{"id":562960,"date":"2025-10-22T15:40:34","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T18:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=562960"},"modified":"2025-10-22T15:40:34","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T18:40:34","slug":"unsustainable-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/unsustainable-situation\/","title":{"rendered":"Unsustainable situation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Neuroscientist Sylvain Lesn\u00e9, accused of manipulating images in a celebrated article that suggested a possible cause of Alzheimer&#8217;s disease, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/alzheimer-s-scientist-resigns-after-university-finds-data-integrity-concerns-papers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">has resigned from<\/a> his position as a professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, USA. Published in the journal <em>Nature<\/em> 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&#8217;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. Lesn\u00e9 was responsible for the study\u2019s western blot images\u2014a method used to identify proteins\u2014but 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 Last year, the paper was retracted after its lead author, neuroscientist Karen Ashe, who is also affiliated with the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and was Lesn\u00e9\u2019s postdoctoral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&#8217;s conclusions (<a href=\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/detours-in-the-labyrinth-of-alzheimers-disease\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>see<\/em> Pesquisa FAPESP <em>issue n\u00ba 341<\/em><\/a>). A two-and-a-half-year investigation of Lesn\u00e9&#8217;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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neuroscientist accused of manipulating images in Alzheimer&#8217;s article resigns from university","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[230],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-562960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-practices","tag-ethics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562960"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":565397,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562960\/revisions\/565397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562960"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=562960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}