The proof is the product. 18,000 edited images in the antibody catalogues.
Before you buy an antibody, the catalogue shows you one piece of evidence: a photograph. A western blot supposedly proving it grabs the protein it claims. Months of work ride on that photo.
Reese Richardson, a metascientist at Northwestern, wrote a program to stretch the black and white levels in 270,000 catalogue images, revealing hidden edits. He flagged 18,000+ across 15 vendors. 13,800 share one of seven backgrounds. His GIF: 102 Thermo Fisher blots sharing one background, a pattern in 845 images from five companies.
Biggest: G-Biosciences 6,388, Thermo Fisher 5,580, LSBio 2,695, Origene 2,236. Thermo reports no impact on quality. LSBio: under 0.04% of its offering. Two companies said nothing.
A 2023 study of 614 antibodies: more than half failed as advertised, an estimated $1 billion wasted a year. Elisabeth Bik, image-integrity specialist, is blunt: shared backgrounds suggest some antibodies were “never tested at all in the lab.”
The photo is not documentation of the test. For the buyer, it is the test. When the proof is the product, what are you buying? Not every flag means a bad antibody. But the evidence has a hole, and under it stand researchers who trusted a picture.