The enormity of apparent problems described in the Masliah dossier stunned 11 neuroscientists who agreed to review it for Science. “Breathtaking,” says neuroscientist Christian Haass of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. “People will, of course, be shocked, as I was. … I was falling from a chair, basically.”
He and the other researchers didn’t personally verify every example of possible misconduct, but they agreed that most of the suspect work cannot reasonably be explained as careless errors or publishing anomalies. “I’m floored,” says Samuel Gandy, a prominent neurologist at the Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center who was visibly shaken during a video interview. “Hundreds of images. There had to have been ongoing manipulation for years.”
