When I use a word . . . Academic sleuths

Varieties of sleuths

Mention the word “sleuth” and most people will immediately think of amateur detectives like Miss Marple or Lord Peter Wimsey, Father Brown or Rabbi David Small, Ludwig or the Puzzle Lady Cora Felton; or consulting detectives like Sherlock Holmes or Hercules Poirot; or police detectives like Inspectors Morse, Lewis, Dalgliesh, or Rebus.

But others may also be regarded as sleuths of a sort. Doctors, for example, are sleuths, whose sleuthing takes the form of medical diagnosis. If we need to be reminded of this we only have to think of the US TV diagnostician Dr Gregory House, whose various attributes were invented with Sherlock Holmes in mind. Each has a domestic surname—house/ho[l]mes; Holmes’s close colleague is Dr John Watson, House’s is Dr James Wilson; Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street, House in an apartment numbered 221B; and both have drug addictions, Holmes to a 7% injectable solution of cocaine, House to Vicodin, an oral formulation that contains hydrocodone and paracetamol.

In the last few years, the term “sleuth” has been extended to academic detectives who unmask fraudulent research. They may be called academic sleuths, scientific sleuths, or research integrity sleuths.1

Etymology

Leaving aside the Scots word sleuth, which is used as an adjective meaning hungry, voracious, or keen and as a verb meaning to work carelessly or be neglectful, related to “sloth,” the English word “sleuth” can be traced back to an old Norwegian word slōð, meaning a track or a trail. That must have had, in its turn, an antecedent form with a corresponding theoretical IndoEuropean forerunner. The standard texts on IndoEuropean derivatives do not mention sleuths, but the root LEIS, meaning a track or trail, appears to be a candidate for its origin.

IndoEuropean roots starting with consonants such as K, L, M, P, T, or W sometimes have an S prefixed to them. So, for example, the root LEU, meaning to loosen or unbind, gives us words such as lysis, analysis, catalysis, dialysis, hydrolysis, and paralysis, loose and lost, and words ending in –less, implying absence. And LEU has a counterpart, SLEU, to relax, giving us words such as sloth, slouch, and slow, sludge, slush, and slumber.

Likewise, one can hypothesise an IndoEuropean root corresponding to LEIS, namely SLEIS, perhaps meaning to follow, which would give us a word such as sleuth and, in its o-grade form, slot, the track of an animal such as a deer.

Usage

The predominant public perception of the role of a sleuth comes from the history of its usage.

The earliest version of “sleuth” meaning a detective was in the term “sleuth-hound,” first recorded as two words in 1849 in a novel called Clement Lorimer by Angus B Reach: “There is an awful mystery which the sleuth hounds of the law may trace—a mystery of suspicion, perhaps a mystery of crime—the mystery of my own being! Before long, perhaps, that secret shall be unravelled, and I will know who I am, and the world shall know what you are!”

The earliest recorded instance of the use of the shortened version of this, “sleuth,” at least so far (antedatings are always possible), is from a dime novel titled Old Sleuth, the Detective; or, the Bay Ridge Mystery, written by “Old Sleuth,” which first appeared in 1872.2 “Old Sleuth” was a pseudonym of the writer Harlan Page Halsey (1837–98), a prolific writer of pulp detective fiction. The Bay Ridge Mystery is a novella in 38 chapters, first published in George Munro’s New York Fireside Companion and later republished in 1880 and then again on 3 March 1885, in 30 densely printed pages in the first issue of volume 1 of Munro’s magazine, also called “Old Sleuth,” priced 5 cents—a dime novel at half price. “Old Sleuth” was not old at all; he was a young man, Harry Loveland, who operated in disguise, typically, as shown in the cover illustration, dressed up as an old man, his face almost complete hidden by an enormous bushy beard and spectacles, the rim of his top hat hiding even his eyebrows.

Very little has been written about Harland Page Halsey, and his name cannot be found in any of the standard reference books listing American authors in general or authors of detective stories in particular. However, an appreciation, published shortly after his death in 1899, described him as “one of the most remarkable men of his times.”3 He had, so the obituarist wrote, published his first novel, Annie Wallace, or The Exile of Penang, at the age of 18. In the Old Sleuth stories he had achieved “phenomenal success,” with the result that the name “Old Sleuth” had become known as a synonym for a clever detective “wherever the English language is spoken.” The author added information about other novels that Halsey had written, estimating that he had written “not less than six hundred books of adventure.” He also mentioned that in Halsey’s other life he had been an accomplished financier, one of the principal organisers of The Kings County Trust Company, the Hamilton Trust Company, and other corporations, He had also served as a member of the New York Board of Education.

Then, in April 1908, Halsey’s niece, May Halsey Miller, gave some more information about him in a letter to The New York Times, correcting errors that had appeared in an article in the paper. Halsey, she wrote, had been a gentleman of considerable culture, educated at a Brooklyn grammar school, who had published his first novel, Annie Wallace; or, The Exile of the Isle of Penang, at the age of 16. [The title of the book was actually Annie Wallace, Or, The Exile of Penang: A Tale.] Having married at an early age, he contrived to earn a living by writing for weekly papers, using the pseudonym Tony Pastor, bringing him “more money than fame.” The Bay Ridge Mystery was his first success, and he continued to write pulp fiction thereafter, writing for a living rather than a reputation, earning well in excess of $12 000 a year. That’s equivalent to over $300 000 today (£220 000)—and a lot of dimes for a dime novel.

A systematic review

In order to investigate the ways in which the word “sleuth” is used in the bioscientific literature I searched PubMed and Clarivate’s Web of Science for the term without restriction. I got over 1000 hits. I then asked two questions: what were the earliest instances of terms relating to medical diagnosis and investigation of research misconduct, and with what collocates was “sleuth” or “sleuthing” associated.

Earliest instances

Given that the earliest use of “sleuth-hound” to refer to a type pf detective, as opposed to its original meaning of a bloodhound, was recorded in 1849, its use in a medical sense came relatively quickly thereafter. T Clifford Allbutt used the term in reference to medical practice in 1889, in a lecture published in The British Medical Journal: “But do we not now see whence the light is coming? Are not many of our young physicians tracking, like sleuth-hounds, the causes of these effects, and surely learning why a kidney shrivels, and why a heart or lung decays?”4

When I previously wrote about research integrity sleuths, the earliest instance of the use of the word “sleuth” in relation to academic misconduct that I found, on a rather cursory search, dated from 2022.1 However, I then received a message from Ivan Oransky, one of the founders of Retraction Watch, telling me that the word had been used in this sense in a piece published on the RW website in 2018.5 This is an exceptionally useful article, since it lists the names of nearly 50 academic sleuths, from Anna Abalkina, Elisabeth Bik, and Guillaume Cabanac to Mike Rossner, “Artemisia Stricta,” and Nick Wise.

Oransky’s article is listed in Google Scholar, the website that, despite its faults, resuscitates citations that other databases cannot reach. However, the original article is not included in the database, only a 2023 citation of it. On the other hand, I haven’t found any other citations to rival it in originality, and so for now I am counting this as the earliest reference to the word “sleuth” in relation to academic misconduct. But only for the time being—earlier instances are likely to turn up.

Collocates

The British National Corpus, the website that I first go to when looking for collocates was on this occasion unhelpful. It lists only 31 examples of the use of the word “sleuth” and the top three collocates are “Columbo,” “Agatha,” and “Christie,” giving the flavour of the material. None of the listed collocates relates to academic practices. I have therefore turned my attention to the papers I retrieved in my systematic review.

Ignoring the large number of papers that describe types of computer software whose names have included the term “SLEUTH,” I have found about 100 collocates of “sleuth” or “sleuthing” in all. Most of them have been used only once or twice. About 54% describe the topic being studied, from accounting, anatomy, anthrax, and arthritis, through biology, cells, DNA, environmental health, and failures, to potatoes, seismology, truth, and viral infections. Among the more unusual topics are churchyards, extraterrestrials (the search for), and gender-non-binary and sexuality, although not sex, at least not yet.

About 17% describe the methods used by academic sleuths, including the types of information studied, such as archives, catalogues, and data (unspecified), and methods or places of searching, such as computers, cyberspace, laboratories, libraries, online, software, and websites.

Types of sleuths were described by about 14% of the collocates, including amateurs, seniors and veterans, medical and technical, and those investigating integrity and scientific misconduct, although there are only a few of each of those.

But perhaps the most interesting categories are the collocates that indicate either approval or disapproval. There are only four of the latter: closet, recalcitrant, pseudo, and short-selling, and they are outnumbered by the complimentary collocates, 11 in all, which I am pleased to list here in their entirety: brilliant, caring, dedicated, intellectual, mastermind, sagacious, sainted, scholarly, serious, super, and supreme.

Indeed, “super” is the most common collocate of all, with about a dozen individual instances.

It’s good to see that academic sleuthing is generally held in high esteem.