[M T]

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 

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.

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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?

[M T]

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 

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?