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Sholto David

@sholtodavid.bsky.social
1.7K followers 249 following 367 posts
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Today I'm posting a new video about a team of ophthalmology researchers in Germany who scribbled on their figures! t.co/X2U6zCw9pn
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Fabiënne ✍️ @fabienne1972.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
My pleasure 😘
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Is anyone good at these? Is this photo from a recent Frontiers in Medicine case report AI generated/modified? Anything you can point to specifically? (10.3389/fmed.2026.1915046)
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Today I'm posting a video about Neurodigitech LLC which has provided clearly photoshopped neurons to research teams that published these images in Nature, JBC, and more. A year after I uncovered this only one paper has been corrected. It's in Frontiers. youtu.be/4g_1_AWOVpI
youtu.be
Faked Images of Neurons in Major Journals
YouTube video by Sholto David
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Are these p values reasonable? They seem very small. Quote: "One-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s multiple comparison test is presented based on single measurements averaged for each group. P values are indicated." - www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
A correction to a 2026 Nature paper. This is PubPeer working quite well (in my view at least). I spotted the error and the authors corrected the paper and replied on PubPeer to update. If I had to complain I would rather the correction referenced the PubPeer comment. pubpeer.com/publications...
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
A new video on my YouTube Channel - This one is about a 2013 Nature Neuroscience paper with extensive image manipulation. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R6V...
youtube.com
Image Fraud in Nature Neuroscience
YouTube video by Sholto David
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Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...
mathandai.org
Declaration — Math and AI
Read the declaration and add your name.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Retracted today from Scientific Reports following my comments. Graphene oxide against cancer cells. The unlikely collaboration involved authors from Ethiopia, Chile, India, China, and South Korea. Two of the diagrams were easily identifiable as AI slop.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Today I'm posting a new blog! Nearly two hundred papers have muddled the names for different proteins and recorded using the wrong antibody for a range of experiments. This time it's PERK vs. p-ERK. Including researchers from Harvard, the Mayo Clinic, and more. sholto.substack.com/p/perk-vs-p-...
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Alan McElligott @amcell.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Well done @peerj.bsky.social peerj.com/articles/214... cc @retractionwatch.com
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Catching up with MDPI corrections. A published meta-analysis accidentally compared body fat in the probiotic group to weight in the control group. Unsurprisingly comparing two different variables resulted in an obviously wrong forest plot. The authors did correct this after I spotted it.
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Marc Veldhoen @marcveld.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Sleuth identifies dozens of studies that used the wrong antibody The case is the latest example of a scientific workhorse being misused in experiments. www.nature.com/artic... 1/2
nature.com
Sleuth identifies dozens of studies that used the wrong antibody
Nature - The case is the latest example of a scientific workhorse being misused in experiments.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
What will work for pancreatic cancer? Revolution Medicines and their BORING chemistry (YUCK!) or MD Anderson and Lorenzo Cohen with actual MAGIC!
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Good to see that Lorenzo Cohen is still wasting MD Anderson's NIH money on psychic interventions, all peer reviewed of course. From the Materials and Methods: "Briefly, the therapist rapidly cycles through images or symbols of future events they want to have or experience."
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Nick Brown @steamtraen.eu · 22/08/2026
This makes for uncomfortable reading, but I think it's important. bestbehavior.substack.com/p/eugenicist
bestbehavior.substack.com
You're probably a eugenicist
Let me start this essay with a love story.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Sleuth identifies dozens of studies that used the wrong antibody
The case is the latest example of a scientific workhorse being misused in experiments.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Silly correction at Cell Death & Disease. Authors elected to correct just one of these images after accepting that there was an overlapping area, but disputed the other obviously cloned parts. Who accepted the correction at Springer Nature? Sometimes it feels like there are no adults in the loop.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
For those who follow my cycling videos! youtu.be/v8MhgvU1siE
youtu.be
Cycling From Oxford to Arbroath: 800 km Across the UK
YouTube video by Sholto David
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Some interesting cheating in a 2026 Nature paper. Similar areas in this fluorescence measurement are unexpected, these tend to be quite noisy. Source data confirms sections have been copied and pasted 👇
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Always funny to see in a published paper. Forgot to click and drag the boxes the whole way when doing a t-test in Excel. pubpeer.com/publications...
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
A tool used to rephrase plagiarised text changed "final solution" to "mass killing of an ethnic group" in a chemistry paper. Now retracted thanks to a PubPeer user who spotted this. pubpeer.com/publications...
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Retraction Watch @retractionwatch.com · 01/08/2026
A lawsuit filed under the U.S. False Claims Act accuses Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Informa of perpetrating a decade-long scheme to defraud the government by charging exorbitant article processing charges.
retractionwatch.com
Federal lawsuit accuses four major publishers of extorting article processing charges
iStock A lawsuit filed under the U.S. False Claims Act accuses four major publishers of perpetrating a decade-long scheme to defraud the government by charging exorbitant article processing charges…
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Retraction Watch @retractionwatch.com · 27/07/2026
After Arday enlisted Carter-Ruck, one of the United Kingdom’s leading defamation law firms, to send @timeshighered.bsky.social a letter, the publication spiked the story, according to three sources who spoke to Retraction Watch.
retractionwatch.com
Exclusive: News outlet killed story on plagiarism allegations after Cambridge prof hired law firm
Jason Arday In September 2025, Times Higher Education had a bombshell story in the works: A star sociology professor at the University of Cambridge had allegedly plagiarized parts of his Ph.D. thes…
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Today I'm posting a blog about another ridiculous antibody blunder. Dozens of papers in the senescence and ageing field have mistakenly used an antibody for E. coli β-galactosidase when trying to stain for the human protein with the same name. forbetterscience.com/2026/07/21/d...
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Amusing spelling mistake in the title... Makes it sound quite ominous! And probably hard to search.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
www.chemistryworld.com/news/thermo-...
chemistryworld.com
Thermo Fisher antibody data manipulation is a breach of trust, say researchers
Science sleuths say the problem is impacting research progress and Thermo's response falls short
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Paul Jenkins @pjenkinslab.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Nice article from The Scientist about the antibody "problem". www.the-scientist.com/altered-anti... @reeserichardson.bsky.social @sholtodavid.bsky.social @jwoodgett.bsky.social @mbonini.bsky.social @bwjones.bsky.social
the-scientist.com
Altered Antibody Validation Data on Vendor Sites Alarms Researchers | The Scientist
After several examples of undisclosed alterations in reagent suppliers’ antibody catalogues surfaced, researchers call for transparency to rebuild trust.
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Neuroskeptic @neuroskeptic.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Can bees spontaneously solve problems - and what does "spontaneously" mean? An interesting @pubpeer.com discussion. pubpeer.com/publications...
pubpeer.com
PubPeer - Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees
There are comments on PubPeer for publication: Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees (2026)
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
AEC staining. Something looks off to me, any thoughts? 10.1152/ajplung.00362.2025
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Elisabeth Bik @elisabethbik.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Is science self-correcting? Not in this Elsevier journal. Two 'five-second-retractions' were never retracted, even though I reported them to the journal in 2015. Eleven years later.... nothing. My latest blog post: scienceintegritydigest.com/2026/06/24/i...
scienceintegritydigest.com
Is science self-correcting? Not in this Elsevier journal.
Around 2014-2015, I screened 20,000 biomedical articles for image duplication in 2014-2015. About 4% of those papers, 782 to be exact, contained inappropriate duplications. Together with my coautho…
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Scale bar: 50 pixels - Not sure that's as helpful as the authors imagined it would be. 10.1016/j.jtumed.2025.12.008
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Leonid Schneider @forbetterscience.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Lab leaks are scientifically impossible. In all of history of pathogen research, there hasn't been even a single lab leak. Besides, several raccoon dogs and a pangolin already admitted, in writing, to have smuggled the virus to Wuhan.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
706 days? In a freezer, perhaps 😋 I don't like to gang up on poor @weldeiry.bsky.social but this one does need a source. Grokipedia references this claim which circles back to this slide deck, so it's an urgent situation!
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
This is a ridiculous paper in the category of "computational bestiary" but Fig. 1 is wonderful: fcampelo.github.io/EC-Bestiary/
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Recently published "Expert Review of Clinical Immunology": A so called "scattered plot", which plots something against nothing in particular. A diagram that looks convincing but is back to front; assigning low COVID-19 mortality to western countries. 10.1080/1744666X.2026.2664060
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
@smutclyde.bsky.social discusses the recycling of kaggle datasets into the scientific literature. A paper from Scientific Reports used the "eye disease data set" which includes only a few hundred images, including animals, diagrams, and people in sunglasses. forbetterscience.com/2026/06/09/b...
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
I am sending an open letter to Thermo Fisher. Their response to my response to their manipulated western blot is bullying and petty. Yes, this western blot really is manipulated, it is unfair on me to say otherwise. I don't make those accusations lightly, and I have a (minor) reputation to defend.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
This is a very compelling animation and another good thread from @reeserichardson.bsky.social. I understand these are catalogue images... but size matters. A lot of energy is wasted on troubleshooting experiments. Thermo doing stuff like this will not help!
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Today I'm posting a new blog about an astonishing scientific own goal. Hundreds of papers have reported using a totally wrong antibody to investigate the tumor suppressor p16. This mistake has happened because scientists have muddled the names of two proteins. forbetterscience.com/2026/06/02/m...
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Rick Brewster @rickbrew.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
I GOT THE DOMAIN! I FINALLY GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!1 🥳🎉 Paint​.NET is now at paint.net! Well, it will be just as soon as I push all the buttons to migrate content and set up redirects from getpaint​.net etc. For now it's just a "hey go here" redirect page.
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Unreliable and underperforming antibodies are a longstanding problem, so while the reveal of apparently manipulated antibody data in Thermo Fisher's catalog was a shock, the frustration it sparked among many researchers is perhaps no surprise. My reporting:
nature.com
Science sleuths uncover more than 100 suspicious images in Thermo Fisher antibody catalogue
Scientists have long worried about the reliability of commercial antibodies, and the latest findings have sparked fresh concerns.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
Reluctant to post too much about this but I did want to share my favourite finding from the dozens of manipulated or duplicated ThermoFisher verification blots. This one has a giant square. Enjoy!
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Reese Richardson @reeserichardson.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
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...
reeserichardson.blog
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
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Leonid Schneider @forbetterscience.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
By @arbitraryeffect.bsky.social
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Cheshire @thatsregrettab1.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
“At Thermo Fisher, consistency is more than a goal.”
Satirical logo for Thermo Fisher.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Earlier this week I posted an example of a fake western blot provided by ThermoFisher to demonstrate the validity of a p53 antibody. I considered it an amusing curiosity. In fact Thermo Fisher Scientific has systematically manipulated antibody validation data!
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Reese Richardson @reeserichardson.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
@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...
Apparent manipulation in the antibody verification data in Thermo Fisher's online catalog
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Johan Duchêne @johanduchene.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
@sholtodavid.bsky.social Have you seen this WB from ThermoFisher? Still anti-p53 antibody, but another clone (MA-12648 instead MA5-12557). It also looks like that the band in lane 3 was rotated and reused in lane 4. Moreover, it seems that same band was used for the 2 different clones.
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
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.
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