See also NRF2 and Nrf2 (Nuclear Respiratory Factor vs. Nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2). Totally different proteins that get mixed up all the time! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38815934/

100s labs ordered the wrong "p16" antibody. They wanted to study p16-INK4a, but bought p16-ARC antibodies. 312 papers got it wrong. Now the literature is polluted with false mechanistic pathways. As a reminder: validate your reagents. But also read the datasheet and use your brain.

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...

New @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint led by @pranujanp.bsky.social, studying errors such as incorrect primer sequences and contaminated #CellLines in #circRNA papers in high impact factor journals. We found reagent errors in 51% of n=118 circRNA papers in high IF journals in 2022 (1/4)🧪

Weekend reads: White House proposal prohibits federal funds for APCs; sleuths say Thermo Fisher doctored data; sleuth in China takes to social media

Thermo Fisher has responded to research integrity activists who spotted apparent manipulation in its antibody catalog: "In ... preparing antibody images for publication on our website, some images may have been adjusted to clarify for presentation purposes." More: cen.acs.org/research-int...

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:

@dangaristo.bsky.social reports on the brouhaha for @nature.com : www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Every scientist should know: • antibodies (Abs) can bind the wrong target • non-validated Abs can lead to false conclusions • Abs should be validated before use YCharOS tests commercial Abs in KO cell lines ycharos.com Only Good Antibodies makes the data easy to browse onlygoodantibodies.co.uk

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...

This is a very good question. Several other antibodies produced in my lab (X77 specific for Xenopus p53, for example), are also distributed by Thermofisher. It is funny that the datasheet showing the epitope was also an internal document. We suspect that someone in our lab released these clones.

In 1994, my lab generated this antibody that is now sold by Thermo Fisher (HR231). They are marketing this reagent without my authorization, without any agreement or acknowledgment of our original work. www.thermofisher.com/antibody/pro... Legros Y, Lafon C, Soussi T. Oncogene. 1994;9:2071-2076.

@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...

@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.

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.

@oga-community.bsky.social @ycharos.bsky.social

TREM2+ macrophages have rapidly emerged as key regulators in diseases. Studying them requires specific antibodies. Among 14 tested antibodies in KO cell lines by WB, 5 are specific. Pick up the right human TREM2 Antibody. Full report: tinyurl.com/TREM2Ab Or here: tinyurl.com/OGA-TREM2

Another example of how technique variation can really matter. Here, another example of use of cycloheximide in ribosome profiling can lead to artifacts that affect interpretation. Really careful experiments to suggest that 2018 paper in Nature likely mistaken.

Data manipulation allegations hit an approved autoimmune drug. Tavneos for vasculitis is now under scrutiny for data changes that may have flipped a negative trial positive FDA: – doubts about efficacy – proposed market withdrawal - worries about safety www.science.org/content/blog... 🧪

📢Looking forward to our next CRC 1123 Keynote Lecture 🧑‍🏫by Clément Cochain next week on TREM2+ macrophages in atherosclerosis and MI www.ipek-research.com/news-reports... @dfg.de @steffenslab.bsky.social @ipekresearch.bsky.social @isd-research.bsky.social

All of the images were FABRICATED by ChatGPT Images 2.0, each with a single prompt. How AI will affect science?🧪 mikhoelias.substack.com/p/how-ai-bre...

Failure is part and parcel of research, but discussing it sometimes seems to be taboo in science. It doesn’t need to be go.nature.com/3QHXZvk

#Medsky🧪 #Publichealth @nature.com Some disease-predictors use dodgy data . Dozens of AI models designed to predict a person’s risk of #stroke or #diabetes are trained on dubious datasets. Researchers found that many such models used one of two open-access health datasets

“All models are wrong, but some are useful” - George E.P. Box Are we misled by myocardial infarction (MI) models? Open-chest MI triggers systemic inflammation that can mask MI-specific immune responses Minimally invasive MI tells a different story Read our new preprint🧪 doi.org/10.64898/202...

🧪 #BadJournalism Headline: Genetics don’t explain variability in weight-loss jab effects “The authors’ model suggests… genetics adding only a modest incremental contribution.” Boring non-genetic factors such as sex, drug type, dose and duration most important www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

If you’re using 10x Genomics (Flex v1) for scRNA-seq, this study is a must-read. 🧪 It uncovers a key artefact: • Probe barcodes themselves introduce bias • Some barcodes systematically alter gene expression signals • Apparent DEGs may be technical, not biological www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

major issues with antibodies used in #neuroscience research www.thetransmitter.org/open-neurosc... #reproducibility

🔬 Are you using the right antibody for your experiments? Only Good Antibodies helps researchers identify specific antibodies 🧪 1496 antibodies against 147 proteins tested so far. Check now oga-website.onrender.com OGA is powered by YCharOS

A step forward for cardio-immunology! Our recent preprint shows: Standard MI models distort neutrophil responses through surgical inflammation. A minimally invasive model better mirrors patients and reveals immature neutrophils driving post-MI damage. Here is link www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

How specific are therapeutic monoclonal antibodies? In a study of 174 FDA-approved antibodies, 28% showed off-target binding. Surprisingly, even the famous pembrolizumab (anti–PD-1) binds another protein (TDGF1). www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social A Genetic Tool for Specific Tracking of Mature Neutrophils www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

I'd like to see this problem analysed at the single cell multi-omics level 'Advances in research technolo- gies are crucial for the scientific enterprise but have an unintended consequence: when pow- erful techniques become widely available, they tend to be applied without a good question in mind.'

Engineers increasingly found themselves coaching colleagues who were “vibe-coding” and finishing partially complete pull requests. This oversight often surfaced informally—in Slack threads or quick desk-side consultations—adding to engineers’ workloads.' hbr.org/2026/02/ai-d...

Do we study the right biology after myocardial infarction (MI)? • Surgery in standard mouse model disrupts bone marrow & masks MI-specific immune responses • Minimally invasive model better reflects patient immune responses & reveals immature neutrophils worsen heart function tinyurl.com/MImodels

Scientific paper mill: the model flagged 10% of the research papers in cancer research as problematic 😱 www.bmj.com/content/392/...

A study shows the consequences of poor Antibody Validation - Out of 614 antibodies tested, 97 failed - These 97 non-specific antibodies (43 proteins) were used in 640 publications - 9443 mice and 5015 human samples wasted Waste of animals, human samples, time, and trust tinyurl.com/OGA-Ab

Highly recommend using CiteAb and check for genetic (KO/KD) validation too.

In all seriousness,use CiteAb and Antibodypedia, look for KO/KD validated antibodies, best - recombinant, second best - monoclonal, and if possible do your own KO/KD controls, or induction by ligand/small molecule,if not - compare hyperexpressing with low expressing cells (from depmap/protein atlas)

VA-LI-DA-TE your abs! My experience (and some spooky examples in the thread): bsky.app/profile/gree...

A new magnetic particle mouse model of stroke Importantly, no craniotomy is required, avoiding a major confounder that causes massive surgery-induced inflammation. Read the article "A minimally invasive thrombotic model to study stroke in awake mice" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

www.statnews.com/2026/02/20/c... i hope they can get the data from the authors. I was told by the editor that data weren’t available because of patient confidentiality- so many authors use that excuse , it makes data sharing policies worthless

This is weird. On @pubpeer.com, a reader noticed some seemingly irrelevant references in a Scientific Reports paper pubpeer.com/publications... The paper has now been modified, with many references removed (from 45 down to 25!) but it contains no acknowledgment of the change. It does have EoC.

Based on our publication on antibody validation, R&D Biotechne confirmed that MAB4139 and AF6695 exhibit nonspecific binding and have been discontinued. Thanks for that 👍. For assessing ACKR1 expression, the specific clones 2C3 and 6B7 should be used. #Metaresearch www.cell.com/cell-stem-ce...

The Cre–LoxP system is widely used to study gene function in mice. However, Cre itself can be toxic to cells. Proper controls should always be included to distinguish gene effects from Cre toxicity. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

With hundreds of HFpEF animal studies, it’s time to ask: how good are the models? Read the comment from David A. Kass www.nature.com/articles/s44... Conclusion: current HFpEF models are suboptimal & we must refine them to better capture disease essentials and drive truly translational therapies

Scientists must learn to join larger pro-democracy and people's movements, coalitions. Our science training may not have prepared us for such work, but we can no longer sit in the safety of our labs and expect the world to get better My book review @thelancet.com www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Resources such as Human Protein Atlas rely on antibodies to map protein expression or intracellular localisation, but bad or unvalidated antibodies can misinform and derail research projects by giving false or unreproducible results. How can we make antibodies better and more reliable? 👇

Bad antibodies are a major roadblock in biomedical research, harming reproducibility and wasting resources. The International Antibody Validation Meeting was created to fix it. Watch the talks from the 5th Antibody Validation Meeting (2025) tinyurl.com/AntibodyVali... #Integrity #reproducibility

🗨️ Just published in Nature Biotechnology: Our CellWhisperer AI enables chat-based analysis of single-cell sequencing data. You can talk to your cells & figure out the biology without writing any computer code. Paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... Annotated walkthrough in a thread below (1/11)