Gregg Semenza shared the 2019 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for discovering how human cells sense and adapt to different oxygen levels. He surely must have known better days. His work is now being avidly scrutinized by journals where it got published. Serious concerns have been raised about the validity of his reported data, specifically about the integrity of immunoblot images. Journals have already retracted, corrected or posted expressions of concern regarding 17 papers where Semenza is listed as author with different sets of coauthors. Furthermore, dozens more are now been subject to close examination by the “sleuths” of scientific integrity (hopefully not the idiocracy that manages post-publication peer review). A recent article in Nature describes the Semenza affair in considerable detail.

Data tampering has come under increasing scrutiny, as digital tools such as Photoshop are known to enable image manipulation facilitating the generation of fraudulent results. Elisabeth Bik, a consultant on scientific integrity, is credited for having detected data falsification in work co-authored by Semenza. Bik claims that the number of corrections or expressions of concern flagging reported work from Semenza’s lab seems fairly routine over a 20-year period. However, five retractions over the same period of papers proven to contain image manipulation leading to allegedly fraudulent results is surely not normal, but a red flag possibly pointing to a pattern of deceit. Now, delineating Semenza’s responsibility in this fraudulent affair is quite another matter, and a delicate one, and no firm conclusion has been reached as of yet.

So far 17 of Semenza’s papers have been retracted, corrected or had received an expression of concern. The editorial notices typically cite tampering of images showing experimental results. An additional 15 papers by Semenza are currently under investigation by their respective journals. What seems particularly troublesome in regards to delineating Semenza’s responsibility is that across the 32 papers that have drawn scrutiny so far, Semenza is always listed as author with different combinations of coauthors. Semenza is the corresponding author in 14 of these papers which are essentially derivative of his Nobel-earning research. Needless to say that all signing authors and especially corresponding authors are responsible for ensuring the validity of the results in a paper.

In Bik’s opinion, quoted in the Nature article, “the fact that there are multiple papers now retracted for manipulated images, and several others still under investigation suggests an intention to mislead”.

Recently, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA retracted four cell biology papers co-authored by Semenza and corrected three others over concerns about manipulation of figures, especially the splicing of immunoblot images where cut-and-paste manipulations became apparent. The authors claimed they believe the work remained valid overall but retracted the work because of concerns over the figures.

The papers currently under investigation include one paper in the prestigious Nature Genetics and one paper in Oncogene and two in Science Signalling.

Clearly a Nobel prize does not and should not make the recipient immune to further scrutiny. We had already covered the case of Frances Arnold retraction. The key issue is that the losers and haters that make up the idiocracy of post-publication peer review are simply not up to the job, and there is a clear shortage of competent people to assess whether there may be a pattern of deceit or we are simply dealing with the outcome of a sloppily run (and obviously successful) lab.