years earlier, but the most striking feature was the plots: several were identical down to the last data point. He fired off an e-mail to the journal, BioSystems, which promptly rejected the manuscript.

    In July, Payne discovered that the manuscript had been published2 in the journal Proteomics, and he alerted the editors. On 15 August, the journal retracted the paper. An accompanying statement cited “major unattributed overlap between the figures” in it and Payne’s work. In response to questions from Nature, a spokesperson for Wiley, which publishes Proteomics, said, “This paper was simultaneously submitted to multiple journals and included plagiarized images.”

    AI is complicating plagiarism. How should scientists respond?

    The retraction statement also stated that four of the authors said they “did not participate in the writing and submission of the article and gave no consent for publication”, and that the fifth author did not respond. However, Nature’s news team found links between several of the authors and International Publisher, a paper mill based in Moscow. Neither the authors nor International Publisher responded to Nature’s requests for comment.

    The alleged plagiarism of Payne’s paper highlights systemic vulnerabilities in the global research community, says Lisa Rasmussen, editor-in-chief of the journal Accountability in Research. According to one analysis, roughly 70,000 papers with characteristics common to work produced by paper mills were published in 2022 alone.

    Despite the scale of the problem, there is no Interpol equivalent for journals, nor an official authority to provide industry-wide alerts about suspicious manuscripts. “It was just a complete lucky break that the person asked to review it was the author,” Rasmussen says. “Obviously our system should not depend on that kind of serendipity.”

    Carbon copy

    Although some figures in the BioSystems manuscript were direct copies of those in Payne’s paper, others were simply replotted using his data, which are publicly available, he says. He shared the disconcerting experience on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Well, it happened,” he wrote. He was reviewing a manuscript, he wrote in a post, that included “a direct copy of the figures” in one of his own papers.

    A very close match: Comparison of Fig. 1a from Boekwig et al. 2021 and Fig. 3a from Popova et al. 2024.

    Source: Ref. 1 and Ref. 2

    When, months later, he discovered the Proteomics paper, he posted a follow-up. “Well. It REALLY happened” — the paper that he had been asked to review had been published. Two weeks later, Proteomics retracted the paper, citing plagiarism of images.

    Unlike the figures, the main text of the Proteomics paper is similar to that of Payne’s, but not identical. For example, Payne and his colleagues wrote:

    “From the large population of 10,000 cells, we subsampled a given number of cells n_sample ∈ [7, 16, 20, 30, 100] and calculated S/Vest.”

    The corresponding paragraph of the Proteomics paper features the same numbers and many of the same words:

    “The authors calculated S/Vest using sample n = [7, 16, 20, 30, 100] cells from a population of 10,000 cells.”

    The use of the third person caught Payne’s eye. He says such oddities led him to think his paper had been paraphrased using artificial intelligence (AI) to create believable but different text.

    Paper pushing

    In the course of reporting, Nature found links between authors of the Proteomics paper and a paper mill. Two authors, Dmitrii Babaskin and Tatyana Degtyarevskaya, both at the I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, had separate articles3,4 retracted from the International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning. Both retraction statements, issued in July 2022, use the same language: “The work could be linked to a criminal paper mill selling authorships and articles for publication.”

    As evidence, the statements cited the work of Brian Perron — who studies social work at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and also works as a misconduct sleuth — and his colleagues, who had found links between both of the retracted papers and International Publisher. Neither Babaskin nor Degtyarevskaya responded to Nature’s requests for comment about the retractions.

    Publishers unite to tackle doctored images in research papers

    International Publisher’s website advertises a selection of more than 10,000 manuscripts, on topics as diverse as the metallurgy of aluminium-alloy welding and the biological features of quails. Prospective buyers can see the paper’s title, and sometimes its abstracts, as well as the expected ranking in the citation database Scopus of the journal of publication. They then select an author slot, with costs ranging from about US$500 to $3,000. The company promises that titles and abstracts shown online will be “completely changed” for publication. “No one will ever be able to find the manuscript anywhere,” the website declares.

    Nevertheless, in 2021, Perron and his colleagues reported on the scientific-fraud watchdog website Retraction Watch that they had identified nearly 200 published papers that probably originated from International Publisher. A number of the published titles “were almost word-for-word” the same as those listed for sale, Perron says. Many of the papers listed in the Retraction Watch report were later retracted. Asked for comment on allegations that it is a paper mill, International Publisher did not respond.

    Clearing the catalogue

    International Publisher removes paper listings from its online catalogue after papers are purchased. To get around this, Nature examined a database of past International Publisher paper listings, created by Perron, and combed through screenshots of the paper mill’s website taken by the non-profit organization Internet Archive, based in San Francisco, California. The search showed that the titles of multiple articles published by four of the five authors of the Proteomics study matched the titles of papers previously listed for sale by International Publisher.

    Biomedical paper retractions have quadrupled in 20 years — why?

    These paper listings do not include the full article text, but strong circumstantial evidence connects the paper mill’s listings to published studies. For example, a screenshot of the paper mill’s website taken in September 2021 shows that among the articles for sale was #1584, “The structure of forest vegetation on industrial dumps of different ages.” Degtyarevskaya was an author of a paper published in Ecology and Evolution5 in July 2023 with a nearly identical title and matching abstract. In response to an enquiry from the news team, Ecology and Evolution said that it is now investigating the matter.

    Although Nature’s news team was unable to locate a sales listing on International Publisher’s website for the Proteomics paper, Perron says that the paper has several hallmarks of paper-mill articles. Nature could not find any other studies published by the authors on the paper’s subject matter, protein analysis. Moreover, the manuscript was submitted to BioSystems while it was still under review at Proteomics. Perron says that submitting a manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously is a classic tactic of researchers trying to publish paper-mill products.

    A spokesperson for Wiley did not specify whether the allegedly plagiarized Proteomics paper came from a paper mill, but said: “Our investigation confirmed that systematic manipulation of the publication process was at play.”

    Check and check again

    In recent years, some publishers and journals have taken extra countermeasures against plagiarism and paper mills. One such effort, developed by the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), a trade organization in The Hague, the Netherlands, is the STM Integrity Hub, a resource for scientific publishers that includes a ‘paper mill checker tool’ and ‘duplicate submission checker tool’. The latter is in use at more than 150 journals and scans more than 20,000 papers each month. More than 1% are identified as duplicates.

    There are no metrics for how often researchers spot plagiarism of their own work, but several researchers responded to Payne’s social-media posts by sharing that they had found themselves in a similar situation.

    For Payne, the prospect of paper mills taking advantage of AI is a daunting one. “This, I think, is a pretty good con,” he says. “I think it’s going to happen more.”

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  • Animals, Robots, Gods review: A gripping anthropological account of morality

    Animals, Robots, Gods review: A gripping anthropological account of morality

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    An iconic tram driving along California Street with a motion blur effect

    The trolley problem is a classic dilemma in moral philosophy

    Stefan Lenz/Getty Images

    Animals, Robots, Gods
    Webb Keane (Allen Lane)

    No society we know of ever lived without morals. Roughly the same ethical ideas arise, again and again, over time and in different societies. Where do these notions of right and wrong come from? Might there be an ideal way to live?

    In Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the moral imagination, anthropologist Webb Keane at the University of Michigan argues that morality doesn’t arise from universal principles but from the human imagination. For him, moral ideas are sparked in…

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  • how to stop bad science propagating through the literature

    how to stop bad science propagating through the literature

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    Article retractions have been growing steadily over the past few decades, soaring to a record-breaking figure of nearly 14,000 last year, compared with less than 1,000 per year before 2009 (see go.nature.com/3azcxan and go.nature.com/3x9uxfn).

    Retracting flawed research papers is part of a healthy scientific process. Not all retractions stem from misconduct — they can also occur when mistakes happen, such as when a research group realizes it can’t reproduce its results.

    But regardless of how erroneous results found their way into a published paper, it is important that they are not propagated in the scientific literature. No one wants to base their reasoning on false premises. In the same way that many people wouldn’t accept a medical treatment bolstered by shaky clinical trials, the scientific community doesn’t want researchers, the public and, increasingly, artificial intelligence (AI) to rely on erroneous data or conclusions from retracted articles.

    How to improve assessments of publication integrity

    One aspect that is often overlooked is what happens to the papers that cite retracted research. For example, in June, a Nature paper1 on stem cells was retracted amid concerns about the reliability of the data shown — 22 years after its publication, having amassed nearly 5,000 citations. Of course, an article lists references for a variety of reasons, such as to provide context, to introduce related work or to explain the experimental protocol. A retraction doesn’t mean that all the papers that cited the retracted article are now unreliable, too — but some might be. At a minimum, researchers should be aware of any retractions among the studies that they have cited. This would enable them to assess potential negative effects on their own work, and to mention the relevant caveats clearly should they continue to cite the retracted paper in the future. But, as far as I know, no systematic process is in place for publishers to alert citing scholars when an article is retracted. There should be.

    Beyond retractions, what is needed is a large-scale mechanism to stop errors from propagating in the scientific literature. The tools exist — now, practices need to change.

    Shaking up the status quo

    Publications and citations are important currency in academia. Yet dubious papers or citations can be difficult to distinguish from genuine ones. Combined with the fact that the editorial, peer-review and publishing processes are highly reliant on trust, this has led to many distortions.

    Biomedical paper retractions have quadrupled in 20 years — why?

    A researcher’s performance metrics — including the number of papers published, citations acquired and peer-review reports submitted — can all serve to build a reputation and visibility, leading to invitations to speak at conferences, review manuscripts, guest-edit special issues and join editorial boards. This can give more weight to job or promotion applications, be key to attracting funding and lead to more citations, all of which can build a high-profile career. Institutions generally seem happy to host scientists who publish a lot, are highly cited and attract funding.

    Unscrupulous businesses known as paper mills have popped up that capitalize on this system. They produce manuscripts based on made-up, manipulated or plagiarised data, sell those fake manuscripts as well as authorship and citations, and engineer the peer-review process.

    But reputable publishers are also complicit, when they churn out papers from high-profile researchers — including some who might have built visibility quickly through dubious or dishonest practices — and regularly use those individuals as reviewers and editors. The publishing industry benefits from large volumes of papers, including those that are not scientifically sound.

    Stylised illustration of a row of dominoes carrying scientific symbols

    Illustration: Phil Wheeler

    Tools for change

    Researchers, publishers, institutions and funders must all act to uphold the integrity of the scientific record.

    Scientists who discover a suspicious or problematic paper can flag it through the conventional route by contacting the editorial team of the journal in which it appeared. But it can be difficult to find out how to raise concerns, and who with. Furthermore, this process is typically not anonymous and, depending on the power dynamics at play, some researchers might be unwilling or unable to enter these conversations.

    And journals are notoriously slow. The process requires journal staff to mediate a conversation between all parties — a discussion that authors of the criticized paper are typically reluctant to engage in and which sometimes involves extra data and post-publication reviewers. Most investigations can take months or years before the outcome is made public.

    Retractions are increasing, but not enough

    Other avenues exist to question a study after publication, such as commenting on the PubPeer platform, where a growing number of papers are being reported. As of 20 August, 191,463 articles have received comments on PubPeer — nearly all of which were critical (see https://pubpeer.com/recent). But publishers typically don’t monitor these, and the authors of a criticized paper aren’t obliged to respond. It is common for post-publication comments, including those from eminent researchers in the field, to raise potentially important issues that go unacknowledged by the authors and the publishing journal.

    In February 2021, I launched the Problematic Paper Screener (PPS; see go.nature.com/473vsgb). This software originally flagged randomly generated text in published papers. It now tracks a variety of issues to alert the scientific community to potential errors.

    I devised a tool for the PPS to comb the literature for nonsensical ‘tortured phrases’ that are proliferating in the scientific literature (see ‘Lost in translation’). Each tortured phrase first needs to be spotted by a human reader, then added as a ‘fingerprint’ to the tool that regularly screens the literature using the 130 million scientific documents indexed by the data platform Dimensions. So far, 5,800 fingerprints have been collated. Humans are involved in a third step to check for false positives. (Dimensions is in the portfolio of Digital Science, which is part of Holtzbrinck, the majority shareholder in Nature’s publisher, Springer Nature.)

    Lost in translation

    Nonsensical phrases in scientific papers can sound alarm bells.

    Co-authors, editors, referees and typesetters should keep an eye out for unnatural phrases in articles. They can expose text that has been generated by artificial intelligence or by an elaborate form of copy-and-paste that uses a translation tool to make phrases unrecognizable to plagiarism-detection tools.

    Yet, even published articles that are riddled with dozens of these ‘tortured phrases’ are slow to be investigated, corrected or retracted. As of 20 August, the Problematic Paper Screener that I launched in 2021 had flagged more than 16,000 papers citing 5 or more such tortured phrases — only 18% of which have been retracted (see go.nature.com/3mbey8m).

    Tortured phrase (Expected phrase)

    Counterfeit consciousness (Artificial intelligence)

    Man-made brainpower (Artificial intelligence)

    Bosom malignancy (Breast cancer)

    Kidney disappointment (Kidney failure)

    DNA fix (DNA repair)

    DNA harm/hurt (DNA damage)

    Lactose bigotry (Lactose intolerance)

    Invulnerable framework (Immune system)

    Since my colleagues and I reported that tortured phrases had marred the literature2, publishers — and not just those deemed predatory — have been retracting hundreds of articles as a result. Springer Nature alone, for example, has retracted more than 300 articles featuring nonsensical text (see go.nature.com/3ytezsw).

    And I am increasingly concerned by the number of articles that cite retracted studies — even after their retraction3.

    To facilitate ongoing checks and continuous clean-up of the literature, I have devised two other tools for the PPS. One is the Annulled Detector, which keeps track of papers that have been retracted, withdrawn or removed — these are the various labels used by publishers to flag that a study is no longer valid. The detector harvests data from individual publishers, the Crossref database (which includes the Retraction Watch database) and the biomedical database PubMed to track the global landscape of retractions, withdrawals and removals. Some 62,000 such ‘annulled’ articles have now been cited more than 836,000 times overall (see go.nature.com/4dp5d7f).

    The other is the Feet of Clay Detector, which serves to quickly spot those articles that cite annulled papers in their reference lists (see go.nature.com/3ysnj8f). I have added online PubPeer comments to more than 1,700 such articles to prompt readers to assess the reliability of the references.

    Prevent and cure

    There are simple steps, using widely available tools, that would significantly bolster the reliability of the scientific literature.

    Authors should check for any post-publication criticism or retraction when using a study, and certainly before including a reference in a manuscript draft.

    Retractions are part of science, but misconduct isn’t — lessons from a superconductivity lab

    Two PubPeer extensions are instrumental. One plug-in automatically flags any paper that has received comments on PubPeer, which can include corrections and retractions, when readers skim through journal websites. The other works in the reference manager Zotero to identify the same articles in a user’s digital library. For local copies of downloaded PDFs, the publishing industry uses Crossmark: readers can click on the Crossmark button to check the status of the article on the landing page at the publisher’s website.

    Tools exist to check reference lists, such as RetractoBot, which alerts scholars when papers they have cited are retracted. And the Feet of Clay Detector can be used, for free, to check whether the reference list of a published article has any red flags. It can run checks using just the title of an article or entire publishers’ portfolios, making it easy for individual researchers and journals to check the literature that is of interest to them.

    Science would also benefit from more active post-publication scrutiny by an increased number of readers reporting concerns on PubPeer and to publishers. Conversely, the authors of a criticized paper should engage in good faith in discussions with their peers and/or the relevant journal, and work towards a swift resolution.

    Readers — especially reviewers — should be aware of red flags, such as tortured phrases and the possible machine-generation of texts by AI tools (including ChatGPT). Suspicious phrases that look like they might be machine-generated can be checked using tools such as the PPS Tortured Phrases Detector2.

    Journals should also contact researchers who reviewed an article that went on to be retracted on technical grounds — for their own information and, if the technical issue is in their area of expertise, to prompt them to be more cautious in future.

    Publishers are best placed to make impactful changes to their practices and processes. They should routinely run submitted manuscripts through tools that check for plagiarism, doctored images, tortured phrases, retracted or questionable references, non-existent references erroneously generated (‘hallucinated’) by AI tools and citation plantations (large shares of references that benefit certain individuals).

    Pay researchers to spot errors in published papers

    These checks and balances are being integrated into the STM Integrity Hub currently in development by STM, the association for the academic publishing industry that serves the editorial boards of subscribed publishers. The software aims to detect duplicate submissions across publishers, and to flag to editors any suspicious signals such as tortured phrases, comments on PubPeer or retracted references.

    As well as preventive measures, publishers should speed up and scale up their curative efforts when it comes to investigations, corrections and retractions. They should take firm responsibility for the articles they have published, and conduct regular checks so that retractions in their portfolios do not go unnoticed.

    To help independent tools such as the Feet of Clay Detector to harvest data on the current status of articles in their journals, all publishers should publicly release the reference metadata of their entire catalogue.

    They should also “unmistakably” identify retracted articles, as stated in the guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; see go.nature.com/4dh7fdg). Most publishers edit the article PDF file to include a ‘Retracted’ watermarked banner. But any copy downloaded before a retraction took place won’t include this crucial caveat.

    ‘Expressions of concern’ from publishers should be more widespread. Such notes serve to alert readers that the reliability of a paper’s conclusions has been called into question.

    And when a study is retracted, it should trigger a cascade reaction and, in some cases, a ‘cascade retraction’. This would mean that all the papers that cite that study should be reassessed, and if their conclusions hinged on now-retracted results, they should be corrected or retracted as appropriate.

    Overall, to facilitate all these steps, publishers must update their practices and attribute more resources to both editorial and research-integrity teams.

    Hold all parties accountable

    Finally, another aspect that could curb the propagation of errors in the literature is accountability. At the moment, there are few consequences for failing to correct or retract erroneous papers, and little reward for flagging them — a time-consuming endeavour. Universities and funders must give priority to good, solid science over indirect metrics such as numbers of publications and impact factors of the journals they appeared in. Contributions to correcting the scientific record should be viewed more positively, perhaps in terms of community service.

    As publishers retract ever more articles, I nudge them to transfer to charity the article processing charges they received on publication. For instance, IOP Publishing, owned by the Institute of Physics in London, was among the first publishers to retract articles on the basis of tortured phrases. It donates revenues from its retracted articles to Research4Life, an organization that provides institutions in low-and middle-income countries with online access to the academic literature.

    A combined preventive and curative effort from all involved is key to sustaining the reliability of the scientific literature — a crucial undertaking for science and for public trust.

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  • How to harness AI’s potential in research — responsibly and ethically

    How to harness AI’s potential in research — responsibly and ethically

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    Participants in an AI learning workshop hosted by Deep Learning Indaba look at a computer

    Researchers at a workshop in Nairobi put on by Deep Learning Indaba, a non-profit organization with a mission to ensure that Africans are active developers of AI technologies.Credit: Deep Learning Indaba

    The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) offers immense potential for scientific advancements, but it also raises ethical concerns. AI systems can analyse vast data sets, detect patterns, optimize resource use and generate hypotheses. And they have the potential to help address global challenges including climate change, food security and diseases. However, the use of AI also raises questions related to fairness, bias and discrimination, transparency, accountability and privacy. Image-generating AI programs can perpetuate and amplify biases, such as associating the word ‘Africa’ with poverty, or ‘poor’ with dark skin tones. And some technology giants fail to disclose important information about their systems, hindering users’ efforts towards accountability.

    Four researchers from different countries give their perspectives on the significant promise and pitfalls of AI used in scientific research. They discuss the need for data sets that accurately represent populations in their entirety, and the importance of understanding the limitations of AI tools. Experts from Africa caution that AI systems should benefit all, and not further increase inequities between richer and poorer countries.

    ROSS KING: Harness AI for good, keep ethical standards high

    Computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and at Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.

    A portrait of Ross King

    Ross King used a robot scientist to discover that a common ingredient in toothpaste is a potent anti-malaria drug.Credit: Chalmers University of Technology

    I’ve been in the AI field since 1983, when I worked on a computing project to model microbial growth for my honour’s degree thesis project. I’m so inspired by AI’s potential that I’ve helped to organize the Turing AI Scientist Grand Challenge, an initiative to develop AI systems capable of producing Nobel prize-worthy research results by 2050. Science has been hugely transformative in human history: billions of people have much better standards of living than previous kings of England had, with better food and health care, global travel and digital communication. But there are still huge problems, such as climate change, pandemics and extreme poverty.

    I’ve spent my career in AI trying to make science more efficient. In 2009, my colleagues and I built a robot scientist called Adam, the first to automate scientific research in yeast genomics. Introduced in 2015, Eve — Adam’s better-designed successor — automates early-stage drug design with a particular focus on neglected tropical diseases. We demonstrated that AI reduced development costs, and the approach has now been widely copied across the pharmaceutical industry. Eve discovered that the compound triclosan, a common ingredient in toothpaste, was a potent anti-malaria drug (E. Bilsland et al. Sci. Rep. 8, 1038; 2018).

    Why AI’s diversity crisis matters, and how to tackle it

    Only in the past few years has anyone really begun to raise concerns about the ethical consequences of AI. Already, it is a bit too late. If the Turing Challenge succeeds, we would have agents that could transform science but that might also have the potential do bad things. That prompted a group of us at a Challenge workshop in 2023 to prepare the Stockholm Declaration on AI for Science. Along with other signatories, we commit to using AI in science for good, and affirm that it should help to meet the great challenges that the world faces, such as climate change and food insecurity. We also recognize the need for rigorous oversight, accountability and safeguards against potential misuse.

    We hope that the declaration raises awareness about the pitfalls of using AI. For example, it is important to avoid bias and discrimination. If the training data are not representative of a whole population, then the system won’t generalize properly.

    In a similar way, we need to be careful about some of the conclusions drawn by AI systems. Historically, more Black people in the United States have been incarcerated in prisons than have white people, and that has a lot to do with the US history of systemic racism. The reason for this discrepancy isn’t to do with biology — that’s just obvious — but an AI system trained on a data set of incarceration statistics might conclude, incorrectly, that it is. Be very careful that you don’t believe everything that a large language model says, and check the outputs. You are still responsible for your science. You can’t just say, “AI told me to do it.”

    I don’t think there’s anything ethically worrying about using AI to process your data, generate hypotheses or suggest an experiment. It is just a tool. Ultimately, let your conscience be your guide.

    SURESH VENKATASUBRAMANIAN: Understand the limitations of AI tools

    Computer scientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

    Portrait of Suresh Venkatasubramanian

    Suresh Venkatasubramanian helped to co-author the first US blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights.Credit: Nick Dentamaro/Brown University

    On a sabbatical in 2013, I started thinking about AI in a big-picture way, asking myself, “What happens if we are using machine learning everywhere in the world?” and “How will we know these systems are doing what they are supposed to be doing?” Now, I focus on the effects of automated decision-making systems in society and, in particular, I investigate algorithmic fairness.

    Algorithmic unfairness describes what happens when algorithms that are used in decision-making lead to decisions based on characteristics that we don’t think should play a part. For example, an algorithm that assists in recruitment decisions for a tech company might favour men over women.

    Not all ‘open source’ AI models are actually open: here’s a ranking

    In 2021, I was asked to serve as the assistant director for science and justice in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and to help co-author the first US blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. The document outlines five core principles to protect people, including data privacy and avoidance of algorithmic discrimination. It is relevant for scientists, especially when their use of AI in research affects civil rights, perhaps by influencing opportunities for advancement or access to services. As a biomedical researcher, for example, you might be making medical devices or designing treatment plans that affect people’s lives and their ability to function in society.

    The AI Bill of Rights will provide more concrete advice to AI practitioners. We need better guidance in the capabilities and limitations of AI tools. All tools have limits. You don’t use a screwdriver to hammer a nail, unless you’re desperate.

    Much of the public discussion around AI is at a high level, where it’s just not helpful. A researcher needs to be very specific and people-centred or they won’t really get a deep understanding of the broader societal impacts of the tools they’re creating. For example, developing an intricate and fair assessment tool to predict who might be least likely to show up for their court dates, and then targeting them, could be less effective than simply sending reminder messages to everyone about their trial dates.

    At Brown University, where I direct the Center for Technological Responsibility, one thing we think about is how to educate a wide swathe of researchers about what AI can and cannot do.

    Can we use ChatGPT to generate title ideas for an article? Sure. Can we use a chatbot to get accurate answers to questions? Not right now, but stay tuned. Can we use AI to make critical life-altering decisions? Almost certainly not, and at least not without significant protections and safeguards. Right now, we are in the hype cycle, in which no one’s talking about the limits of these tools, but it’s important to convey a more balanced sense of what these tools are good for, and what they’re not good for.

    NYALLENG MOOROSI: Effective, ethical AI requires representative data

    Computer scientist at the Distributed AI Research Institute in Hlotse, Lesotho.

    Portrait of Nyalleng Moorosi

    Nyalleng Moorosi co-founded Deep Learning Indaba so that Africans could learn to become ‘active shapers and owners’ of advances in AI.Credit: Nik West

    In 2016, I was working on a data-science project for the South African government’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, using social-media data to understand political trends and sentiments in that year’s local elections. It was clear that most of the conversations were being led by urban, well-to-do voters. We didn’t have the voice of the rural populations, and there was little representation from older or low-income populations. We also realized that we could access information that people wouldn’t necessarily wish to volunteer, such as their locations or details about family and friends. All these issues of equity and privacy really came to light. This developed my passion for data representation: that is, who is included in the data sets and how they are portrayed.

    Data representation is really important in Africa. In the large language models that power AI chatbots, there are very few resources for most African languages, so the models perform badly on tasks such as language identification and translation. A case in point is a paper published at the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics 2024 conference. The paper shows that, when used to identify 517 African languages in a specific data set, ChatGPT averaged an accuracy of only 5% (W.-R. Chen et al. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/ndmd; 2024). But it was able to identify English 77% of the time. AI is all about historical data for training, and these AI systems don’t work for African countries, because they don’t have data from those countries. Developers effectively haven’t ‘seen’ us.

    AI image generators often give racist and sexist results: can they be fixed?

    When African AI developers get these poorly performing systems, we rush into our communities and we build these data sets. We interact with these systems, and we correct them, and the systems learn, learn, learn. The best-case scenario is that we get the systems to a place where they do work for us, but because we don’t own any of the companies behind them, we have done all of that work for free.

    Instead, we should be focusing our resources on local researchers and developers so that we can develop our own systems. Then we’ll be able to use our own metrics of correctness and incorporate meaningful data. Masakhane, one of the largest language-model-building communities in Africa, has now constructed several benchmark data sets on which lots of other local language tools have been built.

    Another problem with AI is that it can produce outcomes that societies cannot tolerate, such as when the Google Photos app labelled two black people as gorillas. Now, Google has created systems that will never do that, by removing the label ‘gorilla’ from their data sets. Of course, this might not seem like an optimal solution to us in the research community, but it goes to show how intolerable that mistake was in the United States. Developers and companies put themselves, their culture and their politics in there. That’s why it is important to build AI systems locally, because we know what we are sensitive to and what makes sense to our communities.

    My AI developer colleagues and I felt that we, as Africans, needed to learn enough to develop these technologies for ourselves. So, in 2017, we formed the non-profit organization Deep Learning Indaba — indaba is the Zulu word for gathering — to strengthen machine learning and AI in Africa. At first, we just ran a summer school, to which people would come to learn about the fundamentals of machine learning. Now the organization does much more. Our goal is that Africans will be not only observers and receivers of advances in AI, but also active shapers and owners of those advances. We know our problems, and we are great at solving them.

    SEYDINA NDIAYE: Prevent AI-driven colonization in Africa

    Programme director and lecturer at the Cheikh Hamidou Kane Digital University in Dakar, Senegal.

    Seydina Ndiaye speaking on a panel during a conference about AI

    Seydina Ndiaye is concerned that Africa is seen as full of AI resources that could be exploited.Credit: NGH CORP

    For my PhD, I worked at the French National Institute of Agronomic Research in Toulouse on the use of AI for optimizing the farming of winter wheat. The positive potential of AI in Africa is enormous, particularly if analysed through the lens of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which call for simultaneous efforts to address poverty, hunger, disease and environmental degradation. The advances of AI in areas such as agriculture, health and education mean that it is already possible to apply this technology to solve many of Africa’s common problems. AI also provides a real opportunity to develop and strengthen African cultural identity in all its diversity. People in the African AI community are already seeing enthusiasm to produce African-specific content that can be shared with the rest of the world. And we’re seeing African-led AI systems for African languages.

    After my PhD, I corresponded with former undergraduate classmates and professors at the University of Senegal to promote the idea that we needed to set up local IT companies to ensure our sovereignty in this field — and not just be consumers of imported products. We created several IT education and software-development companies, including SeySoo, which provides IT services and training in Senegal, Gabon, Burkina Faso and France.

    At the beginning of my career, I saw AI only from a positive point of view. But in the past 15 years, the AI boom has been guided more by economic gain than by solving the problems facing humanity, and I’ve started to question that perspective.

    Rules to keep AI in check: nations carve different paths for tech regulation

    I am concerned that Africa is being managed, against its will, as the least rewarded link in the global chain of the AI economy by the big powers in the field. They see Africa as a source of health data that are difficult to obtain elsewhere, or of low-paid workers for sorting and labelling data. I am concerned about it being colonization all over again. When we talk about colonization in Africa, we think of gross exploitation of natural and human resources, but the most negative impacts of colonization are undoubtedly the loss of the cultural identity and of initiative, particularly in technological innovation.

    The race for AI supremacy hinges on three main pillars: computing power, talent and data. Thanks to international competition and increasing global demand, these resources are becoming scarcer. Countries and major corporations from the global north tend to view the global south as untapped territory rich in talent and data. What is in danger of happening — and this has already begun — is that the African continent will be stripped of its most experienced human resources through emigration, and Africans who are employed as data workers will be exploited with poor working conditions, low wages and little job security.

    In international research projects, we often see that African partners are used to provide data to build models, or to facilitate frameworks for large-scale experimentation. This reinforces colonialist tendencies. But if, instead, African researchers could be recognized as making a significant contribution to the AI scientific process, we could end up with innovative solutions that would be the fruit of different world perspectives. InstaDeep, a start-up with offices worldwide, created and run by Africans, has made considerable advances in AI-powered drug discovery, design and development and has subsequently been acquired by biotech firm BioNTech.

    For researchers using data collected in African countries, it is important to respect confidentiality, especially regarding personal details, such as health measures. It is also important to ensure that the Africans who contributed data for AI models get to benefit from those systems.

    If we want responsible AI for all, and by all, it is crucial to make sure that the African continent is not left behind. This is mainly the responsibility of African policymakers, who need to make AI a priority and provide the necessary resources for African researchers and entrepreneurs to innovate. But the international research community can also help, by including African expertise and experience in projects, and by carefully considering how African data are used. Global partners can help African researchers to be architects of amazing AI solutions for Africa and the world.

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  • The US Government Wants You—Yes, You—to Hunt Down Generative AI Flaws

    The US Government Wants You—Yes, You—to Hunt Down Generative AI Flaws

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    At the 2023 Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas, prominent AI tech companies partnered with algorithmic integrity and transparency groups to sic thousands of attendees on generative AI platforms and find weaknesses in these critical systems. This “red-teaming” exercise, which also had support from the US government, took a step in opening these increasingly influential yet opaque systems to scrutiny. Now, the ethical AI and algorithmic assessment nonprofit Humane Intelligence is taking this model one step further. On Wednesday, the group announced a call for participation with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, inviting any US resident to participate in the qualifying round of a nationwide red-teaming effort to evaluate AI office productivity software.

    The qualifier will take place online and is open to both developers and anyone in the general public as part of NIST’s AI challenges, known as Assessing Risks and Impacts of AI, or ARIA. Participants who pass through the qualifying round will take part in an in-person red-teaming event at the end of October at the Conference on Applied Machine Learning in Information Security (CAMLIS) in Virginia. The goal is to expand capabilities for conducting rigorous testing of the security, resilience, and ethics of generative AI technologies.

    “The average person utilizing one of these models doesn’t really have the ability to determine whether or not the model is fit for purpose,” says Theo Skeadas, CEO of the AI governance and online safety group Tech Policy Consulting, which works with Humane Intelligence. “So we want to democratize the ability to conduct evaluations and make sure everyone using these models can assess for themselves whether or not the model is meeting their needs.”

    The final event at CAMLIS will split the participants into a red team trying to attack the AI systems and a blue team working on defense. Participants will use NIST’s AI risk management framework, known as AI 600-1, as a rubric for measuring whether the red team is able to produce outcomes that violate the systems’ expected behavior.

    “NIST’s ARIA is drawing on structured user feedback to understand real-world applications of AI models,” says Humane Intelligence founder Rumman Chowdhury, who is also a contractor in NIST’s Office of Emerging Technologies and a member of the US Department of Homeland Security AI safety and security board. “The ARIA team is mostly experts on sociotechnical test and evaluation, and [is] using that background as a way of evolving the field toward rigorous scientific evaluation of generative AI.”

    Chowdhury and Skeadas say the NIST partnership is just one of a series of AI red team collaborations that Humane Intelligence will announce in the coming weeks with US government agencies, international governments, and NGOs. The effort aims to make it much more common for the companies and organizations that develop what are now black-box algorithms to offer transparency and accountability through mechanisms like “bias bounty challenges,” where individuals can be rewarded for finding problems and inequities in AI models.

    “The community should be broader than programmers,” Skeadas says. “Policymakers, journalists, civil society, and nontechnical people should all be involved in the process of testing and evaluating of these systems. And we need to make sure that less represented groups like individuals who speak minority languages or are from nonmajority cultures and perspectives are able to participate in this process.”

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  • Can floating homes make coastal communities resilient to climate risks?

    Can floating homes make coastal communities resilient to climate risks?

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    Sea levels are changing rapidly and could rise by 1 metre or more by 2100 without drastic reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions1. Low-lying coastal areas — home to nearly one billion people — are at high risk of erosion and flooding2. In July, for example, torrential rain, coupled with high tides and worsening erosion, inundated coastal areas in Lagos, flooding around 2,000 properties and displacing residents across the Nigerian metropolis3.

    For coastal communities, urban planning and smart technologies are key to climate adaptation and mitigation. Futuristic designs for flood-resilient settlements, or ‘climatopias’, are gaining popularity, especially in areas projected to be underwater in a few decades4. These large infrastructure projects are being touted by governments and developers as tools to expand the availability of housing, reduce pressures on land, enhance energy efficiency, promote eco-friendly transportation and lessen the effects of flooding. Critics view them as technological fantasies aimed at growing the value of the property market near oceans, lagoons and rivers.

    The Maldives is racing to create new land. Why are so many people concerned?

    They also note that climatopias could stifle sustainable adaptations — and we agree that this is a real concern. With the right approach, however, they can be made viable. It is crucial that governments, scientists, environmentalists, think tanks, local communities and ocean-governing agencies evaluate the challenges and benefits of these projects in the short and long term to determine their legitimacy as climate solutions.

    Here we offer six criteria by which to assess climatopias during their planning and implementation stages: design type, practicality, ecosystem effects, maladaptation risk, justice concerns and regulatory frameworks.

    Choose suitable designs

    The idea of living on water is not new. It has been traced back to around ad 700 during the Tang Dynasty in China5. On Lake Titicaca in Peru, the Indigenous Uros People have long settled on artificial islands made from roots and reeds6. Homes and villages on stilts are widespread, from Ha Long Bay in Vietnam to Chong Kneas in Cambodia, Ganvie in Benin7 and Makoko in Nigeria8. Amsterdam, Jakarta, Mexico City and Seattle in Washington have long embraced houseboats and floating markets.

    Unlike the infrastructure in such traditional communities, climatopias are designed to be high-tech cities equipped with solar panels for generating electricity, deep-sea cooling systems, health-care centres, schools, recreational areas and businesses9. There are three major ways in which developers are converting ocean and near-shore areas into habitable spaces.

    An artist's impression of The Maldives Floating City construction showing brigh mult-coloured buildings around a marina in the middle of the ocean

    An artist’s impression of a floating city that is being built in the Maldives.Credit: Waterstudio – Dutch Docklands Maldives

    Reclaimed land. These structures involve depositing vast amounts of dredged sand, clay, cement or rock into the ocean to make new land that is suitable for construction. Coastal land has been reclaimed in around 50 countries10. Examples include Ocean Flower Island near Danzhou, China; Pearl Island in Doha11; Oxagon city in Neom, Saudi Arabia; and Eko Atlantic in Lagos. These climatopias have iconic architectures that are designed to attract attention and billions of dollars in transnational investment. Some offer tax incentives and relaxed regulations. Criticisms include their impacts on the environment and on nearby communities.

    Amphibious houses. These dwellings are anchored to the ground and buoyed by water (see ‘Go with the flow’). This makes them suitable for construction on shorelines, rivers, floodplains and city harbours or other areas with water levels that rise and fall slowly and predictably12. Europe hosts many amphibious communities12,13 — an example is the IJburg neighbourhood of Amsterdam, which is built on artificial islands and is home to around 45,000 people. Scaling up such projects, however, might encourage people to move into high-flood-risk zones when relocation elsewhere could be safer.

    Go with the flow. A schematic showing an amphibious house during dry season and then during flood season where the barrels under the house raise the raft along a structure it's attached to, keeping the house out of the flood water.

    Source: Adapted from H. Ameh et al. Sustainability 16, 1069 (2024).

    Floating cities. These watertight, prefabricated structures are situated permanently on the ocean or in lagoons through interlocking modular systems and artificial reefs. The United Nations is urging collaboration between governments, the public and the private sector to advance such cities in at-risk places. For instance, the Maldives Floating City is designed to house 20,000 residents, in units that cost around US$250,000 each, and the Panama floating pods — small structures that each house two people — cost between $295,000 and $1.5 million. Although the first pod sank rapidly during its unveiling, the Panama project has been reconstructed and is now available to investors, visitors and buyers. The long-term sustainability of floating cities and their capacity to withstand major storms is unclear, however.

    Assure practicality

    Planners, engineers and environmental specialists must assess the construction materials, structural integrity, safety, cost, market demand and financial sustainability of climatopia projects.

    Rewilding the planet: how seven artificial islands could help a dying Dutch lake

    Amphibious climatopias are relatively cheap. Their proximity to land allows for easy access to electricity, fresh water and waste disposal, which can reduce maintenance costs12. Reclaimed islands, which demand extensive engineering work and lengthy construction times, are the costliest option9. The Ocean Flower Island reclamation project, completed in 2020, took 12 years to build and cost $25 billion. Floating cities need less upfront investment — the one in the Maldives is expected to cost $1 billion, for example — but their maintenance costs can be relatively high, and construction materials are prone to corrosion and damage from tidal waves.

    All climatopias are vulnerable to extreme weather — from storms and tsunamis to hurricane-induced flooding — with significant risks of damage and loss of life. To address these problems, governments, planners, insurance companies and affected communities must work together to set industry standards as well as design early-warning systems and evacuation procedures.

    An artist's impression of a floating city made up of interlinked hexagonal islands with a ring of buildings on each

    Floating cities are designed to rise with tides and floods.Credit: Ian Burr, Emory Center for Digital Scholarship

    Safeguard ecosystems

    Construction of reclaimed islands can cause and exacerbate ocean acidification and loss of biodiversity and coral reefs. Dredging of the sea bed degrades marine environments and pollutes waters, potentially releasing long-buried toxic compounds14,15.

    Land reclamation can deplete natural buffers, such as mangroves and wetlands10, that act as natural carbon sinks and protect against storm surges, waves, erosion and floods16. Sea walls or revetments can alleviate some of the risks, but do not prevent erosion or subsidence16. They can also damage natural ecosystems, while creating a false sense of security that discourages long-term sustainable nature-based solutions and planning for relocation9,16.

    Amphibious and floating cities can alter local patterns of wind, evaporation, sunlight and heat. Increased noise and pollution from such projects can negatively affect fish, crustaceans, molluscs and plant life13. For example, although amphibious houses such as those in Harnaschpolder and IJburg in the Netherlands have not affected water quality, they have contributed to urbanization, generated noise and disturbed aquatic ecosystems13. To reduce the impact on marine life, projects in the Maldives and OCEANIX Busan in South Korea propose to use an artificial reef material known as biorock that supports aquatic organisms.

    Aerial view of residential buildings and yachts on the artificial island, Eden Island in Mahe, Seychelles

    Like many reclaimed lands, Eden Island in the Seychelles hosts luxury properties.Credit: David South/Alamy

    To mitigate other environmental impacts, scientists, local communities, residents and non-governmental organizations must demand that urban planners and developers make rigorous and independent environmental and socio-economic assessments. They should insist on transparency in the dissemination of findings. Academics, environmental watchdogs and the media can also improve public awareness about a project’s merits and demerits.

    Beyond public scrutiny, government and independent agencies must track and monitor the safety of these projects and their compliance with environmentally sustainable standards. This should include tracking construction materials from source to site, mandating the use of reused or recycled materials, promoting periodic risk assessments and implementing protective measures to safeguard against ecosystem impacts.

    Alleviate maladaptation

    Bringing people and economic activity that would have otherwise been in rural or suburban locations to a coastal area accelerates greenhouse-gas emissions and environmental degradation, even if energy-efficient systems are used. For example, Eko Atlantic was built on millions of cubic metres of dredged sand and had thousands of tonnes of boulders and stones transported to the project site — processes that release carbon9. Furthermore, paving over natural surfaces can exacerbate erosion and coastal flooding, worsening communities’ existing vulnerabilities.

    Aerial view of floating structures that make up Bandar Seri Begawan Floating Village, clustered in the water around forested hills in Brunei

    Brunei’s capital city, Bandar Seri Begawan, has long had an aquatic district.Credit: David Kirkland/Design Pics Editorial/Universal Images Group/Getty

    Floating cities might need extra energy to maintain infrastructure for water desalination and waste treatment. And those facilities can fail. Insurance and repair costs would place a financial burden on residents and governments, potentially diverting resources from other adaptation measures. To address these pitfalls, governments must update local adaptation plans. They must also invest in social services and crucial infrastructure, especially in low-income areas that are experiencing extreme and frequent flooding.

    Prioritize equity and justice

    Climatopias often cater to wealthy people. For example, an average unit in Ocean Flower Island reportedly cost $3,100 per square metre in 2019; homes in the Maldives Floating City are expected to start at $250,000. These costs are prohibitively high for most local populations.

    Furthermore, the new land and properties are usually privately owned. Rights can be curtailed for the public to access lands and waters that might have been used previously for activities such as fishing or recreation. This can lead to a new form of ocean and land colonialism that perpetuates socio-economic inequalities and increases capital accumulation by powerful groups.

    A street made up of floating houses surrounded by water on Lake Union in Seattle

    Some residents of Seattle, Washington, have settled in houses built on its lake.Credit: Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket/Getty

    For example, the building of Eko Atlantic has coincided with severe floods. Some local residents have said they attribute these to the land reclamation activities9. As a result of the flooding, many low-income communities faced losses of lives, homes and livelihoods, or had to move away, while property prices soared in the area. Higher-income communities were mainly in areas that were protected by a sea wall9. The Neom mega-city project in Saudi Arabia has also come under criticism, including from UN experts.

    Governments need to revisit ocean and land rights. Economic growth must not be prioritized at the expense of social justice or cultural identity. Collaborative governance frameworks — in which local communities, environmental justice advocates and concerned stakeholders can participate in decision-making with developers and government agencies — must be adopted to promote fair and just planning processes and outcomes.

    Tighten regulations

    Climatopias are often built in ecologically fragile areas with few regulations. In the United States, for example, guidance on the construction and maintenance of floating homes exists, but is often not legally binding12.

    Space@Sea, a multidisciplinary group consisting of 17 European partners, offers technical guidelines that are applicable to floating cities. These guidelines vary depending on legal status. In the Netherlands, where amphibious communities are well established, technical manuals are available to industry professionals working on floating structures12. And amphibious houses often need to be registered both as ships under maritime law and as homes under property law17. The latter is essential for securing home addresses and insurance.

    Floating climatopias situated farther out from the shoreline can have ambiguous legal status, because national regulations do not extend to the high seas17. Multilateral treaties, such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea and the Convention on Biological Diversity, offer robust recommendations on sustainable development, marine-environment protection, pollution reduction and the equitable use of marine resources. However, these frameworks have not been ratified by all countries and the laws do not cover floating cities, which are relatively new structures on the ocean. Although the International Maritime Organization has no enforcement power, states comply with the agency’s proposed regulations for their mutual benefit. Similar approaches and regulatory regimes will be required as human habitation expands on the sea.

    Modern houses in the Ijburg neighbourhood in Amsterdam-Oost appear to float on the water

    Amphibious houses are widespread in the Netherlands.Credit: Milos Ruzicka/Alamy

    The UN must consider reconstituting the mandate of the International Maritime Organization to include floating cities or set up an international agency that would develop clear guidelines and standards for establishing floating climatopias. This agency would be geographically representative and include expertise from diverse disciplines and communities.

    Governments must consider environmental, social and intergenerational justice concerns, and protect not just affected communities and ecosystems, but also future generations. Where damages are inevitable, reparation funds for biodiversity and ecosystem restoration should be generated by taxing developers, tourists and investors who benefit from these projects.

    Sustainable small-scale fisheries can help people and the planet

    Where regulations are lacking, governments must establish zoning laws, building codes and safety protocols, and update them every four years to reflect the latest scientific projections on sea-level rise and flood risks. Residents will also benefit from real-time data monitoring, green building certifications and disaster-risk mitigation plans.

    Developers should be mandated to include affordable housing for low-income groups, such as workers and teachers, displaced residents and fishing communities who opt for waterfront living.

    No single climate-adaptation strategy will work for all communities. An adaptive coastal future requires flexibility and openness. Floating cities or amphibious houses could be part of climate adaptation for some riverine areas and archipelagos; Indigenous communities might make use of them to stop their heritage, identity and islands from vanishing. Other communities might prefer to retreat from the coast.

    Ultimately, climatopias can become technical solutions to a complex global challenge only if stricter planning processes, impact assessments, ecosystem protection and justice for communities are at the heart of any coastal future.

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  • How I’m looking to medicine’s past to heal hurt and support peace in the Middle East

    How I’m looking to medicine’s past to heal hurt and support peace in the Middle East

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    This month, I am in Amman, Jordan, teaching on the annual Palestine Social Medicine Course. This course, now in its second year, aims to educate educators, public-health workers, physicians and medical students about the limitations of the biological model of medicine in settings of fragmentation, violence and dispossession. It examines the effects of conflicts and violence on public health and human rights, emphasizing the need for resilience and commitment to these values in the face of adversity.

    The course is organized by the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, a partnership between the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University in the West Bank. Last year, it was taught in Birzeit. It was moved to Amman this year because of escalating violence and restrictions imposed by the Israeli military and settlers in the West Bank.

    I’m a Palestinian scientist building a more inclusive future

    Since violence escalated on 7 October 2023, many scientific and medical gatherings in the Middle East have been postponed or cancelled. Travel to the region is difficult, because many airlines have stopped flying there. Yet the organizers felt strongly that it was important to keep the course running, because the exchanges it enables are crucial. They provide students with access to cutting-edge knowledge and methods that help to prepare them to contribute to science and medicine — to the benefit of society.

    The war in Gaza is harming thousands of people now, but will have ripple effects on all nations for decades, if not centuries, to come. Violence and war anywhere harm us all — not just in terms of people killed and places destroyed, but in the loss of capacity for exploring solutions to problems that plague humanity. People who are having to fight or run for their lives, or who spend their time finding shelter or trying to advocate for fundamental human rights and dignity, do not have time for wider problem-solving.

    Scientists, physicians and health-care providers usually address the ills of the patient or population in front of us. Social medicine is occupied with a larger challenge: healing the hurts of a region or population with a long history of pain. This means identifying the social determinants of health that affect the population — including, for example, sexism, racism, economic inequality and historical, multigenerational traumas — and seeking to heal the people living under their shadow.

    The Taliban ‘took my life’ — scientists who fled takeover speak out

    Recent history could easily make us throw up our hands in despair. In the Middle East, especially, peace seems so far away. Progress on so many fronts — social, scientific, diplomatic — seems to be retreating while exposure to horrifying trauma increases daily.

    Yet the region has a rich history of medical and scientific advancements. Crucial contributions came from ancient civilizations such as the Persian Empire, Mesopotamia and Egypt, culminating in the Islamic Golden Age from the eighth to the thirteenth century. Philosopher-scientists such as Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (often known in the West as Razi or Rhazes), al-Zahrawi (Abulcasis) and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) shaped science and medicine in the Islamic world and Europe in ways that lasted for centuries.

    Years of experience in the Middle East and North Africa have shown me that scientific training and other events held in the region, rather than in Europe or the United States, can provide a valuable historical perspective and cultural context while fostering global collaboration.

    For example, hosting a scientific symposium in Tehran, despite geopolitical pressures against it — as I did in 2012 — exposed participants to contemporary Iranian advances in medical research, such as work in stem-cell research and medical nanotechnology, which have since gained international recognition.

    Tracking women’s mental health amid trauma in Yemen

    By connecting international scholars with local practitioners, the Palestine Social Medicine Course highlights the specific health challenges faced by Palestinians, while creating a platform for cross-cultural dialogue and knowledge exchange.

    Immersing ourselves in the settings where historical advances in science and medicine were made provides deeper insights into how societal values and needs have shaped scientific discoveries and medical practices. Studying pioneers such as Ibn Sina and al-Rāzī can inspire current and future practitioners to innovate and push the boundaries of their fields. And fostering global collaborations and building connections with scholars and institutions in the Middle East enriches the collective understanding and application of medical and scientific knowledge.

    We scientists and medical professionals need to do what we can to change the sad trajectory of violence. Those of us who want peace, understanding and progress towards humanity’s well-being must dig in and push for that vision.

    During what is sometimes called the Dark Ages in Europe, scientific and medical innovations from the Middle East and North Africa shone a guiding light to bring humanity a reasoned approach to health and problem-solving. Perhaps looking through the lens of history can inspire us to find new solutions to address contemporary challenges, in this region and worldwide.

    The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of her institution.

    Competing Interests

    The author declares no competing interests.

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  • biologist who shaped genetic engineering and fought discrimination

    biologist who shaped genetic engineering and fought discrimination

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    Maxine Frank Singer in the laboratory holding vials.

    Credit: National Institutes of Health

    The US molecular biologist Maxine Singer made discoveries about the role of enzymes in assembling genetic material. Work in the same field led to the first experiments in genetic engineering (or recombinant DNA) — a topic that sparked debate among scientists and the public alike. She fully engaged with these concerns and became a key advocate for dialogue between scientists and society. In later life, as an influential scientific administrator, she championed the cause of marginalized people in science and founded innovative programmes to support science teaching in schools. She has died aged 93.

    In 1972, Paul Berg, who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, successfully inserted DNA from a monkey virus into the genome of the bacterium Escherichia coli, in the first such genetic-recombination experiment. In 1974, Berg and others sent a letter to several journals, including Nature, calling for a voluntary moratorium on recombinant-DNA research — to quell fears of genetically modified organisms escaping and spreading disease — and a scientific conference to address potential hazards. Singer co-organized the 1975 conference at Asilomar, California, at which scientists, lawyers and other interested parties thrashed out a way forward, and she co-authored its report (see Nature 255, 442–444; 1975).

    It’s time to admit that genes are not the blueprint for life

    At the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), Singer helped to draw up guidelines on the safety and use of genetically modified organisms in the laboratory. She helped to head off attempts to ban recombinant-DNA research, giving media interviews and testifying to the US Congress. She and a colleague, co-wrote the guidelines’ environmental-impact statement, judging that it would be quicker and less expensive to write it themselves than to teach molecular biology to environmental consultants. “I think we succeeded in what we were trying to do,” she later said, “which was to demystify things and have reasonable regulations but not legislation”.

    Born Maxine Frank in New York City, Singer grew up in Brooklyn and attended local public schools, where a teacher encouraged her love of chemistry. She went to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, for a PhD in protein chemistry. It was there that she first learnt of exciting developments in nucleic acids — including work by geneticist James Watson, biophysicist Francis Crick and chemist Rosalind Franklin on the double helical structure of DNA.

    In 1956, she moved to the biochemistry lab at what is now the US National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. There, she explored the role of enzymes in forming artificial nucleic acid polymers (such as UUU). These studies contributed to the work of geneticist Marshall Nirenberg and others that cracked the genetic code by working out how the sequence of bases in nucleic acids corresponded to the sequence of amino acids in a protein.

    She found the research environment at the NIH welcoming and, unlike colleagues at universities, initially experienced little prejudice on the grounds of her gender. She recalled that, between 1959 and 1964, she was “essentially pregnant all the time” (she had four children), but no one objected. It was only when she had her own independent group at the NIH that she realized that postdoctoral researchers, of all genders, were reluctant to work for a woman. After that, Singer did all she could to reduce the numerous barriers facing women in scientific careers.

    In 1971, she went on a year’s sabbatical to the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, to learn about monkey tumour viruses and animal cell culture, having previously worked with bacterial nucleic acids. She began using restriction endonuclease enzymes to incorporate viruses into animal genomes, which put her at the centre of the debate on recombinant DNA. Her informed perspective, combined with her commitment to science as a public good, made her a trusted negotiator, and she was not afraid to cross swords publicly with powerful figures such as Watson, who called for an end to the moratorium within six months of having voted for its introduction.

    Guidelines on lab-grown embryo models are strong enough to meet ethical standards — and will build trust in science

    In 1975, she moved to the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, setting up its first nucleic-acid biochemistry section and later heading its biochemistry lab. There, she discovered that LINE-1, a group of DNA sequences, is a transposon, or jumping gene, that can move around the chromosome and cause mutations.

    Frustrated with increasing levels of bureaucracy at the NIH, in 1988 she became president of what is now Carnegie Science in Washington DC, keeping her NCI lab going for the first ten years of her term. She threw herself into initiatives to improve resources for pupils and science teachers in public schools, bring science to the public through lectures and hands-on activities and promote the participation of marginalized groups, including women of any ethnicity, in science. She also steered through the construction of telescopes at Carnegie’s astrophysics observatory at Las Campanas in Chile, and established a research department in global ecology.

    Singer retired from Carnegie in 2002, but continued to work on outreach programmes in Washington DC. In 2003, with Paul Berg, she co-authored a biography of the geneticist George Beadle, who discovered the connection between genes and proteins. Among many other honours, she received the National Medal of Science from then-US president George H. W. Bush in 1992.

    “Science is not an inhuman or superhuman activity,” Singer told the journalist Bill Moyers on a television programme in 1998. “It’s something that humans invented, and it speaks to one of our great needs — to understand the world around us.”

    Competing Interests

    The author declares no competing interests.

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  • A controversial Chinese CRISPR scientist is still hopeful about embryo gene-editing. Here’s why.

    A controversial Chinese CRISPR scientist is still hopeful about embryo gene-editing. Here’s why.

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    Last Thursday, JK, who was released from prison in 2022, sat down with Antonio and Mat Honan, our editor in chief, for a live broadcast conversation on the experiment, his current situation, and his plans for the future.

    If you subscribe to MIT Technology Review, you can watch a recording of the conversation or read the transcript here. But if you don’t yet subscribe (and do consider it—I’m biased, but it’s worth it), allow me to recap some of the highlights of what JK shared.

    His life has been eventful since he came out of prison. JK sought to live in Hong Kong but was rejected by its government; he publicly declared he would set up a nonprofit lab in Beijing, but that hasn’t happened yet; he was hired to lead a genetic-medicine research institution at Wuchang University of Technology, a private university in Wuhan, but he seems to have been let go again. Now, according to Stat News, he has relocated to Hainan, China’s southernmost island province, and started a lab there.

    During the MIT Technology Review conversation, JK confirmed that he’s currently in Hainan and working on using gene-editing technology to cure genetic diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). 

    He’s currently funded by private donations from Chinese and American companies, although he refused to name them. Some have even offered to pay him to travel to obscure countries with lax regulations to continue his previous work, but he turned them down. He would much prefer to return to academia to do research, JK said, but he can still conduct scientific research at a private company. 

    For now, he’s planning to experiment only on mice, monkeys, and nonviable human embryos, JK said.

    His experiment in 2018 inspired China to come out with regulations that explicitly forbid gene editing for reproductive uses. Today, implanting an edited embryo into a human is a crime subject to up to seven years in prison. JK repeatedly said all his current work will “comply with all the laws, regulations, and international ethics” but shied away from answering a question on what he thinks regulation around gene editing should look like.

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  • US physics community is not done working on trust

    US physics community is not done working on trust

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    Alas, a pattern of similar behavior has been known for at least two decades. The history of such deceptions led the American Physical Society (APS) to study occurrences of fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and harassment, and to create structures to address the issue. The APS work helped solidify community standards, but ethical violations are still a critical problem. 

    Back in 2003, in response to two high-profile cases of premeditated fraud in physics, one of them remarkably similar to the cases being discussed now, the APS created a Task Force on Ethics. It conducted surveys to learn about the kind of ethics training physics researchers receive, and to determine the community’s awareness of a variety of ethics issues. The most compelling responses came from a survey of APS “junior members” (those who had earned their PhD in the previous three years). Approximately 50% of these members responded, illustrating tremendous concern about a number of ethics violations they had either observed or been forced to participate in. A 2004 Physics Today article that presented the survey data showed the types of ethics violations reported, including instances of data fabrication, fraud, and plagiarism (the federal definition of research misconduct). It also brought to light serious accusations of bullying and sexual harassment. The survey data revealed that ethics education was casual at best. 

    Following the publication of the survey results and many discussions within the physics community, the APS issued an ethics statement focused on respectful treatment of subordinates. It also charged a task force with improving resources for ethics education, resulting in a collection of physics-centric case studies to facilitate training and discussion on ethical matters. And together with the scientific community, the APS’s journals established an explicit focus on publication ethics. 

    In 2018 the APS updated and consolidated its ethics statements and expanded the scope of ethical misbehaviors to include harassment, sexual misconduct, conflicts of commitment, and misuse of public funds. The resulting Ethics Guidelines were adopted by the APS Council in 2019, and at the same time a standing Ethics Committee was established to monitor ethics issues in the physics community. Continuing its focus on education, the APS collaborated with the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) to develop additional materials. The online guide Effective Practices for Physics Programs (known as EP3) is an excellent resource, designed to facilitate efforts by departments and other groups to educate our community through discussions. We particularly recommend the chapter titled “Guide to Ethics.” The APS has joined the Committee on Publication Ethics and the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers to combat the threat posed by paper mills. 

    What sort of impact have these actions had? In 2020, the APS Ethics Committee, in partnership with the Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics, conducted two additional surveys, described in 2023 and 2024 articles in Physics Today. One targeted early-career members (those who had earned their PhD within the previous five years) and graduate students for comparison to the 2004 survey results, and the other focused on physics department chairs in the US. The surveys showed that ethics education in physics departments had improved in the intervening 15 years, but that bullying and sexual harassment were still problems for a number of members. Importantly, most cases of ethical violations experienced or observed by this group go unreported, for fear of inaction or reprisals. When the results of the two surveys were compared, clear differences emerged between the perspectives of department chairs and those of students and postdocs on the extent of ethical violations and the best way to deliver ethics training.

    These surveys showed that improved education alone is not enough to sustain a culture of ethics in physics. They uncovered suggestive patterns to explain why some complaints about ethical violations are reported and resolved but most are not. The main reason young scientists keep quiet about fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or harassment is that they fear complaints will destroy their careers while the perpetrators go untouched. In cases that were resolved, there were people that those with complaints trusted well enough to share their concerns, and those people in turn had enough power and connections to follow through and find a resolution. We call this a trust network. Key figures in a trust network could be an associate chair, an ombudsperson, or a faculty member. These people take it on themselves to listen to concerns, whoever raises them, and bring them to the institution’s attention. Indeed, similar networks would be highly valuable in any institution that employs professional scientists for research and development, since unethical behavior can happen anywhere. How to create and nurture such networks is a matter that needs more attention. 

    Just as reviewers and journal editors need to be able to trust that data in a paper are not fabricated or falsified, all participants in the scientific enterprise need to be able to trust that their institutions fully support them as ethical people. Ranga Dias’s graduate students had worries about data quality early on but were caught in a power dynamic. Problems might have been recognized earlier if the students had been able to be fully engaged in the institutional response.

    Fostering trust networks and continuing to use education to build an understanding of all the nuances involved in ethical decision-making are powerful tools to reinforce ethical behavior. We need to ingrain them as deeply as technical expertise.

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