The Misadventures of Luca and Bart

We gathered here to celebrate an Italian star of biomedical research: Luca Scorrano. And then we will celebrate his Belgian friend Bart De Strooper. The boys solved cancer, Alzheimer’s and who knows what else, and they are always up for a new prank! Eat My Shorts.

We start with the Italian biochemist Luca Scorrano, who is since 2013 professor of the University of Padua, between 2014 and 2020 he was the Scientific Director of the Veneto Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM), also in Padua.

Before we look at what his lab published on the topic of mitochondria biology, a word about Scorrano’s almost-successor. In 2020, the research cheater Pier Paolo Pandolfi, freshly sacked in Harvard for sexual harassment (as revealed by Michael Balter), was about to be appointed as the new scientific director of VIMM and succeed Scorrano. But because of my reporting (read below), the affair was picked up by Italian media, Italian women scientists protested, the international advisory board of VIMM put its foot down (also because of Pandolfi’s fake science), so this dirty old man did not come to VIMM at all, despite his loud protests and the unwavering support of the foundation which sponsors VIMM.

Pandolfi then found a new job somehwere in Nevada, while drawing an additional salary from the University of Turin in Italy because, eh vabe.

Part I. Luca

Now, back to the hero of our story. Scorrano trained as postdoc in Harvard University in USA, in the Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s lab of the late Stanley Korsmeyer, who died in 2005 aged only 54. Unfortunately, some of Korsmeyer’s mentees like Claudio Hetz and Atan Gross, and collaborators like Laurie Glimcher or Wafik El-Deiry, proved to be research cheaters, and this earned Korsmeyer a post-mortem record on PubPeer.During Korslmeyer’s life time, Glimcher won the “Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award“, after his death two other dishonest scientists, MD Anderson’s president Ronald DePinho and future Nobelist Gregg Semenza, got honoured.

Also Scorrano’s papers were previously flagged on PubPeer for suspected image manipulations. In his email to me from 6 March 2023, Scorrano lamented that “these experiments were performed almost 20 years ago“, the raw data was lost, but that he takes “all the responsibility for not having further extended in the past these data archiving mandates“. He also wrote:

“since I moved to Padova I maintain 2 servers with the original data of the lab. I also continuously remind lab members of the importance of storing all their original data in the servers and not on personal computers. I also ask that for any figure we prepare, they store all the original data used to compose the figure, with clear identifiers, in easily identifiable folders so that if any concern arises we can promptly answer them.“

Yet the lessons he learned from his past PubPeer troubles were obviously none. Scorrano continued to publish some very problematic stuff.

From a paper submitted on 24 March 2023, thus after Scorrano promised vigilance, yet an image of a cell was copied and rotated:

Martina Semenzato, Mark J. Kohr, Charlotte Quirin , Roberta Menabò , Petra Alanova , Lukas Alan , Anna Pellattiero , Elizabeth Murphy , Fabio Di Lisa , Luca Scorrano Oxidization of optic atrophy 1 cysteines occurs during heart ischemia-reperfusion and amplifies cell death by oxidative stress Redox Biology (2023) doi: 10.1016/j.redox.2023.102755 

The next one was published in June 2023. The journal Science is, as you all know, not just the top journal of them all, but also the most dedicated to research integrity, with its Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp being the greatest authority, regularly issuing authoritative editorials and talks on this topic to remind you of his own importance.

Déborah Naón , María Isabel Hernández-Alvarez , Satoko Shinjo , Milosz Wieczor , Saska Ivanova , Olga Martins De Brito , Albert Quintana , Juan Hidalgo , Manuel Palacín , Pilar Aparicio , Juan Castellanos , Luis Lores , David Sebastián , Sonia Fernández-Veledo , Joan Vendrell , Jorge Joven , Modesto Orozco , Antonio Zorzano , Luca Scorrano Splice variants of mitofusin 2 shape the endoplasmic reticulum and tether it to mitochondria Science (2023) doi: 10.1126/science.adh9351 

The images derive from a Correction which Scorrano and his former mentee Olga Martins De Brito published in September 2014 for this paper, to replace other duplicated images:

Olga Martins De Brito , Luca Scorrano Mitofusin 2 tethers endoplasmic reticulum to mitochondria Nature (2008) doi: 10.1038/nature07534 

One PubPeer commenter mentioned “other possible duplications in the same paper (Figure 4 and Suppl. 9),“, found and illustrated by other users, including Elisabeth Bik:

Nature does nothing about that paper, I received no reaction from its Editor-in-Chief. But Science Editor-in-Chief Thorp informed Scorrano and myself in an email that he will “take a look at this according to our processes“, and added about yours truly:

“I just think he’s an extremely unpleasant person“

About that 2023 Science paper, Scorrano announced together with his colleagues to “work together to understand exactly what happened and proceed accordingly through the appropriate channels“, and to consider providing “clarification” for “specific scientific points“.

Maybe Thorp can also address this Science paper, finally? It was just a few months old when flagged on PubPeer in 2014, but it seems the editors and authors decided to sit it out:

Atsuko Kasahara , Sara Cipolat , Yun Chen , Gerald W. Dorn , Luca Scorrano Mitochondrial fusion directs cardiomyocyte differentiation via calcineurin and Notch signaling Science (2013) doi: 10.1126/science.1241359

The first author Atsuko Kasahara, now assistant professor at Kanazawa University in Japan, immediately admitted a duplication which according to her “inadvertently” got flipped and rotated. However, no correction was issued, 12 years have passed since. Maybe to protect the reputation of Gerald W Dorn II, professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and a celebrated “Thinker, Teacher, Tinkerer“, who prides himself to daily “work 10 or 11 hours“, he claims to not even “eat breakfast or lunch“. Dorn prides himself at collaborating with Daria Mochly-Rosen “who befriended me as a junior colleague in the 1990s“. Their common fabrication Joshi et al 2019 is discussed here:

Another paper from Scorrano’s lab, also here it was decided that corrections are for losers:

Lena Pernas , Camilla Bean , John C. Boothroyd , Luca Scorrano Mitochondria Restrict Growth of the Intracellular Parasite Toxoplasma gondii by Limiting Its Uptake of Fatty Acids Cell metabolism (2018) doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2018.02.018 

In January 2020, Scorrano’s former postdoc Lena Pernas, now running two labs at UC Los Angeles in USA and Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany, shared a replacement figure on PubPeer and announced to ” work with journal to make the correction“. But her new image contradicted the quantifications and thus the findings of the paper, and anyway, Cell Press is tries to avoid literature corrections at all costs.

As Scorrano played his networking games and corrected little to nothing, Elisabeth Bik found new stuff:

Aswin Pyakurel , Claudia Savoia , Daniel Hess, Luca Scorrano Extracellular Regulated Kinase Phosphorylates Mitofusin 1 to Control Mitochondrial Morphology and Apoptosis Molecular Cell (2015) doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2015.02.021 

Also freshly uncovered, in another Cell Press journal:

Stéphanie Herkenne , Olivier Ek , Margherita Zamberlan , Anna Pellattiero , Maya Chergova , Iñigo Chivite , Eliška Novotná , Giovanni Rigoni , Tiago Branco Fonseca , Dijana Samardzic , Andrielly Agnellini , Camilla Bean , Giulietta Di Benedetto , Natascia Tiso , Francesco Argenton , Antonella Viola , Maria Eugenia Soriano , Marta Giacomello , Elena Ziviani, Gabriele Sales, Marc Claret, Mariona Graupera, Luca Scorrano Developmental and Tumor Angiogenesis Requires the Mitochondria-Shaping Protein Opa1 Cell metabolism (2020) doi: 10.1016/j.cmet.2020.04.007 

This was published just last year and then flagged by Fabian Wittmers, the issue initially looked like a simple duplication. It was actually something more elaborate and much naughtier:

Antigoni Diokmetzidou , Aurora Maracani , Anna Pellattiero , Mauricio Cardenas-Rodriguez , Erwan A. Rivière , Luca Scorrano Metastatic breast cancer cells are selectively dependent on the mitochondrial cristae-shaping protein OPA1 Cell Death and Disease (2025) doi: 10.1038/s41419-025-07878-5 

The Editor-in-Chief of that Cell Death and Depravity journal is a fellow Italian. Gerry Melino loves to play a hero of research integrity himself, never mind his own enormous PubPeer record which he always was too busy to address.

In 2019, Melino boasted to me how he removed Guido Kroemer as chief editor, for his bad science, but in reality Kroemer remained on board, the two boys are again best friends, publishing review papers together in their own journal (Tang, Melino & Kroemer 2026).

To distract from his own bad science, the Editor-in-Chief Melino sometimes retracts papers by cheaters who are not his friends. But it is safe to assume Scorrano is a friend. The last author Camilla Bean (whom you already met above) was working at University of Padua and VIMM from 2004 till 2022, also Marta Giacomello (whom you also already met above) used to be Scorrano’s postdoc and is now professor at University of Padua:

Francesco Chemello , Michela Pozzobon , Lorenza Iolanda Tsansizi , Tatiana Varanita , Rubèn Quintana-Cabrera , Daniele Bonesso , Martina Piccoli , Gerolamo Lanfranchi , Marta Giacomello , Luca Scorrano, Camilla Bean Dysfunctional mitochondria accumulate in a skeletal muscle knockout model of Smn1, the causal gene of spinal muscular atrophy Cell Death and Disease (2023) doi: 10.1038/s41419-023-05573-x 

No correction again, although that paper flagged right after its publication in 2023. The next study in the same journal, by Scorrano, Giacometto and another Padua professor, Monica Montopoli, was corrected three times. In April 2022 Correction, a graphical abstract was added. In August 2023, an author’s name was corrected. Then a third correction was needed:

Caterina Vianello , Veronica Cocetta , Daniela Catanzaro , Gerald W Dorn , Angelo De Milito , Flavio Rizzolio , Vincenzo Canzonieri , Erika Cecchin , Rossana Roncato , Giuseppe Toffoli , Vincenzo Quagliariello , Annabella Di Mauro , Simona Losito , Nicola Maurea , Scaffa Cono , Gabriele Sales , Luca Scorrano , Marta Giacomello, Monica Montopoli Cisplatin resistance can be curtailed by blunting Bnip3-mediated mitochondrial autophagy Cell Death and Disease (2022) doi: 10.1038/s41419-022-04741-9 

In January 2024 Correction, readers were informed that “the TEM image referring to the sample U2OS-PT is incorrect“, it was replaced.

Let me introduce you to another Italian friend of Scorrano – Rafaele Baffa, who after a postdoc stay at Jefferson University in Philadelphia, USA, made a career in pharma industry. Just now, in June 2026, he ended up with Pfizer in Massachusetts as Early Development Group lead. Naturally, also Baffa has a PubPeer record, including with Italy’s greatest superstar in USA, Carlo Croce.

A Vecchione , M Fassan , V Anesti , A Morrione , S Goldoni , G Baldassarre , D Byrne , D D’Arca , J P Palazzo , J Lloyd , L Scorrano , L G Gomella , R V Iozzo , R Baffa MITOSTATIN, a putative tumor suppressor on chromosome 12q24.1, is downregulated in human bladder and breast cancer Oncogene (2009) doi: 10.1038/onc.2008.381 

Next to Baffa and Scorrano, we have on that paper:

• Renato Iozzo, professor of pathology at the Thomas Jefferson University in USA, and owner of hair-raising PubPeer record. You can read about Iozzo in May 2025 Shorts.
• Leonard Gomella, Chairman of Urology at Jefferson University and Senior Director Clinical Affairs at the Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, who of course has more bad stuff on PubPeer, mostly with Iozzo.
• Andrea Morrione, another Italian who left Jefferson University in 2018 for the neighbouring Temple University, by which he followed the Italian mega-cheater Antonio Giordano. Incidentally, Morrione is Deputy Director of the Sbarro Institute at Temple, which is run by President Giordano and is sponsored by Sbarro Pizza restaurant chain, the owner of which is Giordano’s father-in-law. Read this article, which also discusses Morrione’s papers with Giordano:

Here is Scorrano with Baffa again, a cell image was reused, seems to be a Classic Scorrano:

Cristina Cerqua , Vassiliki Anesti , Aswin Pyakurel , Dan Liu , Deborah Naon , Gerhard Wiche , Raffaele Baffa , Kai S Dimmer , Luca Scorrano Trichoplein/mitostatin regulates endoplasmic reticulum-mitochondria juxtaposition EMBO Reports (2010) doi: 10.1038/embor.2010.151 

Scorrano’s colleague at University of Padova, Marco Sandri, also has a PubPeer record, with such titans of bad science like Pura Muñoz-Cánoves and Andrea Ballabio:

Vanina Romanello , Eleonora Guadagnin , Ligia Gomes , Ira Roder , Claudia Sandri , Yvonne Petersen , Giulia Milan , Eva Masiero , Paola Del Piccolo , Marc Foretz , Luca Scorrano, Rudiger Rudolf , Marco Sandri Mitochondrial fission and remodelling contributes to muscle atrophy The EMBO journal (2010) doi: 10.1038/emboj.2010.60   

There is exactly zero chance that anything bad would happen to that paper. Scorrano is member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the scholarly society which publishes this journal, and EMBO Members are exempt from retractions. Seriously, it is an unwritten law. or maybe a written one, who knows.

Part II: Luca and Bart

But now, it is time to meet Scorrano’s other friend, Bart De Strooper, professor in dementia research at KU Leuven in Belgium, former director of the 250-head strong Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie, and In 2017, he moved to London to become director of the UK Dementia Research Institute at UCL, where he was recruited by a governmental grant of £250 million. All that was possibly a demented waste of money. Sir Bart is an actual knight, honoured as Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in Belgium as Commander in the Order of Leopold I. He also received other awards, including the Alois Alzheimer’s Prize, because De Strooper’s incredible research cured Alzheimer’s.

Character-wise, De Strooper is a very different person from Scorrano. Where Scorrano is defensive bordering on meekness (at least in his emails to me), De Strooper goes straight to bullying, presumably in the assumption that if his students are scared of his wrath, so will be everyone else.

More than three years ago, two papers by Scorrano and De Strooper were flagged on PubPeer. Both featured Christian Frezza, Scorrano’s former mentee and now DFG-funded Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the University of Cologne in Germany. The two papers were published in the same Cell issue back-to-back, here the first one:

Sara Cipolat , Tomasz Rudka , Dieter Hartmann , Veronica Costa , Lutgarde Serneels , Katleen Craessaerts , Kristine Metzger , Christian Frezza , Wim Annaert , Luciano D’Adamio , Carmen Derks , Tim Dejaegere , Luca Pellegrini , Rudi D’Hooge , Luca Scorrano , Bart De Strooper Mitochondrial Rhomboid PARL Regulates Cytochrome c Release during Apoptosis via OPA1-Dependent Cristae Remodeling Cell (2006) doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2006.06.021 

Back in February 2023, De Strooper informed on PubPeer that the duplication didn’t affect any of the conclusions at all:

“Our intention as authors is to verify that if a mistake was made, it was limited to the cells shown in the exemplificative panel and not to the actual data used for the quantification related to this particular panel.“

No correction was published, because Cell Press.

he second Cell paper was cited by now ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED times! It also has the disastrous De Brito as coauthor:

Christian Frezza , Sara Cipolat , Olga Martins De Brito , Massimo Micaroni , Galina V. Beznoussenko , Tomasz Rudka , Davide Bartoli , Roman S. Polishuck , Nika N. Danial, Bart De Strooper, Luca Scorrano OPA1 controls apoptotic cristae remodeling independently from mitochondrial fusion Cell (2006) doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2006.06.025

Scorrano, Frezza and De Strooper informed me in March 2023 that the original data was unavailable. Sir Bart also informed me that he already investigated everything and found nothing wrong, except with my attitude:

“My concern is indeed in the first place whether your remarks are pertinent and affect the resulting scientific conclusions.”

He then added:

“I have not found any indications that the conclusions of my papers should be changed or that we need to retract our studies. […] not all mistakes are fraud.
I hope you realize that this is all very time consuming and damaging. It starts to look like a witch hunt.”

With KU Leuven being disinterested and UCL being unresponsive, I decided to ask Frezza’s employer, the University of Cologne, to help with the investigation. On 23 March 2023, the ombudsman and law professor Martin Avenarius announced to forward my evidence to the university’s commission for good scientistic practice (GWP). On 18 April 2023, he provided me with the decision, which I translate:

“Meanwhile, I submitted the suspicions which you formulated in context with the work of Prof. Frezza to an expert for the subject, who came to the conclusion that the similar-looking images you marked are not identical. Also, the prevailing view here is that Prof. Frezza has produced so much work of high quality that he did not obtain any undue advantage with this work, even if there should be something wrong with it.
Afterwards I presented the matter to the local GWP commission. It has come to the conclusion that the indications of possible scientific misconduct are at most very low and, because the event took place a long time ago, a clarification is hardly to be expected.”

Maybe Avenarius asked the same mysterious “integrity manager” of De Strooper’s institute whom the latter quoted to me:

“Frezza et al 2006:  I see the similarities that have been highlighted at PubPeer too, but when I blow up the pictures I do not immediately see sharp edges or other clear signs of copy-paste of cells into those pictures. I am not an expert on the contents of this paper, but when I look at these pictures the things that are highlighted with arrows in the original picture, then these are not the structures that are now highlighted in pubpeer as possibly duplicated. I have difficulties to see what one would gain in these pictures by adding in some duplications.“

Yet the duplications were sufficiently proven on PubPeer. Maarten Van Kampen made an analysis which should have made Avenarius’s “expert for the subject”, De Strooper’s “integrity manager”, and the Cologne GWP Commission look very incompetent, if not worse:

Now for Figure S4:

Maarten also wrote on PubPeer:

“When I wrote my comment #9 this thread still contained an earlier comment from one of the authors pointing out the absence of rectangular ‘cut and paste box’ discontinuities. As shown for Fig. 5a above, there are clear discontinuities showing imperfect polishing-up after duplicating image features. Also, for the red duplication in Figure S4 the bounding box does seem to have been rectangular, slicing off some parts of the duplicated mitochondrion.
Another sign pointing to author-generated artwork is the absence of any rotation between the duplications. Some 7 mitochondria decided to ‘grow’ in exactly the same shape in often different cell cultures. This in itself is already magical. And they then managed to get imaged in TEM in the exact same orientation. Which is beyond magical. One can add to this that mitochondria duplicated in the same panel also have the exact same size, so apparently their closer proximity made them not only keep their orientation and shape, but also ‘synchronized’ their exact size.“

I forwarded this all to Avenarius and asked to urgently inform me if his “expert for the subject” and the GWP Commission would like to retract their earlier decision that there are no duplications, no indications of possible research misconduct, and no clarity can be ever achieved. Avenarius told me that a reply will take time:

“…the Commission can only deliberate if they agree on an appointment beforehand. So please understand that this step will also take some time. The duration is simply due to the diligence with which the GWP institutions devote themselves to their tasks.”

Nothing was done. Also the investigation announced by the Vice-Rector for Research of University of Padua, Fabio Zwirner, led nowhere. I asked Zwirner just now, no reply.

Part III: Bart

In March 2023, De Strooper told me about the following paper of his from Leuven: “We are still dealing with one paper in JBC where mistakes were made, please see pubpeer website.” It was then retracted, but not quite:

Leen Bammens , Lucía Chávez-Gutiérrez , Alexandra Tolia , An Zwijsen , Bart De Strooper Functional and Topological Analysis of Pen-2, the Fourth Subunit of the γ-Secretase Complex Journal of Biological Chemistry (2011) doi: 10.1074/jbc.m110.216978 

In December 2022, De Strooper planned a correction:

“Although no alterations to the conclusions of the paper have to be made, we consider it important to correct Figure 5 as a matter of principle. We have contacted the journal and are awaiting further instructions.

Instead, a Retraction was published in July 2023:

“This article has been withdrawn by the authors. The journal concluded that there was possible undeclared splicing in Fig. 2C, 3A, 4B, and possible image manipulation in figure 7B. The raw data provided was not able to resolve these issues. The withdrawing authors stand by the overall findings and conclusions of the article, and they will make an updated version of the manuscript available for the community.”

Also in July 2023, De Strooper went to PubPeer to inform:

“We have published a corrected version on bioRxiv: https://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2023.07.28.550932v1 and is also submitted to a peer reviewed journal“

And imagine this, JBC republished this 12 year old retracted paper in late 2023, as Serneels et al 2023! Only the new, Elsevier-run JBC could do something that rembarrassing. With a new extra author, who was made first author even: Lutgarde Serneels. You will keep encoutering her name again and again.

Apparently, everyone is scared of Bart. Well, I am not, and allow me to tell you that he has much, much more on PubPeer. Including with the French cheater Frédéric Checler, who even admitted on PubPeer that the gel bands are indeed identical (“Difficult to notice differences!”):

Bruno Vincent , Erwan Paitel , Paul Saftig , Yveline Frobert , Dieter Hartmann , Bart De Strooper, Jacques Grassi , Elvira Lopez-Perez , Frédéric Checler The disintegrins ADAM10 and TACE contribute to the constitutive and phorbol ester-regulated normal cleavage of the cellular prion protein Journal of Biological Chemistry (2001) doi: 10.1074/jbc.m105677200

There are also common papers with the German horror ophthalmologist Antonia Joussen (e.g., Cai et al 2012), read about her below:

Here is one, with Michael Boulton (once in UK, now in USA):

Jun Cai, Xiaoping Qi , Norbert Kociok , Sergej Skosyrski , Alonso Emilio , Qing Ruan , Song Han , Li Liu , Zhijuan Chen , Catherine Bowes Rickman , Todd Golde , Maria B. Grant , Paul Saftig , Lutgarde Serneels , Bart De Strooper , Antonia M. Joussen, Michael E. Boulton β-Secretase (BACE1) inhibition causes retinal pathology by vascular dysregulation and accumulation of age pigment EMBO Molecular Medicine (2012) doi: 10.1002/emmm.201101084 

Look at this disaster, by De Strooper and his German friend from the above two papers, the University of Kiel professor Paul Saftig:

Thorsten Maretzky, Karina Reiss, Andreas Ludwig, Julian Buchholz , Felix Scholz , Erhardt Proksch , Bart De Strooper, Dieter Hartmann , Paul Saftig ADAM10 mediates E-cadherin shedding and regulates epithelial cell-cell adhesion, migration, and beta-catenin translocation Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2005) doi: 10.1073/pnas.0500918102 

I wonder: was Saftig, who has much more on PubPeer, scared when his University of Kiel rector Simone Fulda first had to resign and later was found guilty of research misconduct? Saftig’s collaborations include zombies like Axel Ullrich, Guido Kroemer and his Laurence Zitvogel, and even two retractions with the absolutle horror zombie of German fake science Silvia Bulfone-Paus (see Budagian et al 2004 and Budagian et al 2005).

De Strooper also published with his KU Leuven colleague and zombie scientist Catherine Verfaille, and he did this AFTER everyone knew that she was a science cheater:

Juan Antonio García-León , Alfredo Cabrera-Socorro , Kristel Eggermont , Ann Swijsen , Joke Terryn , Raheem Fazal , FatemehArefeh Nami , Laura Ordovás , Ana Quiles , Frederic Lluis , Lutgarde Serneels , Keimpe Wierda , Annerieke Sierksma , Mohamed Kreir , Francisco Pestana , Philip Van Damme , Bart De Strooper, Lieven Thorrez , Andreas Ebneth , Catherine M. Verfaillie Generation of a human induced pluripotent stem cell–based model for tauopathies combining three microtubule‐associated protein TAU mutations which displays several phenotypes linked to neurodegeneration Alzheimer s & Dementia (2018) doi: 10.1016/j.jalz.2018.05.007 

That paper was fixed in 2018 with a correction: “The modifications performed or the previous insertion of two consecutive pictures with partial overlap does not change the outcome or any of the conclusions of the study.“

And then De Strooper did it again:

Wenting Guo , Haibo Wang , Arun Kumar Tharkeshwar , Julien Couthouis , Elke Braems , Pegah Masrori , Evelien Van Schoor , Yannan Fan , Karan Ahuja , Matthieu Moisse , Maarten Jacquemyn , Rodrigo Furtado Madeiro Da Costa , Madhavsai Gajjar , Sriram Balusu , Tine Tricot , Laura Fumagalli , Nicole Hersmus , Rekin’s Janky , Francis Impens , Pieter Vanden Berghe , Ritchie Ho, Dietmar Rudolf Thal, Rik Vandenberghe, Muralidhar L. Hegde, Siddharthan Chandran, Bart De Strooper, Dirk Daelemans, Philip Van Damme, Ludo Van Den Bosch, Catherine Verfaillie CRISPR/Cas9 screen in human iPSC‐derived cortical neurons identifies NEK6 as a novel disease modifier of C9orf72 poly(PR) toxicity Alzheimer s & Dementia (2023) doi: 10.1002/alz.12760 

But let’s talk about De Strooper’s own lab. Here he explained that the duplications are scientifically correct:

Mostafa Bentahir , Omar Nyabi , Jan Verhamme , Alexandra Tolia , Katrien Horré , Jens Wiltfang , Hermann Esselmann , Bart De Strooper Presenilin clinical mutations can affect gamma-secretase activity by different mechanisms Journal of Neurochemistry (2006) doi: 10.1111/j.1471-4159.2005.03578.x

De Strooper said on PubPeer that it was “the same blot cut into pieces prior to the staining“. Funny how he milked all these triplicate quantifications, error bars and all, out of one measly western blot membrane. But then again, this is why Sir Bart is treated like one of greatest neuroscientists in human history, and you are a nobody.

In an EMBO journal, courtesy of our charming EMBO member:

Sébastien S Hébert , Lutgarde Serneels , Alexandra Tolia , Katleen Craessaerts , Carmen Derks , Mikhail A Filippov , Ulrike Müller , Bart De Strooper Regulated intramembrane proteolysis of amyloid precursor protein and regulation of expression of putative target genes EMBO Reports (2006) doi: 10.1038/sj.embor.7400704 

Back in 2022, De Strooper deployed his trusty local expert:

“My co-author Sebastien Hébert and myself have looked closely to these remarks and we have asked advice to the Research Integrity and Ethics office of VIB and KULeuven. We cannot verify the original images as they are no longer available. We have however uploaded two rows of bands into Photoshop and performed two simple manipulations: changing brightness and contrast, in two directions. At different points the bands show distinct dissimilarities, which with the naked eye in a picture in a journal are difficult to see. While we have therefore no reason to doubt the data, it remains, in the absence of the original data difficult to definitively rule out any errors made when these figures were assembled. They remain minor and do not affect the scientific conclusions of the paper at all, and importantly, the conclusions have been confirmed over the years“

The man is annoying, to put it mildly. Also in an EMBO journal, you met the last author Lucía Chávez-Gutiérrez already above, she used to be De Strooper’s postdoc and after he left for London in 2017, she got her own (or maybe inherited his) lab at VIB-KU Leuven:

Hermien Acx, Lutgarde Serneels, Enrico Radaelli, Serge Muyldermans, Cécile Vincke, Elise Pepermans, Ulrike Müller, Lucía Chávez-Gutiérrez, Bart De Strooper Inactivation of γ‐secretases leads to accumulation of substrates and non‐Alzheimer neurodegeneration EMBO Molecular Medicine (2017) doi: 10.15252/emmm.201707561 

In February 2026, De Strooper warned on PubPeer: “Correcting the panel would not change the interpretation or conclusions of the study“, and added “Even if the incorrect panels were removed entirely, the interpretation of the study would remain unchanged“, and indicated that the original data was unavailable because “the work was published many years ago“. The study was merely eight years old when the concerns were raised. He also said:

“the scientific questions addressed in this study are no longer an active area of debate. A correction would have little practical value for the field and would likely go unnoticed.”

EMBO agreed, special rules for members! Here, for a nine year old paper (at time of commenting), correct data was miraculously available:

Francesc X. Guix, Ragna Sannerud , Fedor Berditchevski , Amaia M. Arranz , Katrien Horré , An Snellinx , Amantha Thathiah , Takaomi Saido , Takashi Saito , Sundaresan Rajesh , Michael Overduin , Samir Kumar-Singh , Enrico Radaelli , Nikky Corthout , Julien Colombelli , Sébastien Tosi , Sebastian Munck , Isabel H. Salas , Wim Annaert , Bart De Strooper Tetraspanin 6: a pivotal protein of the multiple vesicular body determining exosome release and lysosomal degradation of amyloid precursor protein fragments Molecular Neurodegeneration (2017) doi: 10.1186/s13024-017-0165-0 

De Strooper’s former mentee Francesc Guix (now assistant professor in Spain) informed in February 2026 to “have retrieved the appropriate Western blot images from the original experiments“, but no correction was offered and, knowing his boss, none will be forthcoming.

Here, a likely forged gel band by De Strooper, Chávez-Gutiérrez and others in Leuven:

Samer Matta , Kristof Van Kolen , Raquel Da Cunha , Geert Van den Bogaart , Wim Mandemakers , Katarzyna Miskiewicz , Pieter-Jan De Bock , Vanessa A. Morais , Sven Vilain , Dominik Haddad , Lore Delbroek , Jef Swerts , Lucía Chávez-Gutiérrez , Giovanni Esposito , Guy Daneels , Eric Karran , Matthew Holt , Kris Gevaert , Diederik W. Moechars , Bart De Strooper , Patrik Verstreken LRRK2 controls an EndoA phosphorylation cycle in synaptic endocytosis Neuron (2012) doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.08.022 

De Strooper was totally unfazed, and proclaimed that “the published image is most consistent with an artefact introduced during digital overexposure and contrast enhancement“, and anyway, “these artefacts […] do not alter the experimental conclusions of the study, which […] have since been replicated by other laboratories” He declared himself as “satisfied that the underlying experimental observations remain sound“.

Here, De Strooper didn’t even react:

Bruno P. Imbimbo , Elda Del Giudice , Davide Colavito , Antonello D’Arrigo , Maurizio Dalle Carbonare , Gino Villetti , Fabrizio Facchinetti , Roberta Volta , Vladimiro Pietrini , Maria F. Baroc , Lutgarde Serneels , Bart De Strooper , Alberta Leon 1-(3′,4′-Dichloro-2-fluoro[1,1′-biphenyl]-4-yl)-cyclopropanecarboxylic Acid (CHF5074), a Novel γ-Secretase Modulator, Reduces Brain β-Amyloid Pathology in a Transgenic Mouse Model of Alzheimer’s Disease without Causing Peripheral Toxicity The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics (2007) doi: 10.1124/jpet.107.129007 

As with Scorrano, there are some clues also with De Strooper that it is not their junior lab members who fudge data. This is from De Stroper’s own youth, Saftig is on board, the last author is Raphael Kopan at Washington University in USA:

Bart De Strooper, Wim Annaert , Philippe Cupers , Paul Saftig , Katleen Craessaerts , Jeffrey S. Mumm , Eric H. Schroeter , Vincent Schrijvers , Michael S. Wolfe , William J. Ray , Alison Goate , Raphael Kopan A presenilin-1-dependent gamma-secretase-like protease mediates release of Notch intracellular domain Nature (1999) doi: 10.1038/19083 

Being a diva, De Strooper replied on PubPeer with a) several lies and b) accusations of harassement:

“I acknowledge that the figure contains a splice. At the time this work was carried out (1999), such splicing was common practice and not considered problematic when the underlying data were correctly represented. The splice does not alter the interpretation of the experiment, which has been independently confirmed in many subsequent publications.[…]
I will refrain from speculating about individual motives for these complaints.”

Well, splicing may indeed have been common practice among bad scientists, but it was considered problematic by honest scientists, that’s why bad scientists (we don’t want to point finegrs here) always put so much effort into obscuring their splices. De Strooper’s PubPeer record contains many more spliced gels.

I have another joke. De Strooper is so full of himself, he even played the hero of research integrity, commenting on the Sylvain Lesne fraud affair:

The extra irony is that the same sleuth who uncovered the Lesne fraud, Matthew Schrag, also found problems in De Strooper’s papers:

J. Brouillette , R. Caillierez , N. Zommer , C. Alves-Pires , I. Benilova , D. Blum , B. De Strooper , L. Buee Neurotoxicity and Memory Deficits Induced by Soluble Low-Molecular-Weight Amyloid- 1-42 Oligomers Are Revealed In Vivo by Using a Novel Animal Model Journal of Neuroscience (2012) doi: 10.1523/jneurosci.5901-11.2012 

That was flagged more than a year ago. But Sir Bart is done with his harassers.

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