EPN Campus Colloquia | Questionning the reproducibility and integrity of scientific publications
From 11/09/2026 to 05/08/2026ESRF Auditorium
Presented by RAPHAËL LEVY (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord and Université Paris Cité, INSERM)
Summary
The belief that science is self-correcting is consubstantial to the scientific enterprise. Yet, the careful reader of the scientific literature is confronted to a high proportion of uncorrected misconceptions, errors and fraud. Thus, the ERC Synergy project NanoBubbles asks the question of how, when and why does science fails to correct itself.
In the context of this project, the NanoBubbles Reproducibility Initiative investigates the robustness of highly cited articles in nanobioscience. It starts from a paradox: hundreds of articles report the use of nanoparticles as efficient intracellular sensors of various cytosolic target (ions, mRNAs, etc). Yet, nanoparticles enter cells by endocytosis, a process that results in their confinement within intracellular vesicles, the endosomes, where they do not have access to the targets they are supposed to detect. As an attempt to solve that paradox, the replication initiative focuses on the most cited articles reporting intracellular sensing with nanoparticle probes.
The presentation will introduce the NanoBubbles replication initiative [1], the open science approach that was adopted, the results and conclusions of the first replication [2] and present an open call [3] for contributions to this replication effort. The presentation will conclude with a general discussion on the (lack of?) reliability of the scientific literature and of the various approaches that could be used to improve it.
Acknowledgements
The NanoBubbles project is supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme – Grant agreement number ID:951393
References
[1] Said, M., Gharib, M., & Lévy, R. (2026) Towards More Robust Nanobioscience: Launching the NanoBubbles Replication Initiative, Angew. Chemie Intern Edition; DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.202511631/
[2] Gharib, M., Said, M., Pons, T., Hondow, N., Zrig, S., & Lévy, R. (2025). Failed, Aborted Replication of “Carbon-Dot-Based Dual-Emission Nanohybrid Produces a Ratiometric Fluorescent Sensor for In Vivo Imaging of Cellular Copper Ions”. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/2x3hv_v2
[3] Call for participation: Independent Replication of Carbon Quantum Dots Fluorescence and Cu²⁺ Sensing; https://nanobubbles.hypotheses.org/replication-initiative/call-for-participation-replication-in-bionanoscience/
Raphaël Lévy is a professor of physics at the University Paris Sorbonne Nord (France) and a member of the Laboratory for Vascular Translational Research. He obtained his PhD in physics in 2002 and then moved to Liverpool, where he stayed for 18 years, initially as a post-doctoral researcher, then as a lecturer and senior lecturer. In 2006, he obtained a David Philips Fellowship from the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) for research focusing on the development and application of nanoparticles for biological imaging.
Over the past 20 years, confronted with problematic papers in the field of bionanoscience, he experimented with various modes of producing, evaluating and communicating contentious scientific findings. Since 2021, he is the coPIs of the ERC Synergy project NanoBubbles that attempts to understand the barriers to the correction of science by combining approaches from the natural sciences, engineering, humanities and social sciences.