Scientists Caught This Massive Company Faking 450+ Test Results
Massive thanks to Reese Richardson for basically teaching me a whole field of science in one afternoon.
Reese's Blog: https://reeserichardson.blog/2026/05/...
YCharOS: https://ycharos.com/
Manipulated Data Submission Form: https://forms.gle/AHawpDxrorMXihaW8
Thermo Fisher's Invitrogen™ Antibody Performance Guarantee, which they linked to in their statement: https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/ho...
A few weeks ago I saw some scientists on Bluesky freaking out about manipulated antibody data, and I had genuinely no idea what that meant but it seemed like a big deal. So I did some digging and called up Reese Richardson, a postdoc at Northwestern who studies fraud in science, to break it all down for me.
Turns out hundreds of "verification" images in Thermo Fisher's antibody catalog look like they've been doctored: duplicated bands, copy-pasted backgrounds, weird gray boxes painted over the data scientists are supposed to trust. Reese and his colleague have found 450+ sketchy images so far..
We talk about:
What antibodies actually are
What the heck is a Western blot
The manipulated images Reese found, and what they might be hiding
Thermo Fisher's response (and the FAQ they quietly edited after I emailed them)
Fraud in science, and whether this means "science is broken" (spoiler: no)
00:00 Intro
01:08 Antibodies
02:57 Verification/Validation
04:39 Thermo Fisher and the Situation
09:49 Antibody Reproducibility Crisis
11:12 Thermo Fisher’s Response
12:55 The Bigger Picture
16:36 Outro
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I'm a producer and host on @SciShow. Here's where I make my own stuff. Theoretically I'm making content about science and science-adjacent topics, media literacy, or pop culture analysis. In reality, I'm yelling about whatever I want.
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SOURCES
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/...