[Goose]

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.

I agree he is "responsible", but to what degree is a pretty critical factor in evaluating his integrity.

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.

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.

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.

Stanford should have made an interim appointment for President during the duration of that investigation.

On this, I am ambivalent.

[Goose]

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.

I agree he is "responsible", but to what degree is a pretty critical factor in evaluating his integrity.

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.

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.

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.

Stanford should have made an interim appointment for President during the duration of that investigation.

On this, I am ambivalent.