Government Scientist “Faked Images Published in Alzheimer’s Research Papers”
A U.S. Government scientist and leading authority on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s published faked images in papers on the diseases, a Government report has claimed. The Telegraph has the details.
Eliezer Masliah, who led the neuroscience division at the National Institute on Ageing, a Government health body, has been a key figure in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease research for decades.
But an investigation by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has made “findings of research misconduct” against Dr. Masliah for “falsification and/or fabrication” of figure panels which were used to show experimental results.
According to the academic journal Science, which conducted its own investigation into Dr. Masliah, he may have also doctored pictures used in several research papers.
“All four [papers] used apparently doctored images, according to the dossier, as did other Masliah papers cited in clinical trial reports as important to [Parkinson’s disease treatment] prasinezumab’s development,” Science reported.
The falsification is claimed to include the “duplication of the same image with different captions about different research in different journals”.
According to the NIH, misconduct may have occurred in two studies co-authored by Dr Masliah. …
Science’s investigation, which was published days after the NIH’s findings, alleged that “scores” of Dr. Masliah’s lab studies were “riddled with” apparently manipulated images.
The journal reportedly brought its findings to a neuroscientist and forensic analysts who later asserted that more than 100 of Dr. Masliah’s published studies, spanning more than two decades, contained a “steady stream of suspect images”.
Dr. Masliah, a former professor at the University of California San Diego, was appointed to head the National Institute on Aging in 2016, when Congress significantly increased funding for Alzheimer’s research.
Dr. Masliah’s department had a budget of $2.6 billion, making him one of the most influential figures in neuroscience, with the power to set research priorities within the field.
His own research, amounting to around 800 papers, particularly on proteins such as alpha-synuclein linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, has been widely cited and drawn upon in clinical and drug development efforts. …
A forensic review led by neuroscientist Matthew Schrag, image analyst Kevin Patrick, and others identified issues in 132 papers published between 1997 and 2023. The team found allegedly manipulated western blots – images used to detect proteins – and allegedly altered micrographs of brain tissue. …
The apparently manipulated images raise questions about the calibre and integrity of Dr. Masliah’s research, Mu Yang, a Columbia University neurobiologist who analysed parts of Dr. Masliah’s published work, told Science.
Dr. Masliah’s work has played an important role in advancing drug trials, including for prasinezumab.
His research also helped to secure approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct clinical trials for the drug.
However, results from a 2022 trial of prasinezumab revealed no significant benefit in treating Parkinson’s.
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Sounds like he’d be the perfect candidate for head of the international pandemic response team, a liar and a faker, spot on👍
Only problem for him would be the battalions, the armies of venal fraudster “Experts” fighting for the same job.
Isn’t BBC’s ‘Verifier’ – Mariana Spring – also a suitable candidate?
Medical research seems to be a soft target for scammers. Back in the early days of The Lockdown, there was the “Melba Scandal”[1]. The issue was initially not over toast but over the widely-heralded appearance on 20th May 2020 of data that suggested that the decades-old traditional treatment for viral respiratory disorders, namely hydroxychloroquine(HCQ), was not only ineffective but dangerous. Obviously both the data and the author’s credibility and expertise came into the spotlight, as so many countries were simultaneously promoting the banning of HCQ (or quietly hoarding it) and instead promoting Midazolam in care homes and a yet-to-be-authorised vaccine for Covid-19. The paper questioning HCQ was criticised publicly on 28th May 2020 and quietly retracted on 8th June 2020, at the behest of some of the co-authors but not the lead author. The retraction was probably not noticed by the press and the general public as this all occurred during the psychotic delirium of Lockdown. So where does Dame Nellie Melba fit in? The answer is that the lead author’s earlier research and numerous publications, not directly connected to HCQ or Covid, were brought into scrutiny. In particular the lead author had previously published several images of biological data… Read more »