{"id":3626,"date":"2026-05-29T22:09:47","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T22:09:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=3626"},"modified":"2026-05-29T22:09:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T22:09:47","slug":"d41586-026-01706-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/?p=3626","title":{"rendered":"Science sleuths uncover more than 100 suspicious images in Thermo Fisher antibody catalogue"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Illustration
\n

Y-shaped biomolecules called antibodies are scientific workhorse tools that researchers use to bind to and track specific proteins.<\/span>Credit: Nemes Laszlo\/Science Photo Library<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/picture><\/figure>\n

Catalogue entries for more than 100 antibodies<\/a> sold by the research services and supply company Thermo Fisher Scientific contain images that have apparently been manipulated, according to a pair of researchers who specialize in scientific integrity issues.<\/p>\n

On 28 May, the researchers documented their findings online in a database<\/a> that includes 127 \u201cproblematic images\u201d associated with the company\u2019s antibodies. Issues with the images \u2014 which are included in the catalogue to demonstrate antibodies\u2019 quality and performance \u2014 range from minor alterations that make the images look nicer to extensive changes that raise questions of data soundness. The effort was led by Reese Richardson, a metascientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

How to spot suspicious papers: a sleuthing guide for scientists<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/article>\n<\/p>\n

Science sleuths have uncovered numerous manipulations in images from published scientific papers<\/a>, but the latest discoveries are the first set of issues found in a vendor catalogue. Image alteration does not necessarily mean the underlying products are defective.<\/p>\n

Antibodies \u2014 specialized Y-shaped biomolecules \u2014 are a crucial tool for researchers in the biological sciences, who use them in experiments to bind to and track specific proteins. But for decades, scientists have complained about the quality and performance<\/a> of antibodies sourced from commercial suppliers, calling it a reliability crisis. A 2023 eLife<\/i> survey1<\/a><\/sup> of 614 commercial antibodies found that more than half of them did not work as specified.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe take this matter seriously and have initiated a comprehensive internal review,\u201d says Sandy Pound, the chief communications officer for Thermo Fisher, headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. \u201cMoving forward, where an original image is not present or available, we will ensure that website users are informed that antibody images may have been optimized for presentation and clarity on the website.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the sleuths posted their findings online, some researchers have been asking whether companies are not carefully validating their products and therefore contributing to the antibody reliability crisis<\/a>. \u201cI can\u2019t help but feel that at some level this does potentially indicate some shortcomings of the reagents themselves,\u201d says Jennifer Byrne, a cancer researcher at the University of Sydney in Australia.<\/p>\n

Others, though, say there is probably no link. \u201cMy answer would be no,\u201d says Carl Laflamme, lead scientist for Antibody Characterization through Open Science (YCharOS, pronounced \u2018Icarus\u2019), a programme that tests antibodies sold by commercial vendors, including Thermo Fisher. The antibody reliability crisis has existed for years and is not due to some apparently altered images on a company\u2019s website, says Laflamme, who is a cell biologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.<\/p>\n

A crisis of reliability<\/h2>\n

Last year, the global antibody market was valued at more than US$250 billion, with hundreds of companies collectively selling more than seven million antibodies. Thermo Fisher\u2019s catalogue alone includes more than 250,000 primary antibodies.<\/p>\n

To advertise and validate the performance of their antibodies, companies add supporting data to their catalogues. These data include western blots, which are generated using a technique that detects proteins in a mixture. The technique uses antibodies to effectively \u2018label\u2019 certain proteins by binding selectively to them. If an antibody performs as it should do, a protein shows up as a distinct band in the test. Less-selective, weak antibody binding can result in multiple bands or fuzzy blobs.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, Sholto David, a molecular biologist who specializes in research integrity issues based in Oxford, UK, was looking for western blots of a protein in a particular cell line when he happened upon an odd image in Thermo Fisher\u2019s catalogue. Multiple bands in a western blot had a \u201csquiggly\u201d shape that was \u201cdistinctive\u201d, David says. They looked identical, although appeared flipped or rotated. The same specific shape should not occur repeatedly in a western blot, he adds, which suggests that they were likely copied, transposed and pasted. David shared his findings on social-media platforms such as BlueSky<\/a>, but didn\u2019t investigate further. \u201cI just thought it was probably a one-off,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

\"Image
\n

This is the western blot from Thermo Fisher\u2019s catalogue that Sholto David spotted with distinctively shaped protein bands. He labelled it to show how one of the bands could have been duplicated and then flipped and transposed in three other places.<\/span>Credit: Sholto David adapted from Thermo Fisher Scientific<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/picture><\/figure>\n

Commenters on social media reacted, many voicing frustrations about the antibody reliability crisis. Working with antibodies is \u201cnotoriously complicated\u201d, Bryan Jones, a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, posted on BlueSky<\/a>. \u201cThis\u2026 this does not help. Do better Thermo Fisher.\u201d On the LabRats channel of the Reddit platform, one commenter wrote<\/a>: \u201cFull audit required. This can\u2019t be the only one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other researchers, including Richardson, joined that audit. Within a week, Richardson had identified 105 more apparently altered images. Some included duplicated protein bands. More than 20 had their backgrounds manually \u2018painted\u2019 to obscure streaks or flaws. Most striking, though, were 50 separate blots that had visually identical backgrounds. \u201cIt\u2019s just not possible that this many images all have the same background,\u201d Richardson says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Y-shaped biomolecules called antibodies are scientific workhorse tools that researchers use to bind to and track specific proteins.Credit: Nemes Laszlo\/Science Photo Library Catalogue entries for more than 100 antibodies sold by the research services and supply company Thermo Fisher Scientific contain images that have apparently been manipulated, according to a pair of researchers who specialize<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[2156,98,269,99,97,820],"class_list":["post-3626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-ethics","tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","tag-lab-life","tag-multidisciplinary","tag-science","tag-scientific-community"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owspakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}