READ COMMENTS WRITE COMMENT CORRESPONDENCE: bpalesti@wagner.edu DATE RECEIVED: May 22, 2014 DOI: 10.15200/winn.140076.67602 KEYWORDS: dance, fluctuating asymmetry, fraud, scientific misconduct, sexual selection © Palestis et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. Brown and colleagues (2005) appeared to show a strong link between bodily symmetry (small fluctuating asymmetry or FA) and dance ability, with sex differences fitting predictions exactly. This work seemed to be an important contribution to the literature on human sexual selection and fluctuating asymmetry, and it has now been cited at least 156 times according to Google Scholar. All the results presented by Brown et al. were subject to careful reanalysis that failed to support any ofthe major findings of the paper (Trivers et al. 2009). The reanalysis suggested that the correlation between symmetry and dancing ability was positive but very weak and lacked any of the reported sex differences. This case is complex, involving multiple modes of scientific misconduct by Dr. Brown, including, in the order in which we uncovered them: 1) selecting subjects in a biased manner, based on prior knowledge of dance ability, 2) altering values in the dataset to decrease within-group variability in dance evaluations, thus creating significant effects where none existed, 3) most surprising of all, altering 65 out of 80 values for relative fluctuating asymmetry (rel FA) of the selected dancers in the dataset so as to construct entirely false values for the critical variable in ~80% of all cases. Brown then made the fraudster's classic error-he created a data set that was internally inconsistent-he forgot to change the adjacent columns giving simple FAs, so it was impossible to derive his false values of rel FA from the true values of raw FA. Additionally, with just one exception, he only changed values for those selected as subjects. Although complex, the case for scientific misconduct here is actually more obvious than for other statistical detections of fraud, which are typically based on probability theory (e.g. Pitt and Hill 2013 and references therein). Because we had access to Brown's dataset and the original dataset, we were able to demonstrate directly that many of his numbers and reported results were not externally valid, nor internally consistent. A formal investigation by Rutgers University confirmed the reanalysis by Trivers et al. and uncovered additional evidence for scientific misconduct (Rutgers Research Advisory Board 2012). After a very long delay, Nature eventually agreed to retract the original paper (Brown et al. 2013). Surprisingly, Nature's news division published a story on the case (Reich 2013) titled "Symmetry study deemed a fraud" nearly seven months before a retraction was published. The retraction notice is incredibly weak, consisting of just two sentences that  Symmetry and Dance: A Case of Scientific Fraud Brown, W.M., Cronk, L., Grochow, K., Jacobson, A., Liu, C.K., Popovic, Z. and Trivers, R. (2005). Dance reveals symmetry especially in young men. Nature, 438, 1148-1150. doi: 10.1038/nature04344 BRIAN G. PALESTIS , ROBERT TRIVERS , DARINE ZAATARI 1. Department of Biological Sciences, Wagner College, Staten Island, NY, USA 2. Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA 3. Antioch, CA, USA 1 2 3  ✎ PALESTIS et al The Winnower MAY 06 2014 1