Neuroscientist Sylvain Lesné, accused of manipulating images in a celebrated article that suggested a possible cause of Alzheimer’s disease, has resigned from his position as a professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, USA. Published in the journal Nature in 2006, the article indicated a cause-effect relationship between a protein that accumulates in the brain and memory loss in mice, seeming to have found a target for the development of drugs against Alzheimer’s disease. The paper had a far-reaching impact, being cited more than 2,500 times by other articles. But to date it has not resulted in any new treatment for the disease. Lesné was responsible for the study’s western blot images—a method used to identify proteins—but in 2021, it was discovered that they had been digitally altered. Last year, the paper was retracted after its lead author, neuroscientist Karen Ashe, who is also affiliated with the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and was Lesné’s postdoctoral supervisor at the time the study was conducted, acknowledged that the images had been manipulated, although she maintained that the changes did not affect the study’s conclusions (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue nº 341). A two-and-a-half-year investigation of Lesné’s scientific work by the University of Minnesota also found problems in other articles written by the researcher. As a result, the institution requested the retraction of four more papers published in different journals between 2011 and 2017, which altogether received more than 600 citations.
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Neuroscientist accused of manipulating images in Alzheimer's article resigns from university
