Category: Image Concerns

The rat with the big balls and the enormous penis – how Frontiers published a paper with botched AI-generated images

A review article with some obviously fake and non-scientific illustrations created by Artificial Intelligence (AI) was the talk on X (Twitter) today.

The figures in the paper were generated by the AI tool Midjourney, which generated some pretty, but nonsensical, illustrations with unreadable text.

It appears that neither the editor nor the two peer reviewers looked at the figures at all. The paper was peer-reviewed within a couple of weeks and published two days ago.

Dear readers, today I present you: the rat with the enormous family jewels and the diƨlocttal stem ells.

Tweet by Dr. Houldcroft discussing Figure 1 from the paper. Source: https://twitter.com/DrCJ_Houldcroft/status/1758111493181108363
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Problems in Harvard Medical School studies include images taken from other researchers’ papers and vendor websites

Over the last week I’ve been analyzing a set of papers from a research group at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which falls under the Harvard Medical School. The papers have the usual image problems we unfortunately encounter so often, such as duplicated photos of mice and overlapping Western blots.

But this set also includes a 2022 paper that appears to have copied/pasted several figure panels from other researchers and even from scientific vendors. Most of these problems were found with ImageTwin or reverse image searches.

Quick links [the spreadsheet and slide have been updated with an additional problem found on Feb 2, 2024]:

  • spreadsheet with the 28 29 papers found with PubPeer links [Excel file]
  • slide deck with the 58 59 image problems found in the 28 29 papers [PDF].
An image that appears to have been copied from a scientific seller’s website.
See: https://pubpeer.com/publications/FF5706E8826CB8D45481E942A679EE
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Concerns about 12 MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Pathology Papers

As I was doing a reverse-image search online on a set of papers, I saw an unrelated photo of a skin biopsy that appeared to contain repetitive areas. Even in the small Google Image Search thumbnail it was clear to me that something unexpected was going on in this image.

The discovery led me to a set of 12 papers from a research group at the Hematopathology Department of the Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, all with histopathology photos showing unexpected repetitive structures.

Source: Diverse landscape of dermatologic toxicities from small‐molecule inhibitor cancer therapy, DOI 10.1111/cup.14145. Can you spot the repetitive patterns?
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New Mendel University Rector found guilty of misconduct

In October 2020 and 2021 I reported a total of 21 papers published by Professor Vojtěch Adam that contained image problems. Vojtěch Adam is a professor in chemistry, and head of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, at Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic. He is a top Czech researcher in cancer and nanotechnology.

Today, a day before his appointment as the new Rector (Dean) of Mendel University, a committee released a report of their findings from an investigation into twelve of these papers. Their conclusions came as a big surprise.

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Blast in the Past: Image concerns in paper about comet that might have destroyed Tall el-Hammam

Tall el-Hammam was a Bronze-Age city in current Jordan that is a site of archaeological interest. It is believed by some to be the biblical city of Sodom. According to the Bible, Sodom and Gomorrah were cities full of sinners, which were destroyed by “sulfur and fire” sent by God.

A paper published last week in Scientific Reports now claims that Tall el-Hammam was destroyed by a “cosmic airburst”, perhaps by the impact of a meteorite or comet. The article provides evidence of melted pottery and plaster, shocked quartz, and diamond-like carbon, all suggesting the city was exposed to a sudden high-temperature event.

The paper got a lot of media attention. However, several images presented in the paper appear to contain repetitive elements, suggestive of cloning.

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Cassava Sciences: Of stocks and blots

A group of anonymous persons filed a Statement of Concern with the FDA regarding the integrity of research papers about Simufilam, an Alzheimer’s Disease treatment drug candidate developed by Cassava Sciences (Nasdaq: $SAVA). The petition raises concerns about Western blots and methodology. I took a look at the problematic photos included in the report, and agree with most of those concerns. I also found some additional problems.

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Concerns about Marseille’s IHUMI/AMU papers – Part 1

Last March, I shared my concerns about a paper from the IHU-Méditerranée Infection (IHUMI)/ Aix-Marseille University (AMU) claiming that Hydroxychloroquine in combination with Azithromycin could reduce coronavirus viral loads faster than no treatment.

Other papers by this group of researchers led by Professor Didier Raoult and/or his right-hand man Professor Eric Chabrière, also appear to contain problems, ranging from potentially duplicated images to ethical concerns.

In this blog post I have gathered the papers by the Raoult and Chabrière group that have image concerns. This post is not an accusation of misconduct, but a compilation of the potential problems found in 22 different papers by this group. I welcome the authors removing any concerns by providing the original figures.

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Northeastern University professor with 69 papers on PubPeer has resigned

A chemistry professor at Northeastern University in Boston, MA who has almost 70 papers flagged on PubPeer resigned yesterday, May 4, 2021.

On his blog For Better Science (Update May 5, at the bottom), Leonid Schneider shared an email from the Chair of the Department of Engineering, which states that Thomas J Webster has resigned from the university.

Webster has 69 papers flagged on PubPeer, mostly for concerns about image irregularities. I reported 59 to the journals and institution in March 2020.

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Similar images from the Technion

The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is the oldest university in Israel, ranking itself ‘among the world’s top science and technology research universities’.

It is here that a group of researchers appears to have been publishing remarkably similar photos for the last decade — or more.

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Forty five papers from Tianjin Medical University

This week I worked on a large set of papers from a research group at the Tianjin Life Science Research Center at Tianjin Medical University. The group, headed by Dr. Hua Tang and funded by many National Natural Science Foundation of China grants, has published a total of 113 PubMed-indexed papers.

However, a significant number of these — 45 as of today — have PubPeer posts in which concerns are raised about their figures.

hua-tang-45-papers-excelDownload
hua-tang-45-papers-pdfDownload
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