[HN Gopher] How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been m...
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How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been manipulated?
Author : mhrmsn
Score : 418 points
Date : 2026-06-08 06:56 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (reeserichardson.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (reeserichardson.blog)
| DonsDiscountGas wrote:
| 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.
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| Without engaging in your point, small nitpick: These are images
| of Western blots[1], not PCR.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_blot
| boxed wrote:
| From the comments on the article by the author it looks more
| like 10% _so far_ and they haven 't systematically looked. That
| means ~10% if a probable floor of how much fraud there is.
| sgc wrote:
| Not according to the complete comment:
| More like 10%, but my search has not been systematic. I am
| mostly looking where I know I will find image issues based on
| image filenames and "Find Similar Images" searches.
|
| They are clearly saying they think this is likely above
| average.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| 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.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| > "This image is supposed to demonstrate that the antibody
| being sold works as intended. It is labeled as "Advanced
| Verification" data on Thermo Fisher's site"
|
| (links to https://www.thermofisher.com/uk/en/home/life-
| science/antibod...)
|
| I think it is technically marketing material, but if you have
| to fabricate your marketing material, that's not a good sign
| that the material is accurate. If I buy a car based on an
| advert where it shows the car going at 300 mph, and in real
| life it maxes out at 30mph, that's misleading advertising and
| something should be done about it.
|
| Given that "at Thermo Fisher, a single vial containing a 0.1 mL
| aliquot of antibody solution typically costs 400 to 500 USD",
| you'd want to have accurate marketing material before buying it
| noodlesUK wrote:
| It definitely isn't a good look but I'm not entirely sure
| where this lands on "the line drawing on my IKEA instruction
| manual doesn't look like the furniture" to "VW diesel
| emissions report" spectrum. I'd appreciate if any
| bioscientists in the audience could clear that up a bit.
| flobosg wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > This image is supposed to demonstrate that the antibody
| being sold works as intended. (...) Antibodies are near-
| ubiquitous but notoriously fickle laboratory reagents in
| biomedical research. For many applications, it is
| absolutely crucial that the antibodies that you use are
| selective (i.e., the antibody binds strongly to the target
| protein) and specific (i.e., the antibody binds to the
| protein of interest and little else).
|
| Antibodies showing a different picture (Western blot) than
| what is expected can drastically change the interpretation
| of the results as well as the conclusion of a study, for
| example. It may also encourage scientific fraud by authors
| by forcing them to unknowingly/coincidentally make to a
| blot image the same (or similar) fraudulent modifications
| performed by the vendor.
|
| Now I'm curious about how much of the blot photoshopping
| present in retracted papers can be attributed to these
| misleading verification data.
| raverbashing wrote:
| I would be more worried if the blotted area was different
| (the dark blob) - or if data in a datasheet (something
| like test specificity, level of detection, etc) was wrong
|
| Now, if while preparing the images they needed to do some
| editorial choices (or it is well possible a person in the
| editorial group was told to 'enhance the images' but
| wasn't aware of the details) because of limitations in
| doing the experiment then this is probably not a big deal
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| Do you work in biology?
|
| > would be more worried if the blotted area was different
| (the dark blob) - or if data in a datasheet (something
| like test specificity, level of detection, etc) was wrong
|
| These images are provided on the datasheet and form the
| basis for the level of detection / specificity claims
| flobosg wrote:
| > I would be more worried if the blotted area was
| different (the dark blob)
|
| Or if more than one blob is present (i.e. blobs at
| different molecular weights) for a supposedly selective
| and specific antibody that should show exactly one blob
| on the blot.
|
| > Now, if while preparing the images they needed to do
| some editorial choices
|
| Editorial choices on raw scientific data are a big no-no.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > Editorial choices on raw scientific data are a big no-
| no.
|
| I don't think you can find a picture in an article that
| hasn't been photoshopped in one way or another (which is
| mostly ok as long as it is not misleading)
|
| Edit: TF's reply is interesting
| https://www.thermofisher.com/es/es/home/life-
| science/antibod...
|
| Basically they say they are reviewing the images
| flobosg wrote:
| Usually, journals require raw, unmodified data to be
| deposited as supplementary information.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yes, as supplementary information
|
| (Also journals are usually more rigorous than marketing
| material)
| flobosg wrote:
| > Yes, as supplementary information
|
| Still part of the article.
| codedokode wrote:
| It is obvious that they edited the images to make blobs
| look shorter vertically. And in some cases, simply copy-
| pasted non-existing blobs.
| jhart99 wrote:
| This is 'used car salesman' levels of fraud on that scale.
| People rapidly acknowledge these antibodies work or they
| don't. There are websites with reviews of them. However in
| addition to getting ripped off for a few hundred bucks,
| these antibodies are generally produced by immunizing
| animals and by faking this data they are unnecessarily
| increasing the discomfort to these animals for a fraudulent
| reason. Look up the Santa Cruz antibody scandal for more of
| that.
| M95D wrote:
| Monoclonal antibodies _can 't_ be produced by animals.
| morvita wrote:
| Antibodies on this scale are not _produced_ by animals.
| The way these things work is an antibody that binds to a
| specific target will be _discovered_ by immunizing
| animals and then screening it's blood or lymph nodes for
| antibodies of interest. Once an antibody is found and
| commercialized, it is produced in large bioreactors of
| cell cultures engineered to produce large amounts of a
| particular protein (in this case the antibody).
|
| Source: work as a software dev at a company developing
| antibody drugs
| xyzzy99 wrote:
| It's worse than this -- it's often very difficult
| (expensive, time consuming, etc) to generate the sample
| being run on the gel, the impact of using a bad or
| misrepresented antibody are significantly higher than the
| cost of the antibodies alone.
| JR1427 wrote:
| Images like this show how specifically the antibody binds
| to the antigen. Generally, the ideal is to have very
| specific binding. As such, this type of image (Western
| blot) would only have single bands in any vertical lane.
| Any other bands show that the antibody is binding to other
| molecules.
|
| The evidence of painting out the background is likely
| someone cleaning up other bands, where the antibody has
| bound to something other than the intended target. So, they
| are making out the antibody is better than it actually is.
|
| Copy-pasted bands could be evidence of attempting to make a
| weak band look stronger, or even adding a band where one
| didn't exist - potentially the entire blot is fabricated.
|
| Either way, like someone else said, this is like
| fabricating parts of a data sheet.
|
| It doesn't excuse it, but like someone else said,
| scientists would never just trust an antibody they bought.
| They'd do their own tests. Labs will also share notes
| amongst each other, along the lines of "that antibody is
| bad, and also strongly binds XYZ. You should try this other
| one instead".
| JR1427 wrote:
| (forgot to say I'm a former post-doc in Cell Biology)
| warumdarum wrote:
| The closest we all will ever get to getting meta meta
| answers on HN.
| eig wrote:
| I'd treat this about the same as datasheets for mechanical or
| electrical parts.
|
| When I buy an electronic component as a regular consumer I
| expect the datasheet "typical" values to be accurate 90% of the
| time. I can imagine larger industrial customers would really
| raise a stink if it's worse than that. However, any critical
| components in my circuit must be verified and "binned", and
| that's on me.
| mbreese wrote:
| This is the thing. Yes, the marketing material is bad. But,
| no one in lab trusts an antibody just because of where you
| bought it. A new antibody always gets tested and validated
| before use.
|
| That is to say, this looks bad for Thermo Fisher. But, that's
| as far as the damage should go.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Why would you even generate fake pictures of this type?
| Don't you already have real ones? I mean, it's actually
| more work, unless you don't have the real ones.
| mbreese wrote:
| I'm not going to defend Fisher here. It was a stupid
| thing for someone to do.
|
| But unless you're in the field, you won't realize exactly
| how big ThermoFisher actually is. They are the major
| supplier of _everything_ for molecular biology work. From
| freezers (the Thermo part) to plates and pipettes
| (Fisher) to enzymes and antibodies. In many ways they are
| like Amazon. They sell everything. Some of it from
| outside companies, but a good deal of sales are from in-
| house brands. They could use their position as a reseller
| to know which products sell the best and with the highest
| margins.
|
| In a company of this size, it's easy to have one group
| feel pressure and cheat on running the gels to confirm
| results. Particularly when the real results are ambiguous
| or dodgy. It's not a good look, but I doubt it will put a
| dent in people from buying things (non-antibodies) from
| them.
| swader999 wrote:
| Would it be the same idea as an x ray of a critically welded
| part?
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| It is intentional fabrication: it requires a lot more brain
| cycles to surreptitiously produce false data, it would
| literally be less work to Prepare the Western blots and scan
| them. Its the stuff they sell, so they have ready access to the
| products and would be much easier and cost-effective to simply
| perform (if it worked). Only if the product is known not to
| perform as specified is there a profit incentive for
| fabricating such "evidence".
|
| It's more than just false advertising, it's criminal negligence
| wasting research attention, research time (repeating
| experiments to understand whats not working), naive nameplate
| quotations in the scientific literature also corrupts the
| scientific record (the author knows they are simply restating
| the nameplate specifications, but the reader may confuse it as
| a claim by the author).
|
| Wondering if its sort of OK because it might just be marketing
| material, think of how the tobacco and other lobbies manipulate
| the scientific record. I mean technically it is marketing
| material... if one cynically views the scientific record as a
| poster wall where the highest bidder is allowed to plaster
| their spam all over the place.
| persedes wrote:
| Doing a western blot right takes a bit of practice and there
| are a couple failure modes you need to watch out for. Stuff
| like background "noise", smears, drifts can make it hard to get
| binary decision out of your experiment. E.g. antibodies are
| usually very very specific, but they can have impurities,
| unspecific bindings to other proteins etc which make
| interpretation harder. If they remove these from the advertised
| images you'll have a hard time comparing your own results to
| them. ESPECIALLY if they remove whole bands from the gel
| picture, which imho should be very much verboten.
|
| Typically these catalogues have some numbers with regards to
| the antibodies binding affinity / impurities so you can have a
| general idea of what to expect, but having a clean image might
| mislead you into thinking that you did something wrong in your
| own setup. Seeing how wide spread it is, it's easy to imagine
| that their own lab is not run very "cleanly" and they have
| antibody contaminations in their gels, or issues with their own
| protocol that they're trying to edit out. Doubt that's the
| case, but it's really not a good look.
| jryb wrote:
| When you're deciding which antibodies to buy you'll look at
| these figures to get a sense of their quality. Antibodies
| aren't perfect and might bind proteins unrelated to the one you
| want to study. Depending on your application, some off-target
| binding might be acceptable, but usually it's not. Also, they
| might just be completely nonfunctional and bind nothing
| (perhaps due to missteps during manufacturing).
|
| So what this fraud does is convince you to give these
| antibodies a chance when you otherwise wouldn't have. You
| should validate them yourself and show they only bind your
| target before doing an experiment, but now you're just wasting
| time and money evaluating something that's guaranteed to fail.
|
| Antibodies are notoriously unreliable, so you might have to
| give two or three vendors a try before you get one that works.
| Now I'm starting to wonder how much of that reputation is due
| to fraud and not just nature.
| arcade79 wrote:
| 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.
| pu_pe wrote:
| No marketing or design company would duplicate a band from
| another experiment (taking care to rotate it to make it look
| different nonetheless). Even in that unlikely scenario, Thermo
| Fisher is still responsible for the scientific data they
| publish.
| rcxdude wrote:
| The background painting could maybe be explained like this
| (depending on what was hidden), but I don't think the
| duplicated blobs have a good explanation, especially because
| some were rotated to try to hide the manipulation.
| codedokode wrote:
| I disagree. If you look at the photos the painting used to make
| black blobs shorter. As I understand, black blob vertical
| position is the weight of a molecule, and they want to hide the
| fact that there are heavier or lighter molecules. So originally
| there was a long blob, and they made it look shorter.
| 20k wrote:
| In some of the experiments, the same random noise background
| exists with different black blobs superimposed at where you
| expect the correct value to be. Ie they took a fixed realistic-
| ish looking background, and drew in the 'correct' values
|
| Its hard to argue that that isn't fraud as a result. It isn't
| touching up existing data, its fully fabricating data
| pu_pe wrote:
| 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.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| 1. Obviously unethical and fraudulent behavior.
|
| 2. It should be determined whether the fraud was just the
| display image (imagine a sales manager making a bad call when
| images are not available) or involved the underlying research
| (more systemic and worrying).
|
| 3. It would be interesting to examine occurrence of faked
| images along with apparent unreliability/irreproducibility of
| research that has used those products.
| gopher_space wrote:
| There aren't any display images in science.
|
| Manipulating images for presentation is an automated process
| unless you're ripping someone off. The changes would be
| _uniform_ across whole sets.
|
| The problem with trying to pass off a fake image is that you
| need to be more knowledgeable in each dimension of the effort
| than the recipients are in just one. If anyone remembers the
| folks identifying East German video from background hum it's
| kind of like that.
| adampunk wrote:
| "a sales manager making a bad call when images are not
| available"
|
| It seems nearly impossible to imagine that to be the case.
| I'd have to disregard the kinds of manipulation entirely.
| What sales manager would create a whole western block
| sequence by copying, rotating, and flipping a single element?
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Someone else here mentioned proofers, people that prepare
| marketing materials, as a potential source. I am in no way
| defending Thermo here. I just meant that the extend of the
| fraud needs to be determined, from some non-scientist
| making a decision for short term profits, frustrated that
| no one saved the picture, or because the pictures showed
| how ugly the western blots actually are, versus wholesale
| fabrication of the research from the bottom up.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| > people that prepare marketing materials, as a potential
| source
|
| Scientific advertising and marketing is a small,
| specialized field, done by people with fairly solid
| technical backgrounds (we produce a whole lot of advanced
| STEM degrees, there's plenty of folks available with this
| sort of background).
|
| So I just want to be crystal, crystal clear here: there's
| _no way in hell_ anyone involved in this pipeline should
| have any confusion as to whether "improving" gel
| photographs by painting out details and/or copying and
| pasting blots is fraud. "Proofer" or not.
| eig wrote:
| 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.
| chromatin wrote:
| 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.
| LastTrain wrote:
| 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?
| BoredPositron wrote:
| Some are just completely fabricated so it's hard to say if they
| have equivalent uglier images with real data...
| Faaak wrote:
| More pretty, which would signify that the sample has less
| impurities -> better value
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Someone call bobbybroccoli, they've got a new video to make :P
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| And this is just fraud that was done with incompetence, so easily
| caught. How much is done competently?
| cing wrote:
| 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)
| fp64 wrote:
| 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.
| meindnoch wrote:
| What would happen if I drank these antibodies?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Probably not very much, same as if you ate agar, grass, a
| pencil eraser (rubber), or candle wax. But why would you?
| antonvs wrote:
| You'd become a new character in the MCU: ImmuneMan
| analog31 wrote:
| An antibody is a protein. The acid in your stomach will break
| down the molecules into their constituent amino acids, which
| would be absorbed into your bloodstream. The chance that the
| antibody would have any biological effect before being broken
| down is slim. Still there are other reasons for not drinking it
| such as whatever else is in the solution such as preservatives
| etc.
| meindnoch wrote:
| What if I injected it?
| analog31 wrote:
| Your insurance will probably deny it, and you'll get a
| bill. ;-)
|
| My guess is possibly not much, but it could vary greatly
| from one antibody to another. If the antibody isn't
| specific to any human protein, then it'll probably end up
| in your pee eventually. On the other hand, there are
| therapeutic proteins that are given by injection, so I
| could hardly suggest that it's intrinsically safe. And
| antibodies made for medicinal research stand a good chance
| of existing because of possible human interaction.
| biofox wrote:
| Holy shmoly... I'm a biologist who has used Thermo antibodies
| before, and this is seriously disappointing to see.
| mklyachman wrote:
| 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
| shevy-java wrote:
| 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"?
| vikramkr wrote:
| 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?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > 6. Did Thermo Fisher manipulate or fabricate antibody data?
|
| > No.
|
| Listen to these guys. What assholes.
| atlas1j wrote:
| 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. "
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| And now practically every phone camera "enhances" the image via
| AI that might invent details. Most famously Samsung adding
| details to photos of the moon.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I'm scared that the "AI" marketing will make it much harder
| convincing non-technical coworkers and execs that "garbage
| in, garbage out" is a real concept, that not all "data" is
| good, and that our systems need to keep track of which kind
| is going where.
|
| "All data is useful, the more the better! Just put it all
| into the AI and it'll sort it out."
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Is this really pervasive? E.g. To my knowledge the "AI"
| enhancement that iPhones do automatically is limited to the
| usual sorts of post-processing for contrast, color, etc.
| There is an AI editing mode that leans more into generative
| fill capability that would be analogous to the Samsung
| incident but I don't think it's happening automatically to
| every photo you take.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| I still remember Samsung faking images when using digital
| zoom...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-
| moo...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yes, I believe that is what the person I replied to was
| referring to specifically.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Nice! Just because you're the top comment, I feel it is helpful
| to quick readers to point out that it has 0 to do with what
| happened here. :)
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I dealt with this where our fax number had a 6 in it and it
| would sometimes get changed into an 8, which happened to be a
| valid fax number for another company, ugh. And this was
| confidential info too...
|
| Always a funny phone call when they insist they sent it to the
| number on the cover page we sent and then they send us a copy
| and xerox made it wrong.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Is this with JBIG2? I remember reading about JBIG2 also used in
| the FORCEDENTRY zero click exploit that which was (?) used in
| the Pegasus spyware. Unrelated tidbit, I guess.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The Xerox problem was with image compression. The compressor
| would look at an incoming block, decide it was similar enough
| to one already noted and reuse the existing token. With small
| fonts and similar characters one difference was within the
| tolerance and after seeing something like 888 it could then
| decide 8B8 was the same thing. As it could only happen when
| things lined up perfectly the alterations would also be lined
| up perfectly.
| twbarr wrote:
| Yes, this algorithm is called JBIG2.
| vessenes wrote:
| Yes.
| FL33TW00D wrote:
| 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!
| morley wrote:
| I didn't realize whistleblowers could recover part of fraud
| settlements:
|
| > The civil settlement includes the resolution of claims
| brought under the qui tam or whistleblower provisions of the
| False Claims Act by Sholto David. Under those provisions, a
| private party can file an action on behalf of the United States
| and receive a portion of any recovery. David will receive
| $2,625,000 under today's settlement.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/dana-farber-cancer-institute-...
| stevehawk wrote:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/marine-sarah-
| fei...
|
| $40m for this person in the US
| stronglikedan wrote:
| worth it for a lifetime of looking over your shoulder?
| maybe...
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| If you believe the conspiracy theories, that Boeing
| whistleblower "took his own life" before testimony and
| any potential payout.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Short sellers have become the biggest SEC whistleblowers if
| they discover suspected fraud - it's a more lucrative and
| less risky than shorting:
|
| https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2d7d14lmtfwc1e.
| ..
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Gather round kids and grab your muskets. The Qui Tam Clan
| ain't nuthin to fuk wit.
| d--b wrote:
| Are you sure?
|
| Did he donate the money away? In the video you sent, he seems
| quite anxious about his nightly budget.
|
| EDIT: ah it seems his trip was before that
| stivatron wrote:
| Western Blot is a hideous technique
| feverzsj wrote:
| It's like 90% biomedicine papers are like this.
| stebunovd wrote:
| 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.
| mjg59 wrote:
| What paper? This is about several hundred datasheets.
| airstrike wrote:
| why isn't their stock tanking
| 0xWTF wrote:
| I have already forwarded this to a number of senior pathologists
| and industry leaders. People who are in charge of either
| developing these things or validating them for clinical use.
| We'll see what they say. But I suspect a great many of them will
| actually continue using the implicated products because they
| passed clinical validation at many institutions. TBD.
| gwerbret wrote:
| Unfortunately, the equipment and reagent vendors in the very
| unregulated life sciences/biomedical research world constitute a
| racket. Serial buyouts over the last 10 - 15 years have led to a
| ridiculous degree of consolidation -- the sort that wouldn't fly
| in a regulated industry, or even one in which regulators are
| paying any attention at all -- so it's now dominated by two
| players: Merck (through its MilliporeSigma arm), and Thermo
| Fisher. The existence of this cartel means that they can
| essentially get away with murder, both from a fraud angle (which
| is exactly what the Western blot manipulation is) and by fixing
| prices to whatever degree they please.
|
| Also unfortunately, biomedical scientists are not known for their
| tendency to collaborate to face a mutual enemy (the mild pushback
| against the Elsevier/Springer Nature publishing cartel has come
| less from scientists and more from university systems whose
| libraries have to foot most of the bills). From their
| perspective, it's "What am I gonna do? Raise my own antibodies?
| Start blowing my own glassware?" So they grimace and bear it.
|
| For reference, here's how their workflow for research antibodies
| goes (and it's been like this for decades):
|
| 1. Produce an antibody the research world needs. Do no QA, that's
| expensive and unnecessary.
|
| 2. Claim with usually no evidence (and apparently by forging
| evidence) that the antibody works in certain applications.
|
| 3. Let researchers buy the antibody and do your QA for you. Even
| if the antibody doesn't work, only a tiny percentage of buyers
| will go to the effort of getting a refund.
|
| 4. Profit. Keep selling the antibody even when the rare scientist
| with time on their hands demonstrates beyond doubt that your
| antibody clearly doesn't work.
|
| 5. When sales start drying up because enough people are catching
| up to the scam, discontinue the antibody. Give no explanation.
|
| 6. Repeat from 1.
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