European perch/Wikimedia Commons

Scientists Fredrik Jutfelt and Josefin Sundin, discovered the hard way the power of the false narrative. False narratives once established have a bad habit of taking on a life of their own. Efforts to change them invariably run up against opposition from those who, for lack of a better term, don’t want to “rock the boat.”

In the best case, the lies that survive are harmless. In the worse case, they can create problems far bigger than “fake news.” All of which is why the world needs people like Jutfelt and Sundin willing to challenge ideas that play to what people might want to believe.

About nine months ago, the duo seriously rocked the scientific boat by questioning a paper that claimed to show microplastics – tiny particles of plastic – could harm fish larvae. The paper had just broken new ground in environmental science.

It vaulted researcher Oona Lönnstedt onto a global stage in a world where everyone is a little edgy, and rightfully so, about the damage our ever-accelerating technological advances can or could do to the natural order.

“Bellies full of microplastic rob baby fish of their basic instincts,” PBS.org, the website of U.S. national public radio headlined in reporting on her research on June 6, 2016. The story below the headline started this way:

“When exposed to microplastics, baby fish stop eating natural food and prefer consuming the pollutant, according to a report from ecologists at Uppsala University in Sweden. The dietary switch derails the basic instincts of the fish, the researchers found, elevating the likelihood of being caught by predators. The findings may explain why populations of European perch  — the main species analyzed in the study — have declined in the Baltic Sea.”

The PBS report was constrained compared to that in the Washington Post, where Chelsea Harvey led her story with the claim that “yet another study is adding to scientists’ growing suspicions that tiny bits of plastic in the ocean are causing big environmental problems.”

The only other study Harvey cited was one that documented that a lot of plastic makes it into the ocean. That is not a good thing. Some of that plastic, as Harvey accurately noted “tends to break down over time into smaller and smaller parts. These tiny microplastics are believed to be especially dangerous for marine life because they’re so easy to ingest. They’ve been found in the bodies of all sorts of animals, from filter feeders like clams and mussels to small fish and birds.

“The problem is that scientists are still largely in the dark about how these microplastics are affecting the animals that eat them and how these effects might scale up and impact whole populations.”

Scientists were so in the dark they had yet to form any “growing suspicions.” They only had questions about possibilities. Lönnstedt’s study appeared to offer the first real evidence there were good reasons to be suspicious that microplastics could be causing serious environmental problems.

Other suspicions

But when  Jutfelt and Sundin read the paper, they immediately saw what appeared to them a problem – a very simple and real problem.

Jutfelt, an associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and Sundin, a post-doctoral candidate at Sweden’s Uppsala University, had been at the Uppsala-managed Ar Research Station on Gotland Island, when Lönnstedt claimed to have carried out her experiments on perch.

And they hadn’t witnessed anything to indicate Lönnstedt had done the research she claimed to have done there. Believing Lönnstedt might have concocted data, the duo consulted with scientists in Canada, Switzerland and Australia who had their own questions about the research reported in the paper.

Then, they blew the whistle.

Jutfelt and Sunind “wrote UU that they had ‘a strong suspicion of research misconduct’ and asked for an investigation,” ScienceMag. org reported on Dec. 1 of last year.

As is too often the case,  the whistleblower move did not go well for the whistleblowers.

“A three-member expert panel at UU finished a preliminary investigation that cleared the accused (Lönnstedt) of misconduct and recommended against a full investigation,” Science reported. “The panel even berated Sundin and Jutfelt for blowing the whistle; most of their objections ‘come within the ambit of normal scholarly discussion, which could have been conducted directly with the authors of the article,'” the  panel concluded.

This is an all-too-predictable response to those who challenge the narrative.

Hard heads

But Jutfelt and Sundin did not let go. The took their concerns to Sweden’s Central Ethical Review Board, which began its own investigation. The expert group there issued its opinion about a week ago.

The group concluded that Lönnstedt and co-author Peter Eklöv committed “scientific dishonesty” and recommended that “Science,” the journal which first reported the study retract it, ScienceMag.org reported.

The ethics board, wrote ScienceMag reporter Martin Enserink, concluded that “although Lönnstedt was responsible for carrying out the experiments at Ar – Eklöv didn’t visit the station – the report does not absolve him, noting that ‘in his role as a senior researcher, [he] bore significant responsibility for what transpired.’

“The panel also has some stern words for ‘Science’. The journal was ‘deficient’ in enforcing its open data policy, the authors say. They add that even if the research had been conducted as described, it would not have proved anything. The microplastics supposedly used in the study were mixed with detergents, according to the report, and the authors didn’t say they had removed these detergents. They, and not the plastic beads, could have caused the effects on fish larvae.”

The issue of the damage, if any, that microplastics do to fish is now back in the unknown.

You would not know it by reading PBS. The Washington Post, to that website’s credit, now has an “editor’s note” on its original story stating that “after a study on microplastics in marine life was published in June, 2016, whistleblowers came forward with suspicions about it. An investigation by an outside review board found the authors “guilty of scientific dishonesty” and Science retracted the study on May 3, 2017, citing the authors’ inability to produce their data and a “widespread lack of clarity concerning how the experiments were conducted.” The Washington Post reported on the research when it was published, but no longer stands by the story below.” 

Sometimes the false narratives in science get corrected if someone is brave enough to challenge bad research as Jutfelt and Sundin did. Sadly this rarely happens in journalism. You can still go to the Washington Post and find this: “Moose gives birth in Alaska store parking lot.”

Funny false

There is, unfortunately, more evidence to support the claims made by Lönnstedt in her now discredited paper than there is evidence to support the moose story. The evidence on the latter all runs to the contrary. No one was ever found who saw the calf born in the parking lot. At least one person was found who saw the cow and the calf wander into the parking lot from elsewhere.

Moose born in Lowe’s parking lot is an Anchorage urban myth, but the narrative surrounding the birth remains real. If you have any doubt, Google the words “Lowe’s parking lot moose.”

What you will get is a long list of stories from supposedly reputable news organizations – CNN, NBC News, Fox News, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and more. It would all be funny if dishonesty were funny.