- My first, second, and third instinct here is to say this is pretty obvious and sloppy fraud. But it did remind me of the famous case discovered by David Kriesel where Xerox scanners changed documents in surprising ways. The caption on the YouTube video linked here is entertainingly accurate.
https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres...
"On the scale of things too horrible to contemplate, "document-altering scanner" is right up there with "flesh-eating bacteria". Since 2006, Xerox scancopiers literally are making stuff up. They, for example, replace digits with others in scans. The replacement digits are layouted perfectly into the page, so the errors are hard to see. Sounds unbelievably insidious, but it's true. Drug prescriptions, construction plans, just anything can be affected.
"
by FL33TW00D
1 subcomments
- The guy who uncovered this, Sholto David, is basically just awesome?
Watch him cycle from Wales -> China in 90 days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdgHZPfivVA
This isn't his first fraud rodeo either. For his discovery of serious fraud by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2024, he received $2.6 million.
Be more like Sholto, exercise your free will!
by chromatin
1 subcomments
- We noticed this years ago when looking at -- IIRC -- ikaros antibodies. They were clearly faked. Lacking any sort of platform to gain attention we moved on to Abcam and our lab just sort of maintained a mental map of who not to purchase ANYTHING immuno- from.
- This is systematic fraud, and anyone trying those antibodies with falsified data will waste money and time. A lot of papers have been retracted for similar issues. Thermo Fisher is a major worldwide supplier of antibodies, so this has quite a big practical impact.
- The only reason I think biotech companies are not yet raising hell (and invoking the False Claims Act) is that Thermo Fisher's antibodies are already known to be notoriously bad, and everyone serious seems to have to validate everything themselves.
by noodlesUK
6 subcomments
- Exactly what is the "data" that's being shown here? Is it essentially some kind of marketing material showing "this sort of thing is what you should expect to see" or is it actually data or for compliance? If it's essentially marketing material or an instructional example that isn't meant to be representative it being magically clearer than real life doesn't seem like a great sin (unless it's being claimed it is representative). If it's something to be relied upon for compliance or as data to be used, that's pretty damming.
- https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/life-science/antibod...
> Moving forward, where an original image is not present or available, the Company will ensure that website users are informed that antibody images may have been optimized for presentation and clarity on the website.
wut. Bro if you don't have an original valiation image then the answer is not to say "oh we'll make sure we communicate that we're making up a random image" - it's to say you don't have the damn image. It's validation data wtf. It's not a pretty background image it's validation data if you don't have the data wtf are you "optimizing for presentation?" This faq is unreal - pure CYA except by someone who doesn't seem to know what they're trying to cover. If you've got cut and pasted/rotated bands that's just fake data. Not "optimized for presentation."
Yes labs should and usually do always validate new antibodies as well. It's a waste of time and taxpayer money for them to spend their time on bad antibodies they purchased based on fake validation data. And just fundamentally - don't make up validation data. If it's not there it's not there. What are you optimizing for presentation if there's no original!? What does that say about the rest of your process?
- There have been efforts to standardize antibody reagent testing that are sorely underfunded/undervalued, https://ycharos.com/ (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41596-024-01095-8)
- And this is just fraud that was done with incompetence, so easily caught. How much is done competently?
by DonsDiscountGas
2 subcomments
- Concerning but not really surprising. They offer about hundred thousand antibodies, a few hundred frauds is likely the tip of the iceberg.
> “Similar image” searches using Google Lens, Bing Images or DuckDuckGo betray hundreds more that we have yet to document
In my experience these would return any image of an antibody (edit) Western blot, not just the exactly matching background. Would be curious to hear others thoughts.
- I have no idea about this catalogue, however, looking at the article and how the image manipulation has happened - it looks very much like "repro" work back in the day.
Anything that large companies published in/as magazines, etc, back in the 80/90s first went to a design company. Then to a repro company for the "finishing touches" to make it look nice. Faces were touched up, photo artifacts was removed, everything was to look neat and tidy.
This looks so much like that. I wouldn't be surprised if Thermo Fisher still ran everything that is to be published through a marketing/repro cycle, who has tampered with this without realizing what it looks like.
It'll be interesting to see if any actual data has been changed, or just the presentation of the data.
by stebunovd
1 subcomments
- Apparently, the authors of the original paper haven't yet learned to use AI. Their successors, however, will almost certainly do a better job of it.
by LastTrain
2 subcomments
- Have the samples found so far, in general, been edited in a way to increase value or potential sales volume? Or are they just more pretty?
- My most generous interpretation would be: the marketing/website team didn't get the pictures in time from the respective teams, so without much thinking they edited some. Like those print-on-demand t-shirt websites that don't have real models wearing the real shirts but crappy photoshop composites.
- It's like 90% biomedicine papers are like this.
- why isn't their stock tanking
- Holy shmoly... I'm a biologist who has used Thermo antibodies before, and this is seriously disappointing to see.
by mklyachman
0 subcomment
- Reminds me a lot of the Schon scandal. TLDR is (now-obviously-a-fraud) generational physicist kept publishing breathtaking work about semiconductors, was caught because two of his error distributions were identical
by voidUpdate
0 subcomment
- Someone call bobbybroccoli, they've got a new video to make :P
- Western Blot is a hideous technique
by shevy-java
0 subcomment
- Quite shameful of Thermo Fisher. Therapies are based on
accuracy. Did they damage people by lying to them?
Also, how many other scientists just bought into that
and used this for their own "analysis"?
by meindnoch
1 subcomments
- What would happen if I drank these antibodies?
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