Sholto David
@sholtodavid.bsky.social
A correction to a 2026 Nature paper. This is PubPeer working quite well (in my view at least). I spotted the error and the authors corrected the paper and replied on PubPeer to update. If I had to complain I would rather the correction referenced the PubPeer comment.
pubpeer.com/publications...
pubpeer.com/publications...
September 13, 2026 at 5:17 PM
A correction to a 2026 Nature paper. This is PubPeer working quite well (in my view at least). I spotted the error and the authors corrected the paper and replied on PubPeer to update. If I had to complain I would rather the correction referenced the PubPeer comment.
pubpeer.com/publications...
pubpeer.com/publications...
A new video on my YouTube Channel - This one is about a 2013 Nature Neuroscience paper with extensive image manipulation.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R6V...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R6V...
Image Fraud in Nature Neuroscience
YouTube video by Sholto David
www.youtube.com
September 13, 2026 at 4:53 PM
A new video on my YouTube Channel - This one is about a 2013 Nature Neuroscience paper with extensive image manipulation.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R6V...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R6V...
Reposted by Sholto David
A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...
Declaration — Math and AI
Read the declaration and add your name.
mathandai.org
September 11, 2026 at 5:40 PM
A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...
Retracted today from Scientific Reports following my comments. Graphene oxide against cancer cells. The unlikely collaboration involved authors from Ethiopia, Chile, India, China, and South Korea. Two of the diagrams were easily identifiable as AI slop.
September 9, 2026 at 9:38 PM
Retracted today from Scientific Reports following my comments. Graphene oxide against cancer cells. The unlikely collaboration involved authors from Ethiopia, Chile, India, China, and South Korea. Two of the diagrams were easily identifiable as AI slop.
Today I'm posting a new blog! Nearly two hundred papers have muddled the names for different proteins and recorded using the wrong antibody for a range of experiments. This time it's PERK vs. p-ERK. Including researchers from Harvard, the Mayo Clinic, and more.
sholto.substack.com/p/perk-vs-p-...
sholto.substack.com/p/perk-vs-p-...
August 25, 2026 at 12:52 PM
Today I'm posting a new blog! Nearly two hundred papers have muddled the names for different proteins and recorded using the wrong antibody for a range of experiments. This time it's PERK vs. p-ERK. Including researchers from Harvard, the Mayo Clinic, and more.
sholto.substack.com/p/perk-vs-p-...
sholto.substack.com/p/perk-vs-p-...
Reposted by Sholto David
August 22, 2026 at 5:03 AM
Catching up with MDPI corrections. A published meta-analysis accidentally compared body fat in the probiotic group to weight in the control group. Unsurprisingly comparing two different variables resulted in an obviously wrong forest plot. The authors did correct this after I spotted it.
August 24, 2026 at 11:53 AM
Catching up with MDPI corrections. A published meta-analysis accidentally compared body fat in the probiotic group to weight in the control group. Unsurprisingly comparing two different variables resulted in an obviously wrong forest plot. The authors did correct this after I spotted it.
Reposted by Sholto David
Sleuth identifies dozens of studies that used the wrong antibody
The case is the latest example of a scientific workhorse being misused in experiments.
www.nature.com/artic...
1/2
The case is the latest example of a scientific workhorse being misused in experiments.
www.nature.com/artic...
1/2
Sleuth identifies dozens of studies that used the wrong antibody
Nature - The case is the latest example of a scientific workhorse being misused in experiments.
www.nature.com
August 22, 2026 at 9:54 PM
Sleuth identifies dozens of studies that used the wrong antibody
The case is the latest example of a scientific workhorse being misused in experiments.
www.nature.com/artic...
1/2
The case is the latest example of a scientific workhorse being misused in experiments.
www.nature.com/artic...
1/2
What will work for pancreatic cancer? Revolution Medicines and their BORING chemistry (YUCK!) or MD Anderson and Lorenzo Cohen with actual MAGIC!
August 22, 2026 at 8:58 PM
What will work for pancreatic cancer? Revolution Medicines and their BORING chemistry (YUCK!) or MD Anderson and Lorenzo Cohen with actual MAGIC!
Good to see that Lorenzo Cohen is still wasting MD Anderson's NIH money on psychic interventions, all peer reviewed of course. From the Materials and Methods: "Briefly, the therapist rapidly cycles through images or symbols of future events they want to have or experience."
August 22, 2026 at 8:41 PM
Good to see that Lorenzo Cohen is still wasting MD Anderson's NIH money on psychic interventions, all peer reviewed of course. From the Materials and Methods: "Briefly, the therapist rapidly cycles through images or symbols of future events they want to have or experience."
Reposted by Sholto David
This makes for uncomfortable reading, but I think it's important. bestbehavior.substack.com/p/eugenicist
You're probably a eugenicist
Let me start this essay with a love story.
bestbehavior.substack.com
August 22, 2026 at 5:09 PM
This makes for uncomfortable reading, but I think it's important. bestbehavior.substack.com/p/eugenicist
Silly correction at Cell Death & Disease. Authors elected to correct just one of these images after accepting that there was an overlapping area, but disputed the other obviously cloned parts. Who accepted the correction at Springer Nature? Sometimes it feels like there are no adults in the loop.
August 21, 2026 at 4:14 PM
Silly correction at Cell Death & Disease. Authors elected to correct just one of these images after accepting that there was an overlapping area, but disputed the other obviously cloned parts. Who accepted the correction at Springer Nature? Sometimes it feels like there are no adults in the loop.
For those who follow my cycling videos! youtu.be/v8MhgvU1siE
Cycling From Oxford to Arbroath: 800 km Across the UK
YouTube video by Sholto David
youtu.be
August 21, 2026 at 2:54 PM
For those who follow my cycling videos! youtu.be/v8MhgvU1siE
Some interesting cheating in a 2026 Nature paper. Similar areas in this fluorescence measurement are unexpected, these tend to be quite noisy. Source data confirms sections have been copied and pasted 👇
August 9, 2026 at 12:12 AM
Some interesting cheating in a 2026 Nature paper. Similar areas in this fluorescence measurement are unexpected, these tend to be quite noisy. Source data confirms sections have been copied and pasted 👇
Always funny to see in a published paper. Forgot to click and drag the boxes the whole way when doing a t-test in Excel. pubpeer.com/publications...
August 6, 2026 at 8:08 PM
Always funny to see in a published paper. Forgot to click and drag the boxes the whole way when doing a t-test in Excel. pubpeer.com/publications...
A tool used to rephrase plagiarised text changed "final solution" to "mass killing of an ethnic group" in a chemistry paper. Now retracted thanks to a PubPeer user who spotted this. pubpeer.com/publications...
August 6, 2026 at 12:35 PM
A tool used to rephrase plagiarised text changed "final solution" to "mass killing of an ethnic group" in a chemistry paper. Now retracted thanks to a PubPeer user who spotted this. pubpeer.com/publications...
Reposted by Sholto David
A lawsuit filed under the U.S. False Claims Act accuses Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Informa of perpetrating a decade-long scheme to defraud the government by charging exorbitant article processing charges.
Federal lawsuit accuses four major publishers of extorting article processing charges
iStock A lawsuit filed under the U.S. False Claims Act accuses four major publishers of perpetrating a decade-long scheme to defraud the government by charging exorbitant article processing charges…
retractionwatch.com
July 31, 2026 at 11:03 PM
A lawsuit filed under the U.S. False Claims Act accuses Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Informa of perpetrating a decade-long scheme to defraud the government by charging exorbitant article processing charges.
Reposted by Sholto David
After Arday enlisted Carter-Ruck, one of the United Kingdom’s leading defamation law firms, to send @timeshighered.bsky.social a letter, the publication spiked the story, according to three sources who spoke to Retraction Watch.
Exclusive: News outlet killed story on plagiarism allegations after Cambridge prof hired law firm
Jason Arday In September 2025, Times Higher Education had a bombshell story in the works: A star sociology professor at the University of Cambridge had allegedly plagiarized parts of his Ph.D. thes…
retractionwatch.com
July 27, 2026 at 9:12 PM
After Arday enlisted Carter-Ruck, one of the United Kingdom’s leading defamation law firms, to send @timeshighered.bsky.social a letter, the publication spiked the story, according to three sources who spoke to Retraction Watch.
Today I'm posting a blog about another ridiculous antibody blunder. Dozens of papers in the senescence and ageing field have mistakenly used an antibody for E. coli β-galactosidase when trying to stain for the human protein with the same name. forbetterscience.com/2026/07/21/d...
July 21, 2026 at 10:02 AM
Today I'm posting a blog about another ridiculous antibody blunder. Dozens of papers in the senescence and ageing field have mistakenly used an antibody for E. coli β-galactosidase when trying to stain for the human protein with the same name. forbetterscience.com/2026/07/21/d...
Amusing spelling mistake in the title... Makes it sound quite ominous! And probably hard to search.
July 17, 2026 at 4:57 PM
Amusing spelling mistake in the title... Makes it sound quite ominous! And probably hard to search.
Reposted by Sholto David
Nice article from The Scientist about the antibody "problem". www.the-scientist.com/altered-anti...
@reeserichardson.bsky.social @sholtodavid.bsky.social @jwoodgett.bsky.social @mbonini.bsky.social @bwjones.bsky.social
@reeserichardson.bsky.social @sholtodavid.bsky.social @jwoodgett.bsky.social @mbonini.bsky.social @bwjones.bsky.social
Altered Antibody Validation Data on Vendor Sites Alarms Researchers | The Scientist
After several examples of undisclosed alterations in reagent suppliers’ antibody catalogues surfaced, researchers call for transparency to rebuild trust.
www.the-scientist.com
June 30, 2026 at 1:38 PM
Nice article from The Scientist about the antibody "problem". www.the-scientist.com/altered-anti...
@reeserichardson.bsky.social @sholtodavid.bsky.social @jwoodgett.bsky.social @mbonini.bsky.social @bwjones.bsky.social
@reeserichardson.bsky.social @sholtodavid.bsky.social @jwoodgett.bsky.social @mbonini.bsky.social @bwjones.bsky.social
Reposted by Sholto David
Can bees spontaneously solve problems - and what does "spontaneously" mean? An interesting @pubpeer.com discussion. pubpeer.com/publications...
PubPeer - Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees
There are comments on PubPeer for publication: Spontaneous problem-solving in bumble bees (2026)
pubpeer.com
June 26, 2026 at 3:47 PM
Can bees spontaneously solve problems - and what does "spontaneously" mean? An interesting @pubpeer.com discussion. pubpeer.com/publications...
AEC staining. Something looks off to me, any thoughts? 10.1152/ajplung.00362.2025
June 25, 2026 at 9:04 PM
AEC staining. Something looks off to me, any thoughts? 10.1152/ajplung.00362.2025