[adampunk]

"a sales manager making a bad call when images are not available"

It seems nearly impossible to imagine that to be the case. I'd have to disregard the kinds of manipulation entirely. What sales manager would create a whole western block sequence by copying, rotating, and flipping a single element?

[SubiculumCode]

Someone else here mentioned proofers, people that prepare marketing materials, as a potential source. I am in no way defending Thermo here. I just meant that the extend of the fraud needs to be determined, from some non-scientist making a decision for short term profits, frustrated that no one saved the picture, or because the pictures showed how ugly the western blots actually are, versus wholesale fabrication of the research from the bottom up.

[12_throw_away]

> people that prepare marketing materials, as a potential source

Scientific advertising and marketing is a small, specialized field, done by people with fairly solid technical backgrounds (we produce a whole lot of advanced STEM degrees, there's plenty of folks available with this sort of background).

So I just want to be crystal, crystal clear here: there's no way in hell anyone involved in this pipeline should have any confusion as to whether "improving" gel photographs by painting out details and/or copying and pasting blots is fraud. "Proofer" or not.