Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
Splicing two non-adjacent lanes of a Western blot together without indicating the splice with a clear divider.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
Increasing brightness uniformly across an entire micrograph and noting the adjustment in the figure legend, with the original image deposited as supplementary data.
Editorial commentary
Image manipulation is the adjustment of a research image — a gel, blot, micrograph, or similar figure — in a way that misrepresents the underlying data or breaches a journal’s image-integrity policy. Unlike image duplication, which is frequently a sourcing or file-handling error, manipulation implies an active change made to what the image shows, and is treated by journals and integrity offices as the more serious category because it more often indicates intent.
A practical taxonomy, following Rossner and Yamada’s widely cited 2004 framework, distinguishes three tiers: inappropriate adjustments (over-aggressive contrast or brightness changes that remove bands or features, or adjustments applied selectively to only part of a figure rather than uniformly); deletions or additions of features within an image; and duplication of regions within or across figures used to misrepresent a result. The dividing line the field applies is whether an adjustment changes the conclusion a reader would draw, or whether it would survive full disclosure — uniform brightness correction to an entire micrograph, applied evenly and noted in the legend, is normal image processing; the same adjustment applied only to the band that would otherwise look weak is manipulation.
Journals following Rossner and Yamada-style policy, and publishers such as EMBO Press, now commonly require uncropped original images at submission specifically to make this distinction checkable. Forensic screening tools (Proofig, ImageTwin) are increasingly used by publishers at the submission stage rather than only after publication, catching splices and duplications before a paper is accepted. Under the US federal misconduct framework, ICMJE and 42 CFR Part 93 both treat deceptive image manipulation as a form of falsification, not a separate lesser category — see falsification and research misconduct for how a manipulation finding fits into the broader FFP definition and its honest-error exclusion.
References
- Rossner & Yamada (2004) ‘What’s in a picture? The temptation of image manipulation’, J Cell Biol 166:11-15
- EMBO Press image integrity guidelines (current edition)
- ICMJE, ‘Scientific Misconduct, Expressions of Concern, and Retraction’ recommendations
Also known as
image fraud · figure manipulation · image doctoring
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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