1. How do you think LaCour was able to publish falsified data in such a prestigious journal as Science?
  2. Why didn’t the peer review system identify the problems?
  3. This case features a long-distance collaboration between a faculty member and a graduate student. What issues does the case raise about collaborating with others?
  4. What are the responsibilities of individuals who co-author papers? What can or should a student (graduate or undergraduate) do when co-author is suspected of falsifying data?

GitHub could have been used to create a repo in which LaCour uploaded his data, which would then have allowed Green to review it as it was uploaded rather than at the end. Also, LaCour would not have been able to complete delete the raw data if Green forked the main repo and kept it updated. The peer reviewers could be linked to the GitHub so they could review all of the data that had been uploaded. GitHub would definitely have helped the long-distance collaboration, because it would allow Green to be updated without having to Skype, or email data. It also would have allowed Green to have his own set of the data if he wanted to recreate LaCour’s experiment. Being able to review the data as it was uploaded would have allowed Green to keep a closer eye on LaCour and maybe he would have caught the “mistakes” earlier and he could have prevented the data from being published.

GitHub allows people to collaborate across distances and at separate times. People can update when they can (does not need to be done at a specific time), any data pushed to the main repo can be easily shared between collaborators. Comments can be made on others work, or changes can be requested. GitHub eliminates the need to email huge files. GitHub provides access control, bug tracking, as well as other collaboration features. A collaborator makes a repository which can be forked by anyone, someone can make changes to their fork and request that their changes be added to the main repository via a pull request. Forked versions of the repository can be updated with the new changes by comparing the two branches.