image manipulation – Retraction Watch

10 years ago, Elisabeth Bik published a preprint heard around the world

If you are at all familiar with scientific sleuthing, you’re familiar with Elisabeth Bik. She is quoted so often in the mainstream media it is probably difficult to imagine a time before her supersense for spotting similarities in images wasn’t making headlines.

But it was 10 years ago, on April 19, 2016, when she made her debut, when we covered her work screening more than 20,000 biomedical research papers containing western blots. She and coauthors Ferric Fang – a member of the board of directors of our parent nonprofit organization, The Center for Scientific Integrity, and a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle – and Arturo Casadevall, of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, posted the work as a preprint on bioRxiv.org and it appeared two months later in mBio.

The preprint was a shot across the bow for journals and publishers, and in the decade since, Bik has advised and mentored others doing similar work. In 2024, she won the Einstein Foundation Award for “identifying misconduct and potential fraud in scientific publications, highlighting science’s problems policing itself.” She donated the proceeds to The Center for Scientific Integrity to create a fund to help other sleuths do their work.

Bik spoke with us earlier this month about the paper, sleuthing and more. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

“Game-changer” breast cancer study retracted as Indiana researcher out of his post

A group of cancer researchers whose work has been questioned by sleuths has been hit with their third retraction in less than a year.

Today, Science Translational Medicine (STM) withdrew a 2021 breast cancer study by former Indiana University researcher Yujing Li and 12 other authors for image falsification. The immunotherapy study had been described by senior author Xiongbin Lu as a “game-changer” for triple negative breast cancer in a 2021 IU press release.

The paper’s April 15 retraction notice states that a joint research misconduct investigation involving Indiana University, The Ohio State University, and the University of Maryland, College Park determined “falsification occurred during creation of figure S9C.” The institutions alerted the American Association for the Advancement of Science of the misconduct late last year and requested the paper’s retraction, according to Meagan Phelan, a spokesperson for AAAS, which publishes STM.

Former Mount Sinai postdoc falsified images in grant updates, ORI says

The U.S. Office of Research Integrity has sanctioned a former postdoctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York for manipulating images in two grant updates and a manuscript.

Chen-Yeh “George” Ke committed research misconduct by intentionally falsifying images in an unpublished manuscript supported by federal funds and by reporting the fabricated results in two research performance progress reports, according to a summary published March 10 on the ORI website and to be published in the Federal Register.

Ke, now a manager at Level Biotechnology in Taiwan, according to LinkedIn, did not return messages seeking comment. A spokesperson from Mount Sinai acknowledged our message but did not comment before our deadline.

Heart researcher asked to attend remedial training after OSU misconduct finding, report reveals

In a move one research ethics expert called “odd,” a university asked one of its professors to attend a remedial integrity course — despite their “significant concerns” the training would have any impact following findings of misconduct.

In 2024, Retraction Watch covered the case of Govindasamy Ilangovan, then an associate professor of cardiovascular medicine at The Ohio State University. We reported at that time two of his papers were retracted from Heart and Circulatory Physiology at the request of the university, and that university officials had requested a third retraction. Thanks to a public records request, we now have access to the university’s 2023 final investigation report, which provides us much more information.

The released material shows a committee of the university’s research integrity officers found Ilangovan responsible for manipulating images in three papers. OSU redacted the total number of images in question, but the investigators deemed it “very concerning.”

Nature journal retracts two papers by immunology researchers for image duplication

A Nature journal has retracted a decades-old immunology paper that has been cited more than 1,000 times and, the author claims, spurred the development of new drugs.

The paper on antibody diversity appeared in Nature Immunology in 2002. The article, cited 1,016 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, is the most cited work for corresponding author Andrea Cerutti, a professor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in Spain.

The retraction comes on the heels of another retraction for Cerrutti, also for a paper in Nature Immunology. Both had been flagged on PubPeer for image issues. The authors maintain there was no misconduct.

Fabricated allegations of image manipulation baffle expert

*The fabricated claim about image manipulation raises a question: Why bother?*

Mike Rossner had never seen anything like it. At first, the anonymous comment on PubPeer, which claimed a lane of a western blot in a research paper had been duplicated, seemed nothing out of the ordinary to Rossner, who specializes in detecting image manipulation in biomedical research. The surprise came when he looked closer at the magnified images the commenter had provided to support their allegation.

While the two enlarged lanes in the anonymous comment were indeed identical to each other, close inspection of the original image from the paper, which the comment included, clearly showed two different lanes. It wasn’t hard to see how the fakery had been achieved: A single lane had been copied and pasted on top of an adjacent lane.

“I have looked at thousands of PubPeer allegations, and this is the first time I have come across what appear to be fabricated allegations,” Rossner told us.

Dana-Farber settles suit alleging image manipulation for $15 million

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has settled a lawsuit filed under the False Claims Act, admitting researchers used images and data that were “misrepresented and/or duplicated” in support of grant applications to the National Institutes of Health. Dana-Farber agreed to pay $15 million to settle the claim.

Sleuth Sholto David filed the claim in April 2024, about three months after he first posted about the allegations, which played a key role in Dana-Farber’s decision to retract or correct dozens of studies. Authors of some of those papers were among senior leaders of the institution, including president and CEO Laurie Glimcher.

As is typical in such cases, the complaint remained sealed while the Department of Justice investigated. As part of the agreement, David will receive $2.63 million, or 17.5 percent of the settlement.

Widespread image reuse, manipulation uncovered in animal studies of brain injury

One of the papers in the analysis contained a figure (bottom) found to have overlap with other work by the same author (top). Both papers have been retracted.
*Annotated images: PubPeer*

More than 200 papers on ways to prevent brain injury after a stroke contain problematic images, according to an analysis published today in PLOS Biology. Researchers found dozens of duplicated Western blots and reused images of tissues and cells purportedly showing different experimental conditions — both within a single paper and across separate publications.

As we reported last year, René Aquarius and Kim Wever, of the Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, first noticed these patterns in 2023 when they started working on a systematic review of animal studies in the field. They had wanted to identify promising interventions for preventing early brain injury following hemorrhagic stroke. Instead, their efforts turned into an audit of suspicious papers in their field.

Of the 608 studies they analyzed, more than 240, or 40 percent, contained problematic images. So far, 19 of those articles have been retracted and 55 corrected, mostly from the researchers’ efforts to alert journals and publishers about the issues. Almost 90 percent of the problematic papers had a corresponding author based in China, and many appeared in major journals such as Stroke, Brain Research and Molecular Neurobiology.

Exclusive: Journal to retract Alzheimer’s study after investigation finds misconduct

A journal says it will retract a 2019 paper on an Alzheimer’s treatment after an institutional investigation found research misconduct, according to emails seen by Retraction Watch. The move comes four years after another investigation by the same university uncovered image duplication in a different paper by a similar group of authors.

The paper, published in Biological Psychiatry, describes the potential of an apoE antagonist for treatment in Alzheimer’s disease.

A 2019 news release by the University of South Florida, home to several of the researchers involved in the study, called the work “promising.” Lead author Darrell Sawmiller, an assistant professor at USF, said the study represented “the first time … we have direct evidence” apoE “acts as an essential molecule” in the mechanisms leading to Alzheimer’s.

Second study using ‘Tin Man Syndrome’ X-ray under scrutiny following Retraction Watch inquiry

An altered image posted as an April Fool’s joke (left) was used as a figure (right) in a 2021 paper in *Scientific Programming*.

Just as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the first of 14 books in a series, our recent coverage of a paper on “Tin Man syndrome” seems to have sequels. After we wrote about a case study describing a man with his heart in his abdomen retracted for plagiarizing images from an April Fools’ joke, a reader flagged yet another paper using the same image.

As we previously reported, the authors of a “rare case report” appearing in Medicine claimed they had encountered a case of a man with asymptomatic “ectopia cordis interna,” in which his heart was in his abdomen. After the article was retracted, the corresponding author admitted the photos had been taken from a 2015 April Fools’ paper in Radiopaedia describing the same (fictitious) condition.

Following that coverage, a reader did a reverse image search of the X-ray in both papers and found a 2021 article from Scientific Programming, published by Wiley. The study recommends a non-conventional ventilation option for treating neonatal respiratory distress syndrome. The paper has been cited twice, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

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