COVID-19 paper by scientists at Harvard, Duke gets expression of concern for ‘unreliable’ data
The article “An antibody from single human VH-rearranging mouse neutralizes all SARS-CoV-2 variants through BA.5 by inhibiting membrane fusion” appeared in Science Immunology in August 2022. The study lists 30 coauthors from Boston Children’s Hospital and Duke University. An article by Boston Children’s published at the time said the findings could “contribute to new vaccine strategies.”
According to the expression of concern, published November 21, 2025 the authors informed the journal of “potential data reliability concerns” with two of the figures. The journal is in the process of determining an “appropriate course of action,” the notice continues. Matthew Wright, deputy press director at AAAS, which publishes the journal, confirmed the expression of concern was a first for the journal, which has published about 1,300 articles since it began in 2016.
The research was conducted in the lab of geneticist Frederick Alt of Boston Children’s and Harvard. First author Sai Luo was a Ph.D. student in Alt’s lab at the time the research was conducted, according to Alt’s laboratory page. Alt has one retraction, for a 2012 study in Nature whose results could not be reproduced. Alt was one of 18 authors on that work. Sixteen papers coauthored by Alt have been flagged on PubPeer, many for image issues.
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