Very glad to see this. The Stanford Daily did a great job reporting this. Reposting a comment that I found instructive from the discussion on this piece [1]. About the Genentech report [2] which made MTL look very very bad.
```
APersonWhoCanRead 3 months ago
It seems to me that the linked report goes as close as possible to accusing MTL of fraud as one could hope given that it's coming from Genentech lawyers that are trying to keep the company out of trouble:
"In order to assess whether the 2009 Nature paper contains duplicate images, the diligence team consulted an independent, outside expert who specializes in detecting image manipulations in scientific publications. This expert concluded that two sets of figures, Figures 1d and 5e and Supplementary Figures 9c and 17c, include duplicate images. The expert also concluded that a Western blot panel for Caspase 6 in Supplementary Figure 6d appears to include a composite of two images. We have not determined how these anomalies occurred."
"Genentech scientists and research associates had difficulty reproducing certain results reported in the 2009 Nature paper, in particular, the binding interaction between DR6 and N-APP (the N-terminal portion of APP). Prior to publication of the paper, employees other than the authors performed binding experiments that showed inconsistent results – sometimes binding between DR6 and N-APP was detected, and other times, it was not. Some of the employees who performed those experiments attributed the inconsistent results to variability in the purity and quality of the reagents used."
--> Clearly, some employees attributed the inconsistent results differently - I'm guessing as fraud.
--> These determinations were made before the paper, which contained fabricated data (c.f. above), was published. Clearly, the first author would have been told, and most likely also MTL.
"Senior leaders at Genentech including Dr. Tessier-Lavigne knew of the inconsistent binding results, and there was uncertainty and speculation within the Genentech Research organization about why the binding interaction between DR6 and N-APP could not be reliably reproduced or confirmed."
"Also following Dr. Tessier-Lavigne’s departure, one senior leader in gRED urged that the 2009 Nature paper should be retracted or corrected in light of the inconsistent binding results. Other senior leaders recognized at the time that this was an action only Dr. Tessier-Lavigne or another co-author could take with the journal."
--> MTL was asked to retract and did not.
TLDR: the report is very damning. Why don't you try to dispute some of the facts reported by the Daily, instead of writing nebulously that their headline is misleading.
```
UPDATE: To clarify, that comment is responding to another comment saying "the report is very positive for MTL"
I bet that for every case of scientific fraud that is obvious from the published paper (like this one), there are 10 cases of scientific fraud which are never detected.
Think about it - a domain expert will do a far better job of faking data than a random joe, and will be aware of most statistical tests that could find out.
``` APersonWhoCanRead 3 months ago
It seems to me that the linked report goes as close as possible to accusing MTL of fraud as one could hope given that it's coming from Genentech lawyers that are trying to keep the company out of trouble:
"In order to assess whether the 2009 Nature paper contains duplicate images, the diligence team consulted an independent, outside expert who specializes in detecting image manipulations in scientific publications. This expert concluded that two sets of figures, Figures 1d and 5e and Supplementary Figures 9c and 17c, include duplicate images. The expert also concluded that a Western blot panel for Caspase 6 in Supplementary Figure 6d appears to include a composite of two images. We have not determined how these anomalies occurred."
"Genentech scientists and research associates had difficulty reproducing certain results reported in the 2009 Nature paper, in particular, the binding interaction between DR6 and N-APP (the N-terminal portion of APP). Prior to publication of the paper, employees other than the authors performed binding experiments that showed inconsistent results – sometimes binding between DR6 and N-APP was detected, and other times, it was not. Some of the employees who performed those experiments attributed the inconsistent results to variability in the purity and quality of the reagents used." --> Clearly, some employees attributed the inconsistent results differently - I'm guessing as fraud. --> These determinations were made before the paper, which contained fabricated data (c.f. above), was published. Clearly, the first author would have been told, and most likely also MTL.
"Senior leaders at Genentech including Dr. Tessier-Lavigne knew of the inconsistent binding results, and there was uncertainty and speculation within the Genentech Research organization about why the binding interaction between DR6 and N-APP could not be reliably reproduced or confirmed."
"Also following Dr. Tessier-Lavigne’s departure, one senior leader in gRED urged that the 2009 Nature paper should be retracted or corrected in light of the inconsistent binding results. Other senior leaders recognized at the time that this was an action only Dr. Tessier-Lavigne or another co-author could take with the journal." --> MTL was asked to retract and did not.
TLDR: the report is very damning. Why don't you try to dispute some of the facts reported by the Daily, instead of writing nebulously that their headline is misleading.
```
UPDATE: To clarify, that comment is responding to another comment saying "the report is very positive for MTL"
[1] https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/06/stanford-president-rese...
[2] https://www.gene.com/download/pdf/Findings-of-2023-Genentech...