[jonnyss]

If a physician diagnoses a particular condition partly based on the report from the radiologist of images the physician ordered, but the radiologist altered the images before the physician ever saw them, then the physician is guilty of what?

If the physician doesn't edit/amend/review his/her diagnosis until much later when someone notices the image has been altered, is the physician at fault for not doing it earlier?

Do physicians ever run software to determine if images they've ordered might have been altered?

(I will note that we, or at least I, don't know whether MTL saw the original images or ran software to detect if the images were altered later when they were submitted to the journals.  From what I read in the PubPeer discussions a week or two ago, the creating authors took responsibility for their own images.  It wasn't "unclear".  Did you read something different there?)

if you are comparing to radiology physicians, then we have the tech producing the image, the resident (aka post-graduate fellow) interpreting the image, and the attending physician reviewing and signing off. the attending, not the tech or the resident, is responsible for accuracy. imo in this case, since mtl is senior or corresponding author of the report containing the images, mtl is comparable to the attending radiologist. the journal is comparable to a surgeon or internist receiving and trusting the images and the attending radiologist's interpretation. indeed, i would not expect the journal to catch the doctoring. to be very specific, if the radiology report says an image was taking x minutes after infusion of y dye; and it turns out the actual timing of the image, or the chemical infused, is different than on the report, yes the internist who ordered the study is not responsible for the error, but the attending radiologist very much is responsible even if it's the tech who gave the wrong dye or took the image too soon or too late, or if it's the resident who wrote it down wrong in the report.

the folks who have posted here that they worked in similar labs say 1) their images were reviewed and debated at length by their entire lab, including the pi, and 2) the doctoring of many of the mtl images is blatant, really hard to miss.

regarding, "In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors." [It is not clear to me how authors are expected to satisfy that last sentence.]
to me that references not the integrity of the co-author, which indeed may be hard to assess, but rather the integrity of the data. i believe you assess the integrity of the data not by asserting that a corresponding author produced the image but rather by looking carefully at the blots yourself and perhaps having several associates in your lab review the blots as well. as i read his announcements, mtl has not said, "as required, i reviewed all my co-authors' blots. they seemed fine to me at the time."

[jonnyss]

If a physician diagnoses a particular condition partly based on the report from the radiologist of images the physician ordered, but the radiologist altered the images before the physician ever saw them, then the physician is guilty of what?

If the physician doesn't edit/amend/review his/her diagnosis until much later when someone notices the image has been altered, is the physician at fault for not doing it earlier?

Do physicians ever run software to determine if images they've ordered might have been altered?

(I will note that we, or at least I, don't know whether MTL saw the original images or ran software to detect if the images were altered later when they were submitted to the journals.  From what I read in the PubPeer discussions a week or two ago, the creating authors took responsibility for their own images.  It wasn't "unclear".  Did you read something different there?)

if you are comparing to radiology physicians, then we have the tech producing the image, the resident (aka post-graduate fellow) interpreting the image, and the attending physician reviewing and signing off. the attending, not the tech or the resident, is responsible for accuracy. imo in this case, since mtl is senior or corresponding author of the report containing the images, mtl is comparable to the attending radiologist. the journal is comparable to a surgeon or internist receiving and trusting the images and the attending radiologist's interpretation. indeed, i would not expect the journal to catch the doctoring. to be very specific, if the radiology report says an image was taking x minutes after infusion of y dye; and it turns out the actual timing of the image, or the chemical infused, is different than on the report, yes the internist who ordered the study is not responsible for the error, but the attending radiologist very much is responsible even if it's the tech who gave the wrong dye or took the image too soon or too late, or if it's the resident who wrote it down wrong in the report.

the folks who have posted here that they worked in similar labs say 1) their images were reviewed and debated at length by their entire lab, including the pi, and 2) the doctoring of many of the mtl images is blatant, really hard to miss.

regarding, "In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors." [It is not clear to me how authors are expected to satisfy that last sentence.]
to me that references not the integrity of the co-author, which indeed may be hard to assess, but rather the integrity of the data. i believe you assess the integrity of the data not by asserting that a corresponding author produced the image but rather by looking carefully at the blots yourself and perhaps having several associates in your lab review the blots as well. as i read his announcements, mtl has not said, "as required, i reviewed all my co-authors' blots. they seemed fine to me at the time."