Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist by training, has become one of the world’s most influential science detectives. An authority on scientific image analysis who’s been profiled in The New Yorker for her unique ability to spot duplicated or doctored photographs, she appeared frequently in the news over the past year as one of the experts who raised research misconduct concerns that led to an investigation into, and the eventual departure of, former Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne.
Bik first became interested in plagiarism as a hobby while working as a researcher at Stanford University in 2013. She later began specializing in image duplication specifically, which she believes is a more serious problem for science as a whole.