The Journal of Biotechnology title Elsevier has retracted a 22-year-old-paper "A recombinant H1 histone based system for efficient delivery of nucleic acids". Sleuth Sholto David, who goes by the name "Mycosphaerella arachidis" on PubPeer, raised concerns about the image in December 2023, pointing out a "[d]ark rectangle" that appeared to be "superimposed onto the image".

The first author of the article, Iratxe Puebla, is the facilitation and integrity officer for COPE. According to the retraction notice, Puebla agreed with the decision and conceded "there appears to be evidence of splicing."

Christoph Sensen, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Biotechnology, told us concerns about the paper were raised in January 2024 by a reader and investigated internally. He requested the retraction after authors on the paper failed to produce original data and declined to re-perform the experiment. Sensen attributed the discovery to advances in image technology. Sensen suspected the researchers "took two gels, one was darker than the other and they just cut out a piece from one gel and blotted it into the other one with Photoshop."

Source https://retractionwatch.com/2025/06/23/cope-integrity-officer-loses-22-year-old-paper-for-image-concerns/

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