An investigation by Science has shown that over 100 key papers on Alzheimer’s research have used falsified data. The papers all have a common author – veteran neuropathologist Eliezer Masliah, a key researcher at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), typically as first or last author.
The investigation has found that scores of Masliah’s lab studies at the University of California San Diego (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, under supposedly different experimental conditions.
At UCSD, Masliah had amassed decades of experience researching Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, amassing 800 papers. Some important topics in them, such as alpha-synuclein (a protein linked to both diseases), continue to have great influence. The US Congress had released a flood of funding for Alzheimer’s research, US$2.6 billion for last year’s budget, far outstripping that for the rest of the NIA, and Masliah was an ideal choice for its neuroscience division director. This was a position which was enormously influential for Alzheimer’s research in the US as well as internationally, allowing him to fund selected research over and above others with better scores form peer-review.
One of the drugs being developed based on his work is prasinezumab, which failed to show benefit over placebo in a trial of 316 Parkinson’s patients – but resulting in a host of adverse effects, though none serious. The drug was based on an idea by Masliah and another scientist (whose papers were also seemingly doctored) that a vaccine-like approach could cause the body to create antibodies against harmful precursors in both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Questions began to be raised about his research two years ago. These were assessed by a team of forensic analysts and a neuroscientist, who concluded, “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 acknowledge that accidental duplication is a possibility, and that images can acquire artefacts resembling improper manipulation during the publication process.
Columbia University neurobiologist Mu Yang used specialised software to detect similarities and alterations in images. She had previously worked with the team investigating manipulation in Alzheimer’s and stroke data. In her analysis, duplicated sections in certain Western blots that had been “seamlessly blended” quickly floated into view, she said. “It tells me someone put a lot of thought and effort into the image … and usually indicates something is very wrong.”
A team of 11 neuroscientists was less charitable when they viewed the images. Samuel Gandy, a prominent neurologist at the Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center said that he was “floored” by what he saw, noting that even a “bus driver” could see that two images of a mitochondrion published two years apart were identical. “Hundreds of images,” he said in a video interview. “There had to have been ongoing manipulation for years.”
In response to this latest dossier, the NIH issued a statement stating that there was a finding of “research misconduct” for Masliah over reuse of figures in two papers, further stating that Masliah no longer serves as NIA’s neuroscience division director. The NIH stated that it had started its own investigation in 2023.
Source: Science
