I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇
this line is now also apparently being employed for physical poster presentations. Unclear how recently this has started, but the hair under this sticker suggests a rather hasty application bsky.app/profile/poph...
Thermo Fisher now has a page up in response to our observations. They flatly deny that images were manipulated or fabricated while repeating that images were "optimized for presentation and clarity on the website", no lie, six times. www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/l...
thermofisher.com
Reese Richardson@reeserichardson.bsky.social · 2mo agoThe Thermo Fisher situation keeps getting worse. We've now collected 450+ problematic images presented as verification data in TF's antibody catalog. This includes: 🖌️ Dozens more images with duplications or painting 🖨️ Hundreds of blots that all share the same background (behold slideshow below)
TL;DR: We've identified more than 100 cases of apparent manipulation in Thermo Fisher Scientific's antibody verification data. @sholtodavid.bsky.social @johanduchene.bsky.social reeserichardson.blog/2026/05/28/h...
How much of Thermo Fisher’s antibody data has been manipulated?
We’ve documented more than 100 instances of apparent data manipulation in Thermo’s catalog
reeserichardson.blog
@johanduchene.bsky.social @sholtodavid.bsky.social Spent the last hour looking, found ten more apparently manipulated Western blots in Thermo Fisher's antibody verification data (across eight different catalogued products). Thread below. www.thermofisher.com/antibody/pro...
Surprised to discover that Thermo Fisher appears to show a fake western blot for the validation of one of their p53 antibodies. I've added a diagram to show the very similar bands. This does not appear to be one of the "published figures" but their own internal data.
If I claimed this liquid-to-solid phase transition assay on a pure protein in vitro predicts the same transition to happen in cells, what counterarguments would you raise? Would the same counterarguments apply to a liquid-to-liquid phase transition assay on the same pure protein in vitro?
I find this plugin very useful to have installed. Several times it has stopped me from citing a paper that I did not realize was retracted. Every scientist should use it!
Jay Patel@infotainment.bsky.social · 9mo agoThe browser extension and Zotero plugin can be nice to connect to PubPeer pages quickly to view critical commentaries. Chrome: chromewebstore.google.com/detail/pubpe... Firefox: addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo... Zotero plug-in: github.com/PubPeerFound...
Neat trick if you polycolonal ab's suck. Incubate them with fixed cells with a KO of your protein of interest, then spin. Protocol here: www.med.upenn.edu/markslab/ass... I was amazed how well it worked on first try (I'm sure that I can completely eliminate unspecific bands) #WesternBlot #cellsky
Peer review has a weakness in that it is not in one's interest to upset colleagues by pointing out their mistakes, as upset peers may write negative reviews in the future. But setting the record straight is an essential part of science, and an ever-self-congratulating field is prone to get stuck.
Today, our article "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly" is finally published in PNAS. I hope that it proves to be a wake-up-call for the whole scientific community. reeserichardson.blog/2025/08/04/a...
A do-or-die moment for the scientific enterprise
Reflecting on our paper “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly”
reeserichardson.blog
📢 We’re a coalition of former staff members who saw too much, spoke up against a tyrant administrator and were pushed out. Follow us and stay tuned to learn how this department has deteriorated over the last few years and how it’s recently getting worse & worse.
Big news in the publishing landscape of 🇨🇭 The Swiss National Science Foundation will no longer support publications in special issues. This is to fight the unsustainable models pushed by publishing houses like MDPI or Frontiers. There is another way. Go Diamond! 💎💎💎💎💎💎💎 www.snf.ch/en/g2ICvujLD...
The SNSF is no longer funding Open Access articles in special issues
Large increase, inconsistent processes: from February 2024, the SNSF will no longer fund Open Access articles in special issues.
snf.ch
Big news from Finnish publication forum. Almost all MDPI and Frontiers journals will be downgraded to level 0 and thus are not considered as properly peer reviewed trustworthy scientific journals. julkaisufoorumi.fi/en/news/chan...
Changes to the classification
julkaisufoorumi.fi
It's now possible to win $1000 for making a PubPeer comment!🤑
PubPeer@pubpeer.com · 2y agoWe’re encouraging meaningful commentary with $1,000 rewards for selected PubPeer comments. bsky.app/profile/pubp... Now imagine if @hhmi.bsky.social , NIH, NSF, etc also awarded outstanding public reviews. These could boost careers and CVs while building a vital layer of scientific evaluation.
Impossible😂 But why the hell submitting there??? Publishing in MDPI may be the best way to kill a PhD students career before it even started: predatoryreports.org/news/f/list-... t.co/1NaeJXfSwx
predatoryreports.org
Many years ago I was asked to join the editorial board of the journal Electrochem that was about to start. It sounded very interesting, since OA was just coming in and we were trying to move away from elsevier and other subscription journals. 1/
Sam@ddr-sam.bsky.social · 2y agoMore evidence (as if it was needed) that Frontiers and MDPI do not peer review properly, have predatory characteristics and should be avoided like the plague
Academic fraud is rife with #china at the forefront. As I write in the Spectator, journals are waking up to reality of fake science thanks to dogged detective work of @elisabethbik.bsky.social worthy winner of @einsteinberlin.bsky.social award #fraud #science www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-...
The paper mills helping China commit scientific fraud
In one Chinese research paper into prostate cancer, 50 per cent of the patients named were women – who do not have prostate glands.
spectator.co.uk
More evidence (as if it was needed) that Frontiers and MDPI do not peer review properly, have predatory characteristics and should be avoided like the plague
Mark A. Hanson@hansonmark.bsky.social · 2y agoThe strain on scientific publishing: we set out to characterise the remarkable growth of the scientific literature in the last few years, in spite of declining growth in total scientists. What is going on? direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... A 🧵 1/n #AcademicSky #PhDchat #ScientificPublishing #SciPub
Beware using FLAG tags in SUMOylation studies, as the lysines in the DYKDDDDK sequence can be SUMOylated according to this report... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
An Atypical Mechanism of SUMOylation of Neurofibromin SecPH Domain Provides New Insights into SUMOylation Site Selection
Neurofibromin (Nf1) is a giant multidomain protein encoded by the tumour-suppressor gene NF1. NF1 is mutated in a common genetic disease, neurofibroma…
sciencedirect.com
This study finds that at least N=8-12 RNA-seq experiments are required to avoid a >50% false positive rate www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Optimizing murine sample sizes for RNA-seq studies revealed from large-scale comparative analysis
Determining the appropriate sample size (N) for comparative biological experiments is critical for obtaining reliable results. In order to determine the N, the usual approach is to perform a power cal...
biorxiv.org
Worth bearing in mind! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Prevalence of errors in lab-made plasmids across the globe
Plasmids are indispensable in life sciences research and therapeutics development. Currently, most labs custom-build their plasmids. As yet, no systematic data on the quality of lab-made plasmids exis...
biorxiv.org
Hello Bluesky, looking forward to interesting and stimulating science here!