[BostonCard]

I will be blunt and say that if it is shown that the post-doc altered the images and deceived Tessier-Levigne and the journals for the papers where he was the senior author, it is bad, but probably not career ending.  If he actively participated or encouraged it, then this was probably not an isolated incident, and there ought to be more examples.  Cheaters rarely cheat only a handful of times, and I would be very surprised if there weren't a bunch of other high-profile papers with altered images.

And, regardless of what the University does, you can count on people like Bik to find it.  I stand by my original statement:

The best case scenario (aside from Bik being wrong, which I doubt) is that he was a sloppy supervisor, and the first author (Elke Stein, likely a grad student or post-doc) manipulated the images without Tessier-Levine's knowledge, and that the images were just altered to clean up artifact or other cosmetic changes, and not to change the data. That's still really bad, and warrants a full investigation and if it is held up, some sort of sanction.  In the worst case, where he participated in the image manipulation, and it was done to significantly change the findings, it should be career threatening.

BC

[BostonCard]

I will be blunt and say that if it is shown that the post-doc altered the images and deceived Tessier-Levigne and the journals for the papers where he was the senior author, it is bad, but probably not career ending.  If he actively participated or encouraged it, then this was probably not an isolated incident, and there ought to be more examples.  Cheaters rarely cheat only a handful of times, and I would be very surprised if there weren't a bunch of other high-profile papers with altered images.

And, regardless of what the University does, you can count on people like Bik to find it.  I stand by my original statement:

The best case scenario (aside from Bik being wrong, which I doubt) is that he was a sloppy supervisor, and the first author (Elke Stein, likely a grad student or post-doc) manipulated the images without Tessier-Levine's knowledge, and that the images were just altered to clean up artifact or other cosmetic changes, and not to change the data. That's still really bad, and warrants a full investigation and if it is held up, some sort of sanction.  In the worst case, where he participated in the image manipulation, and it was done to significantly change the findings, it should be career threatening.

BC