[dabigv13]

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.

[dabigv13]

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.