Jennifer Byrne is Director of Biobanking at NSW Health and Professor of Molecular Oncology at the University of Sydney. She has spent her scientific career analyzing childhood and adult cancers at a molecular level, from mapping chromosomal losses in embryonal tumors during her Ph.D. at the University of Queensland to identifying a novel gene family during postdoctoral studies in France. She previously served as Acting Head of the Children's Cancer Research Unit at The Children's Hospital at Westmead and Deputy Director of the Kids Cancer Alliance.

In this interview, she reflects on her path from molecular oncology to research integrity, and what it will take to strengthen trust in the scientific record.

[SIA] You were featured in Nature's 10 in 2017 as an "error sleuth" for identifying DNA-sequence errors in published genetics papers, helping trigger multiple retractions, and co-developing tools to support detection at scale. At the time, paper mills and systematic manipulation were not widely discussed. Looking back, what motivated you to pursue this work, and what helped you stay committed when it was not yet widely understood?

[JB] I’ve always viewed publication integrity as just another problem to study. When I found clues of problems within the molecular cancer literature, it was my instinct to follow those clues for as far as seemed worthwhile. As these problems affected my own field of molecular genetics, it was easy to stay committed. Cancer research is difficult enough; it’s so much more difficult if researchers can’t trust the literature.

[SIA] You now lead PRIMeR (Publication and Research Integrity in Medical Research) at the University of Sydney, where your team combines research and advocacy to improve the reliability of the medical research literature. What are PRIMeR's main priorities right now, and what kinds of partnerships make the biggest difference?

[JB] We’re currently working on understanding the scale of unreliable publications in molecular cancer research and finding easier ways to flag potential paper mill support of individual papers. We’d like to help cancer researchers to make quick and reliable decisions about whether individual papers might have come from a paper mill.

We also have a new grant from the Australian government to study non-verifiable cell lines in the literature, which we’re excited about.