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Recommended Reading
Henderson, Lillian C., Fabian Wittmers, Craig A. Carlson, Alexandra Z. Worden, and Hilary G. Close (2024). “Variable Carbon Isotope Fractionation of Photosynthetic Communities over Depth in an Open-Ocean Euphotic Zone.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121 (10): e2304613121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2304613121.
Wittmers, Fabian, Jacqueline Comstock, Camille Poirier, et al. (2024). “Non-photosynthetic Lineages Sibling to Cyanobacteria Associate with Eukaryotes in the Open Ocean.” Current Biology 34 (22): R1133–R1134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.09.009.
Wittmers, Fabian, Camille Poirier, Charles Bachy, et al. (2025). “Symbionts of Predatory Protists are Widespread in the Oceans and Related to Animal Pathogens.” Cell Host & Microbe 33 (2): 182–199.e7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2025.01.009.
© privat
2026/2027
Fabian Wittmers, Dr. rer. nat.
Postdoctoral Scholar
Oregon State University, Corvallis
from November 2026 to January 2027
Born in 1996 in Wickede (Ruhr), Germany
B.Sc. in Biology, RWTH Aachen University, M.Sc. in Biological Oceanography and Dr. rer. nat. in Biological Oceanography, Kiel University (CAU)/GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
Fellowship
College for Life Sciences
Arbeitsvorhaben
Impact of Delayed Research-Ethics Investigations and Retractions on Manifestation of Erroneous Findings in the Scientific Literature
The number of scientific articles published annually has risen near-exponentially since 2000. A successful career as a scientist is increasingly tied to the number of articles a researcher publishes (“publish or perish”). This incentivizes various problematic behaviors, ranging from less diligence to speed up publications to outright data manipulation and research misconduct. When concerns are brought to a publisher by a third party regarding the integrity of an article, journals assess these concerns. Given the increasing volume of research integrity cases, partially caused by a boom in AI generated articles, research-integrity teams face tremendous backlogs. While the number of published articles increased rapidly in recent years, these teams are small and publishing companies lag behind in allocating resources to these efforts. Publishers and journals are not required to address concerns about articles in any set timeframe and face no consequences for delays in this process. Little data exists on how long these investigations take from the moment of notification by a third party. Journals do not disclose when they were informed of the concerns when correcting or retracting an article. Critically, during the period between when a complaint is filed and a study is addressed/withdrawn, its (erroneous) conclusions proliferate throughout the scientific literature. Today’s scientific progress stands on prior findings and relies on their accuracy. My project focuses on assessing the impact this delay has on the proliferation of the erroneous findings.Recommended Reading
Henderson, Lillian C., Fabian Wittmers, Craig A. Carlson, Alexandra Z. Worden, and Hilary G. Close (2024). “Variable Carbon Isotope Fractionation of Photosynthetic Communities over Depth in an Open-Ocean Euphotic Zone.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121 (10): e2304613121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2304613121.
Wittmers, Fabian, Jacqueline Comstock, Camille Poirier, et al. (2024). “Non-photosynthetic Lineages Sibling to Cyanobacteria Associate with Eukaryotes in the Open Ocean.” Current Biology 34 (22): R1133–R1134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.09.009.
Wittmers, Fabian, Camille Poirier, Charles Bachy, et al. (2025). “Symbionts of Predatory Protists are Widespread in the Oceans and Related to Animal Pathogens.” Cell Host & Microbe 33 (2): 182–199.e7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2025.01.009.