Summary
Eliezer Masliah, who since 2016 has been the head of the Division of Neuroscience in the National Institute on Aging (NIA), and whose scientific publication record over at least the past 25 years shows multiple, widespread, blatant instances of fraud.
More details
Masliah appeared an ideal selection. The physician and neuropathologist conducted research at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) for decades, and his drive, curiosity, and productivity propelled him into the top ranks of scholars on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. His roughly 800 research papers, many on how those conditions damage synapses, the junctions between neurons, have made him one of the most cited scientists in his field. His work on topics including alpha-synuclein—a protein linked to both diseases—continues to influence basic and clinical science.
But over the past 2 years questions have arisen about some of Masliah’s research. A Science investigation has now found that scores of his lab studies at UCSD and NIA are riddled with apparently falsified Western blots—images used to show the presence of proteins—and micrographs of brain tissue. Numerous images seem to have been inappropriately reused within and across papers, sometimes published years apart in different journals, describing divergent experimental conditions.
After Science brought initial concerns about Masliah’s work to their attention, a neuroscientist and forensic analysts specializing in scientific work who had previously worked with Science produced a 300-page dossier revealing a steady stream of suspect images between 1997 and 2023 in 132 of his published research papers. (Science did not pay them for their work.) “In our opinion, this pattern of anomalous data raises a credible concern for research misconduct and calls into question a remarkably large body of scientific work,” they concluded.
Related blog post on some drugs/therapeutic targets that rely on this work: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/fraud-so-much-fraud
This is separate from the controversy with the amyloid studies:
https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/for-researchers/explaining-amyloid-research-study-controversy
One of the main theories to suggest what causes Alzheimer’s disease is called the ‘Amyloid Hypothesis’. It highlights a protein called amyloid as a major contributor to what goes wrong inside the brain in this disease.
Recently, there have been some allegations published in the research journal Science concerning one research study investigating how amyloid protein builds up in the brains of people living with Alzheimer’s disease and forms plaques.
These allegations criticise a US study from 2006 that focuses on a specific type of amyloid protein called aβ*56 and its role in the causes of Alzheimer’s disease. It is alleged that some results from this study were falsified and now the reliability of the study has come into question. Allegations of this kind in research are taken extremely seriously in the research community but are thankfully very rare.
Apart from the research in question, there remains a vast amount of robust scientific evidence, which supports the view of amyloid contributing to Alzheimer’s disease.
I get pissed off whenever I see that one, it was done out of pure malice and set Alzheimer’s research down the wrong path for decades
It’s worrying, I know some people in the nootropics community are using cerebrolysin. At least it looks like he wasn’t involved in the clinical trials for it (that showed some benefit).
Is there potentially some innocent, or at least less fraudulent explanation for this?
800 research papers in 25 years is ~2,5 papers per month.
How did people who figure stuff out for a living not notice anything suspicious?
