Category: Image Forensics Tools

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
Continue reading “Problems in Harvard Medical School studies include images taken from other researchers’ papers and vendor websites”

No Manipulation Was Detected in This Image

This post is not an accusation of misconduct.

In a previous post, I wrote about the high percentage of image concerns in papers published in Oncotarget, an Open Access journal. PubPeer, the post-publication peer review website contains many posts about Oncotarget papers flagged by me and other image duplication detectives.

Instead of reflecting on these concerns and improving their peer review and quality control process, Oncotarget apparently has decided to try to prove that these concerns are not real.

Continue reading “No Manipulation Was Detected in This Image”