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Does "the earthquake chewed my data" trump "the dog ate my homework"?

Feedback ponders a novel excuse for missing data and brings readers the very latest on bonobos' preference for grapes over parsnips

By Marc Abrahams

3 May 2023

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Tim Alexander

Earthquake snack

The traditional excuse “the dog ate my homework” has a new counterpart: “the earthquake chewed my data.”

Retraction Watch reports the case of Atsunori Kamiya at Okayama University in Japan, who is accused of faking data in a paper published in Nature Neuroscience. Kamiya is the paper’s lead author.

According to Retraction Watch, which cites information from the university, Japanese newspapers and the journal: “When asked for the paper’s underlying data, Kamiya claimed that the hard disk storing them fell and broke during the June 2018 North Osaka earthquake. The paper versions were destroyed after chemical …

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