Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been manipulated?

reeserichardson.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 97 posts

Re: How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been manipulated?

#81

Post by 12_throw_away »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #76
adampunk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a sales manager making a bad call when images are not available" It seems nearly impossible to imagine that to be the case. I'd have to disregard the kinds of manipulation entirely. What sales manager would create a whole western block sequence by copying, rotating, and flipping a single element?

Someone else here mentioned proofers, people that prepare marketing materials, as a potential source. I am in no way defending Thermo here. I just meant that the extend of the fraud needs to be determined, from some non-scientist making a decision for short term profits, frustrated that no one saved the picture, or because the pictures showed how ugly the western blots actually are, versus wholesale fabrication of th…

> people that prepare marketing materials, as a potential source

Scientific advertising and marketing is a small, specialized field, done by people with fairly solid technical backgrounds (we produce a whole lot of advanced STEM degrees, there's plenty of folks available with this sort of background).

So I just want to be crystal, crystal clear here: there's no way in hell anyone involved in this pipeline should have any confusion as to whether "improving" gel photographs by painting out details and/or copying and pasting blots is fraud. "Proofer" or not.

Re: How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been manipulated?

#82

Post by d--b »

FL33TW00D wrote: post #48

The guy who uncovered this, Sholto David, is basically just awesome? Watch him cycle from Wales -> China in 90 days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdgHZPfivVA This isn't his first fraud rodeo either. For his discovery of serious fraud by the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2024, he received $2.6 million. Be more like Sholto, exercise your free will!

Are you sure?

Did he donate the money away? In the video you sent, he seems quite anxious about his nightly budget.

EDIT: ah it seems his trip was before that

Re: How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been manipulated?

#83

Post by rootusrootus »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #79
rootusrootus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really pervasive? E.g. To my knowledge the "AI" enhancement that iPhones do automatically is limited to the usual sorts of post-processing for contrast, color, etc. There is an AI editing mode that leans more into generative fill capability that would be analogous to the Samsung incident but I don't think it's happening automatically to every photo you take.

I still remember Samsung faking images when using digital zoom... https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moo...

Yes, I believe that is what the person I replied to was referring to specifically.

Re: How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been manipulated?

#84

Post by LorenPechtel »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #77
atlas1j wrote: post #47

My first, second, and third instinct here is to say this is pretty obvious and sloppy fraud. But it did remind me of the famous case discovered by David Kriesel where Xerox scanners changed documents in surprising ways. The caption on the YouTube video linked here is entertainingly accurate. https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres... "On the scale of things too horrible to contemplate, "document-…

> They, for example, replace digits with others in scans. The replacement digits are layouted perfectly into the page, so the errors are hard to see. Is this with JBIG2? I remember reading about JBIG2 also used in the FORCEDENTRY zero click exploit that which was (?) used in the Pegasus spyware. Unrelated tidbit, I guess.

The Xerox problem was with image compression. The compressor would look at an incoming block, decide it was similar enough to one already noted and reuse the existing token. With small fonts and similar characters one difference was within the tolerance and after seeing something like 888 it could then decide 8B8 was the same thing. As it could only happen when things lined up perfectly the alterations would also be lined up perfectly.

Re: How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been manipulated?

#85

Post by 0xWTF »

I have already forwarded this to a number of senior pathologists and industry leaders. People who are in charge of either developing these things or validating them for clinical use. We'll see what they say. But I suspect a great many of them will actually continue using the implicated products because they passed clinical validation at many institutions. TBD.

Re: How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been manipulated?

#86

Post by [deleted] »

morvita wrote: post #80
jhart99 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 'used car salesman' levels of fraud on that scale. People rapidly acknowledge these antibodies work or they don't. There are websites with reviews of them. However in addition to getting ripped off for a few hundred bucks, these antibodies are generally produced by immunizing animals and by faking this data they are unnecessarily increasing the discomfort to these animals for a fraudulent reason. Look up the…

Antibodies on this scale are not _produced_ by animals. The way these things work is an antibody that binds to a specific target will be _discovered_ by immunizing animals and then screening it's blood or lymph nodes for antibodies of interest. Once an antibody is found and commercialized, it is produced in large bioreactors of cell cultures engineered to produce large amounts of a particular protein (in this case th…

[deleted]

Re: How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been manipulated?

#87

Post by twbarr »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #84
kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They, for example, replace digits with others in scans. The replacement digits are layouted perfectly into the page, so the errors are hard to see. Is this with JBIG2? I remember reading about JBIG2 also used in the FORCEDENTRY zero click exploit that which was (?) used in the Pegasus spyware. Unrelated tidbit, I guess.

The Xerox problem was with image compression. The compressor would look at an incoming block, decide it was similar enough to one already noted and reuse the existing token. With small fonts and similar characters one difference was within the tolerance and after seeing something like 888 it could then decide 8B8 was the same thing. As it could only happen when things lined up perfectly the alterations would also be…

Yes, this algorithm is called JBIG2.

Re: How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been manipulated?

#89

Post by vessenes »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #77
atlas1j wrote: post #47

My first, second, and third instinct here is to say this is pretty obvious and sloppy fraud. But it did remind me of the famous case discovered by David Kriesel where Xerox scanners changed documents in surprising ways. The caption on the YouTube video linked here is entertainingly accurate. https://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres... "On the scale of things too horrible to contemplate, "document-…

> They, for example, replace digits with others in scans. The replacement digits are layouted perfectly into the page, so the errors are hard to see. Is this with JBIG2? I remember reading about JBIG2 also used in the FORCEDENTRY zero click exploit that which was (?) used in the Pegasus spyware. Unrelated tidbit, I guess.

Yes.

Re: How much of Thermo Fisher's antibody data has been manipulated?

#90

Post by analog31 »

meindnoch wrote: post #38

What would happen if I drank these antibodies?

An antibody is a protein. The acid in your stomach will break down the molecules into their constituent amino acids, which would be absorbed into your bloodstream. The chance that the antibody would have any biological effect before being broken down is slim. Still there are other reasons for not drinking it such as whatever else is in the solution such as preservatives etc.
Post reply on HN