An Australian geneticist on a mission to expose fraudulent research has been named among the top 10 people that mattered in 2017 by leading science journal Nature.
Nine flawed scientific papers have so far been retracted thanks to the detective work of Professor Jennifer Byrne from the University of Sydney and the Sydney Children's Hospital.
Nature says Prof Byrne became involved in uncovering errors after noticing a spate of them in papers that mentioned a rare gene she had studied.
Five of the papers had reported the wrong DNA sequence for the experiments they claimed to conduct on the effects of inactivating the gene in cancer cells.
She has also worked with computer scientist Cyril Labbe at the University of Grenoble Alpes, in France, to develop a software that identifies such "junk" manuscripts.
Prof Byrne says the process has taught her just how much scientific research is built on trust.
"I used to think that science ran on brains and money," she told Nature.
"Trust is the component that's easy to forget and take for granted."
Prof Byrne is the only Aussie to make the Nature top 10 this year, which also includes other scientists, a lawyer, politicians and a young girl whose battle against leukaemia inspired a new generation of cancer therapy.
