Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - Printable Version
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RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - Mick - 12-17-2022
(12-17-2022, 01:31 PM)TrumpCard Wrote: And the parents who went to jail to get their kids into U$C? I might argue their kids got negative value from the parents’ criminal activity and that the kids would’ve been better off at a Cal State school.
At least one of these cases is under appeal. Three main arguments against conviction:
1) It can't be conspiracy if the alleged conspirators literally don't know each other.
2) Can't be conspiracy if they are competing for the same admissions spots.
3) (my favorite) -- USC already sells admissions spots. Why should this be any different?
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - Goose - 12-17-2022
(12-17-2022, 02:10 PM)Mick Wrote: 3) (my favorite) -- USC already sells admissions spots. Why should this be any different?Because USC didn't get all of the money?
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - Mick - 12-17-2022
(12-17-2022, 03:57 PM)Goose Wrote:The cheating parents said they were unaware of the fact that Rick got the money, not the colleges. And in Stanford's case, the college did, in fact, get all of the money.(12-17-2022, 02:10 PM)Mick Wrote: 3) (my favorite) -- USC already sells admissions spots. Why should this be any different?Because USC didn't get all of the money?
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - 82lsju - 12-27-2022
from the Daily
Quote:Opinion | Some faculty urge caution in rushing to judgment on MTL case
the authors
Aaron D. Gitler (Professor of Genetics)
Liqun Luo (Professor of Biology and Member, National Academy of Sciences)
Robert Malenka (Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Member, National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine)
Susan K. McConnell (Professor of Biology and Member, National Academy of Sciences)
William T. Newsome (Professor of Neurobiology and Member, National Academy of Sciences)
Carla J. Shatz (Professor of Biology and Neurobiology and Member, National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine)
Kang Shen (Professor of Biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator)
https://stanforddaily.com/2022/12/24/opinion-faculty-urge-caution-in-rushing-to-judgment-on-mtl-case/
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - dabigv13 - 12-27-2022
It's a reasonable article written by some very good Bio profs (I worked in Susan McConnell's lab FWIW).
But a couple things strike me- only 7 profs signed this. Seems like a low number.
And this paragraph, while largely true, doesn't exactly speak to the present scenario.
Quote:As faculty members and principal investigators in contemporary biological laboratories, we work closely with our graduate students and postdoctoral trainees to ensure the accuracy of our experimental work. However, advancing scientific frontiers increasingly requires larger teams of scientists who bring distinct sets of expertise to a study. In science, as in all realms of life, mistakes are inevitable. We strive to build a culture that aims not to punish mistakes made by trainees or one another, but instead encourages criticism and provides authors the opportunity to correct errors. Our scientific contributions will ultimately be tested by colleagues who examine our discoveries and extend them into new domains.
The most serious papers at issue were not large teams, but rather MTL and a single postdoc.
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - BostonCard - 12-27-2022
The most problematic articles are probably the ones in which he was a middle author; the most problematic articles *for MTL* are the ones where he was a senior author, because he was the senior author.
There is an element of “there by the grace of god…” in some of the faculty members who signed the letter.
BC
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - jonnyss - 12-27-2022
also, perhaps i am misunderstanding, but i thought the daily, followed by others, raised questions of alteration of data (images) not of errors.
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - dabigv13 - 12-28-2022
Quote:There is an element of “there by the grace of god…” in some of the faculty members who signed the letter.
Certainly got a whiff of that as well.
And yes, the editorial talks about mistakes and errors, when the "charge" is fradulent intentional image manipulation. I guess they didn't want to be so explicit about what they were willing to defend.
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - M T - 12-28-2022
(12-28-2022, 12:01 AM)dabigv13 Wrote: And yes, the editorial talks about mistakes and errors, when the "charge" is fradulent intentional image manipulation. I guess they didn't want to be so explicit about what they were willing to defend.
Perhaps we should be careful of our terms. You seem to be saying there is a charge (by whom?) of fraudulent image manipulation. (I removed "intentional" as redundant since I don't believe fraud, at least as used in normal discourse, can exist without intent.) I would take "fraudulent" to mean with intent to misrepresent the evidence for some purpose.
I have seen the case for intentional image manipulation, but I haven't seen any serious discussion that claimed fraud. Yet you speak of it like some official has made this charge. Who is making "the charge" of "fraudulent intentional image manipulation." Which images in which papers?
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - Goose - 12-28-2022
The assumption in the letter is that any unacknowledged image manipulation ("fraudulent" or innocent) was not done by MTL. What he could be accused of is not detecting this manipulation, which would have been an "error". Some have also said he did not take appropriate steps to correct the error when it was reported to him.
The "grace of God" feeling in the letter is obviously due to the fact detecting such manipulation, especially back in 2000 when the software used to "detect" the suspicious areas did not exist, was virtually impossible. Another type of "fraud" would have been possible by manipulating the input to the blot to show exactly what you wanted to show. The sample was not what it was supposed to be. How do you detect that? Blot looks too "clean"? Some bands that should be there are missing? If done well, none of these would be the case. The PI can't completely protect against dishonesty in the lab. If somebody has a "history" of suspicious results, that is one thing. If not, it isn't likely that you are going to check every single step they take. It just isn't possible.
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - dabigv13 - 12-28-2022
I'm very conscious of the terms I'm using, MT, since I've been saying fraud in lots of my posts. I'm the one making the charge, and I put it in quotes because there is no court of law taking this case. MTL can take me to court if he'd like though I guess??
Repeating myself-
There is a blot in the Cell paper that was modified or copy/pasted.
Without that altered image, one of the conclusions of the paper would be unsupported.
In the worst case, MTL or the only other author, a postdoc in MTL's lab, created that data to support a conclusion they did not have the data for otherwise. This would be fraudulent to me.
There are more benign possibilities as well. However, that the same two authors are involved in two other papers with altered images is concerning even if those papers the editing was probably more on the end of making prettier pictures to publish. Establishes that there was a pattern that was missed until someone outside of the lab pointed it out.
Goose, I keep repeating this as well- MTL is still responsible even if he didn't push the buttons on photoshop. He is the senior author. The postdoc is his trainee. MTL's best argument is that this postdoc repeatedly lied to and fooled him, and that could well have happened. But still his responsibility that he didn't catch it, no matter what software existed when.
You don't need special software to catch this problem necessarily. If MTL missed the image alteration, perhaps he was not as familiar as he should have been with the actual gels and immunostains that were done to support the paper he was senior author on.
Let's hope the investigation can shed some light on the degree of MTL's failings. Stanford should have made an interim appointment for President during the duration of that investigation.
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - Goose - 12-28-2022
(12-28-2022, 09:26 AM)dabigv13 Wrote: There are more benign possibilities as well. However, that the same two authors are involved in two other papers with altered images is concerning even if those papers the editing was probably more on the end of making prettier pictures to publish. Establishes that there was a pattern that was missed until someone outside of the lab pointed it out.I agree he is "responsible", but to what degree is a pretty critical factor in evaluating his integrity.
Goose, I keep repeating this as well- MTL is still responsible even if he didn't push the buttons on photoshop. He is the senior author. The postdoc is his trainee. MTL's best argument is that this postdoc repeatedly lied to and fooled him, and that could well have happened. But still his responsibility that he didn't catch it, no matter what software existed when.
Quote:You don't need special software to catch this problem necessarily.There is plenty of evidence the above statement is false, as I have pointed out previously. How many people read the CELL paper? Presumably a very large number. How many of them detected the problem? Zero. As far as I know nobody questioned the figures until the computer program pointed out the anomalies. That is pretty good empirical evidence that the software was "necessary" to detect the anomalies. It may be that once one knows there is an anomaly, they may be able to detect it. However, at that point they are looking for a known anomaly, which is much easier.
Quote:If MTL missed the image alteration, perhaps he was not as familiar as he should have been with the actual gels and immunostains that were done to support the paper he was senior author on.AFAIK bringing your wet gels to lab meetings has never been a "thing". Even when there weren't digital cameras available, the Polaroid (yep) was what you presented. You might dry the gel and put it in your lab notebook, but they generally curled up and cracked pretty soon so that was meaningless. If radioactive labels were involved, they would decay away in any case. The photo was there for sure. That is also a reason nobody is calling for an examination of the original :-) If the PI happened to be walking through the lab when a certain result was obtained, somebody may show them the gel. If there is some kind of strange/unexplained result the PI might be asked to come to the lab and look at it, but otherwise the PI won't see the gel, only pictures of the gel/blot. It is not, and has not been AFAIK the standard of practice that the PI needs to look at the "original" of every blot/gel their lab runs.
Another point to consider is that AFAIK nobody has published or reported any data contradicting the conclusion that the gel may not have actually supported. If that data exists, I would expect it to be in the "public" record by now and well known. It may be the result is so insignificant that the fact it is wrong has not been detected. However, it also may be that this editing was also cosmetic. It was in an important part of the photo, but we don't have any evidence AFAIK that it actually altered the "data" in any way. One might ask why it was done but to conclude it altered anything "important" is a fact not in evidence.
Quote:Let's hope the investigation can shed some light on the degree of MTL's failings.Indeed. Would also be nice to know if the conclusion the photo was supposed to "prove" is true or not. If we have independent verification that might mean nobody did anything unethical. If the opposite, somebody undoubtedly did.
Quote:Stanford should have made an interim appointment for President during the duration of that investigation.On this, I am ambivalent.
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - dabigv13 - 12-28-2022
I think we're mostly repeating ourselves here. I won't convince you, that's fine.
Quote:There is plenty of evidence the above statement is false, as I have pointed out previously. How many people read the CELL paper? Presumably a very large number. How many of them detected the problem? Zero. As far as I know nobody questioned the figures until the computer program pointed out the anomalies. That is pretty good empirical evidence that the software was "necessary" to detect the anomalies. It may be that once one knows there is an anomaly, they may be able to detect it. However, at that point they are looking for a known anomaly, which is much easier.
A random reader may not be able to easily determine a figure is altered, but that's a different question than whether the senior author can determine that. The senior author should be very aware of the underlying data or involved in the experimental collection of that data.
That doesn't mean they need to have seen every blot or immunostain the lab has done. But if it's going in your Cell paper, you should have seen these experiments replicated in your own lab and seen the photos of the gels or blots that will make up those figures. Close familiarity with that data would have enabled an observant PI to catch the manipulation at issue.
Quote:If we have independent verification that might mean nobody did anything unethical.
Image manipulation of this kind even if the conclusion is valid is still very unethical.
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - BostonCard - 12-28-2022
Most people are generally trusting and aren’t going to give more of a cursory look to the figures. There’s a big gap between “so blatantly obvious that anyone can see it” and “so hard to detect that it can only be found with sophisticated software”. Based on what I’ve read, I think this case falls in that gap; it is visible if you know what to look for and are looking for it, but since MTL is generally a well-regarded scientist and Cell and Science are well-regarded journalists, few people are going to look closely.
But at least a couple people did look closely, and posted their suspicions on pubpeer. I think the allegations fell into “can someone else look at this; something looks off here” rather than “this is clearly manipulation”, but I do believe that at least a few of them were flagged based on an a human ascertainment.
BC
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - Goose - 12-28-2022
(12-28-2022, 01:21 PM)dabigv13 Wrote: I think we're mostly repeating ourselves here. I won't convince you, that's fine.
Quote:There is plenty of evidence the above statement is false, as I have pointed out previously. How many people read the CELL paper? Presumably a very large number. How many of them detected the problem? Zero. As far as I know nobody questioned the figures until the computer program pointed out the anomalies. That is pretty good empirical evidence that the software was "necessary" to detect the anomalies. It may be that once one knows there is an anomaly, they may be able to detect it. However, at that point they are looking for a known anomaly, which is much easier.
A random reader may not be able to easily determine a figure is altered, but that's a different question than whether the senior author can determine that. The senior author should be very aware of the underlying data or involved in the experimental collection of that data.
That doesn't mean they need to have seen every blot or immunostain the lab has done. But if it's going in your Cell paper, you should have seen these experiments replicated in your own lab and seen the photos of the gels or blots that will make up those figures.
You are assuming that the underlying data and the photos contradict what the published photo shows, a fact not in evidence. We don't know that is the case. The question of how many times this experiment was replicated is a valid one. I don't know the answer. If it was an N of 1, that is another issue, and that is a valid question. If it was a confirmatory experiment to supplement other data, it is less of an issue.
It is quite possible that MTL did see the photos but that they had already been manipulated. It is also possible that the photos showed the same thing before manipulation. All he ever saw was what he expected to see. Assuming the postdoc did the manipulation, I would not expect that they presented data to the PI that clearly refuted what later became the conclusion of the paper and then later altered the images to change the result. That would be crazy, and MTL would indeed know that the data had flipped 180 degrees. Unlikely.
Quote:Close familiarity with that data would have enabled an observant PI to catch the manipulation at issue.Again, you are assuming the manipulated photo was "significantly" different than the ones the PI saw that were allegedly not manipulated. They may not have been materially different. Given the pattern in the other papers it could be there was a cosmetic manipulation that was done for publication that did NOT contradict what MTL had previously seen. OTOH, if the postdoc was manipulating the data, she would have been crazy to ever show MTL a contradictory photo. That would be asking for trouble. If they were both engaged in a conspiracy to publish a bogus paper, it is a moot point as they both knew what was going on.
If the conclusion drawn from the data is in fact correct, there is every reason to believe that the manipulation did not change the photo in any significant way. If that conclusion is not correct there is every reason to believe the manipulation did in fact change the data.
Quote:Absolutely don't agree. Image manipulation for publication happens all the time. It is obviously unethical to do something that changes the results and character of the data. Contrast enhancement for instance is often applied. Edge sharpening is also often applied. This is often done in "modern times" right as the photo is made. Is "auto-focus" allowed? It is obviously a matter of degree and intent. I would agree that a statement detailing what techniques were used to "enhance" the image would be appropriate, but I can't get excited about something that is actually "cosmetic" not being cited.Quote:If we have independent verification that might mean nobody did anything unethical.Image manipulation of this kind even if the conclusion is valid is still very unethical.
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - M T - 12-28-2022
(12-28-2022, 01:21 PM)dabigv13 Wrote: Image manipulation of this kind even if the conclusion is valid is still very unethical.Image manipulation runs from the required (zooming/clipping) to the fraudulent.
You have stated
Quote:There is a blot in the Cell paper that was modified or copy/pasted.
Without that altered image, one of the conclusions of the paper would be unsupported.
In the worst case, MTL or the only other author, a postdoc in MTL's lab,....
To cogently discuss your claim, I still need to pin down paper you are talking about. At PubPeer, there are comments on 17 papers associated with MTL.
Two of those were published in Cell, but neither was published with just two authors. Ly, et al, were the authors on a 2008 Cell paper. Hong, et al, were the authors on a 1999 Cell paper. The only paper listed with two authors is a 2001 paper in Science.
So if you mean the 2001 paper in Science, please see Science's note indicating an erratum was submitted circa 2015, but wasn't published. Unfortunately, Science has chosen not to publish the erratum even now, so it is a bit hard to follow what even Science was intending to say ("The original data for these figures" may mean (only) figures 2D, 4B, 5E).
The original paper is behind a paywall so I don't have access to it directly. At PubPeer, figure 2D is described as a negative control so seems unlikely to influence the results; It appears the concern of 4B is that two apparently expected-to-be-blank panels were duplicated. I can't tell if any of the commenters said anything about 5E, but the recent Science blurb indicates "an incorrect blank panel was used in Figure 5E (top right)", so it seems unlikely it affects the results. However, the Science blurb states "The original data for these figures could not be accessed, so not all specific conclusions related to these panels are supported by these figures."
To me, it is sorta like saying "You can't trust the conclusion that if you put a signal into a speaker and you hear a sound, then the signal caused the sound, unless you also prove that you didn't get a sound when you didn't put a signal into the speaker." That's science. But one can understand why someone such as a post-Doc might take liberties with the no-signal case even though they shouldn't. Bad science, yes. Fraud, not in my book.
----
Each time I look at this PubPeer set of comments on this paper, I am struck by Elizabeth Bik jumping in 6 years after the previous comments (none of which are attributed to her either originally or in her single attributed post), posting links to news coverage about the issue, and then referring to MTL solely as "current Stanford President" and then "the Stanford President himself". That surely sounds like someone with an agenda speaking.
Is anyone aware of an agenda for her? Might she have something against MTL or Stanford?
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - dabigv13 - 12-28-2022
Goose, what is your experience in a research science lab?
I've never "edge sharpened" any blots I ran before presenting them in a meeting, poster, or paper. I don't think I'm an outlier but I've only spent a few years in labs. I would welcome comment from people with more lab experience such as BC or chimera on this.
Quote:To cogently discuss your claim, I still need to pin down paper you are talking about. At PubPeer, there are comments on 17 papers associated with MTL.
Two of those were published in Cell, but neither was published with just two authors. Ly, et al, were the authors on a 2008 Cell paper. Hong, et al, were the authors on a 1999 Cell paper. The only paper listed with two authors is a 2001 paper in Science.
MT, sorry I was incorrect in stating the Cell paper with the most egregious problem was only two authors. It was the 1999 Cell paper on which he was a senior author.
Here is the figure-
![[Image: Fig3A-newcolors.jpg]](https://www.statnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Fig3A-newcolors.jpg)
Quote:The level of detail in the alteration also appeared to be intentional, she added. Some image manipulations in other Tessier-Lavigne papers are duplications, meaning the same western blot is used to represent different results, and researchers could conceivably use the same image twice by mistake. “If they had reused the same blot, you could argue negative blots all look the same, we just grabbed the wrong blot,” said Bik. In this figure, though, parts of a single western blot have been copied and appear multiple times.
https://www.statnews.com/2022/11/30/stanford-president-altered-images/
As I mentioned earlier Bik did work at Stanford previously. There is no public knowledge I'm aware of that points to any axe to grind, and it seems strange to make that the thrust of a defense for MTL. It's not like MTL is the only or first person Bik has identified as authoring an article with manipulated figures.
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - M T - 12-28-2022
(12-28-2022, 04:03 PM)dabigv13 Wrote: MT, sorry I was incorrect in stating the Cell paper with the most egregious problem was only two authors. It was the 1999 Cell paper on which he was a senior author.
Here is the figure-
Quote:The level of detail in the alteration also appeared to be intentional, she added. Some image manipulations in other Tessier-Lavigne papers are duplications, meaning the same western blot is used to represent different results, and researchers could conceivably use the same image twice by mistake. “If they had reused the same blot, you could argue negative blots all look the same, we just grabbed the wrong blot,” said Bik. In this figure, though, parts of a single western blot have been copied and appear multiple times.
https://www.statnews.com/2022/11/30/stanford-president-altered-images/
As I mentioned earlier Bik did work at Stanford previously. There is no public knowledge I'm aware of that points to any axe to grind, and it seems strange to make that the thrust of a defense for MTL. It's not like MTL is the only or first person Bik has identified as authoring an article with manipulated figures.
First off, I am not setting out to defend MTL. I have no reason to defend or attack him. AFAIK, he's had no direct impact on me. I will say that I respect the fact that he is the Stanford President -- he likely has done something well.
I still haven't seen you quote anything from PubPeer, so I'll keep referring to it since that seems where most such issues are raised & considered, rather than news sources. For that 1999 paper, concerns were raised on PubPeer in 2015. Cell magazine has published (Dec. 2022) a statement that in 2015, these issues were considered by Cell and the decision was to take no action. A portion of that statement reads
Quote:We decided, based on information available, to take no further action because in 1999 we did not have policies prohibiting the unmarked splicing of images
This is about image 3A in the paper. Just to clarify to others, the image linked above was not the image from the paper, but the image edited by Bik (and I believe reproduced in a news article). Indeed, in PubPeer, Bix has a newer version of her version of image 3A. The concerns acknowledged by Cell is that some areas are duplicated in this image, which is not mentioned as something they noticed in 2015. Cell does not indicate whether the authors were among those that brought the concerns to Cell's attention. Stanford sources indicate that MTL did contact Cell.
Here is the image as I see it in my web browser from the original paper on the Cell website.
https://i.ibb.co/hCPLtSb/MTL1999-3-A-web.png
The areas in question look almost pure white. That doesn't mean that they weren't manipulated somehow, but that the end result was basically white.
Ok, maybe the web display isn't good enough to show what's going on. I downloaded the PDF version, zoomed it to 200% and again took a screen shot.
https://i.ibb.co/hV7fCmS/MTL1999-3-A-pdfx2.png
Still almost pure white.
Ok, let's try downloading the powerpoint and zooming it to 300% and again take a screen dump.
https://i.ibb.co/6vSc4T9/MTL1999-3-A-pptx3.png
Aha, I can spot some noise in the pure white.
Why aren't we seeing what was in the Bix version of this image? I suspect software was used to dramatically increase the contrast to bring out patterns in the lower order bits of the colors.
If this particular image is your concern, all I can say is "Big deal". The person that created this should not have duplicated virtually pure white areas and pasted it over virtually pure white areas. But, I can see how a person might not realize that overlaying one white area with another white area might be a big No-No and cause someone to consider it to be fraud. For the purposes of science, it shouldn't have been done. It *could* hide something nefarious, but what could possibly be in that column that would invalidate the results?
As for anyone other than the person that prepared/manipulated the image files to go into the paper, I can't see anyone, coauthor or reviewer, possibly spotting that manipulation by eyeball, especially if they expect the regions to be nearly purely white. Even in 2015, the commenters did not notice the duplication in this figure.
Was there duplication of regions? If I trust Bix to be honest and the software not to be broken, then probably there was. Does it invalidate the results? Personally I think not, but I'll leave it to Cell and that community. Is this duplication fraudulent? Flatly, no.
Do I think Bix is making a mountain out of a mole hill? Yes. Bix's first post is 7 years after the previous comments. Somehow these immediately wound up as news articles rather than hashing the issues out technically.
[In case someone in the future can detect it, I had to go through and get rid of all the doubled & quadrupled lines that MyBB puts in when you edit/preview a post, at least with my browser & OS. I wouldn't want someone saying I fraudulently altered the whitespace (sorry, for the questionable technical term) ;-]
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - dabigv13 - 12-28-2022
Quote:If this particular image is your concern, all I can say is "Big deal". The person that created this should not have duplicated virtually pure white areas and pasted it over virtually pure white areas. But, I can see how a person might not realize that overlaying one white area with another white area might be a big No-No and cause someone to consider it to be fraud. For the purposes of science, it shouldn't have been done. It *could* hide something nefarious, but what could possibly be in that column that would invalidate the results?
I don't think you understand what is being shown.
The areas highlighted are supposed to show a negative result, hence why it would look "white" as you describe it. Basically, it's showing there is not a band there, as opposed to the top right (next to "anti-myc").
But the image manipulation here is that all these negative/"white" spaces were copied and then pasted. They don't show distinct separate experimental results. Which image is the copy and which is the original? Are any of them showing a real actual experimental result? We can't know.
Particularly when it comes to blots, this sort of falsification is very easy and thus concerning; you have to trust that the band or blank space without a band actually represents the protein or lack of protein the author tells you it represents.
RE: Tessier-Lavigne research under investigation for scientific misconduct - Goose - 12-28-2022
(12-28-2022, 09:21 PM)dabigv13 Wrote: But the image manipulation here is that all these negative/"white" spaces were copied and then pasted. They don't show distinct separate experimental results. Which image is the copy and which is the original? Are any of them showing a real actual experimental result? We can't know.Exactly so. It is concerning because there may have been "signal" in the lower right area that was pasted over with basically white space from the other green highlighted areas. Which way did the pasting go? We can't know. It is also interesting to speculate why there was any other "cut and paste" going on in this blot result. The other areas that are manipulated are not significant to the main result, so why were they altered at all?
It also seems to me that the whole figure is under-exposed compared to any of the other figures. In all the other figures the "no data" areas are light gray. In this figure they are basically white with some very weak "junk" present. The signal in the upper right corner is plenty strong though. While this "proves" nothing, it is interesting.
I believe the data that was sent to Cell had these blot photos in much higher resolution (1344 pixels horizontally??) than is present in the printed copies or available on the website. It is very clear why the reader (or MTL looking at galley proofs) would have seen nothing alarming, because "nothing" was what was seen and expected. I would argue that even with a higher resolution photo it would not raise questions. The area that is supposed to have no signal in fact has no signal. It only becomes suspicious when one notes that the "noise" in several areas are exact duplicates of each other. Nobody is going to be looking for that unless they are told to do so.
I have been told that "back in the day" sometimes gels/blots were cut to exclude areas of "no interest" to the study. This made them easier to store. If that was done here and then somebody had to "reconstruct" a middle, they might do it by copying and replicating data from each edge, lower right and upper left. Obviously, doing so would be improper, but it might "explain" what happened. Otherwise, what we see here makes no sense. If there was signal in the lower right you needed to conceal, copy over that and be done with it. Why mess with the rest?
Quote:Particularly when it comes to blots, this sort of falsification is very easy and thus concerning; you have to trust that the band or blank space without a band actually represents the protein or lack of protein the author tells you it represents.Yep. You can also suppress faint bands by intentionally underexposing the photo. No photoshop required. Another data point is that this article has been cited over 850 times since it was published. That is a pretty big number I think. It may be that this particular issue isn't a driver for the paper being cited, but nobody has, at least AFAIK, challenged the conclusions from figure 3.