When that researcher is a senior official whose salary is paid by the American taxpayers, that sin is compounded. Such a researcher has not only broken the scientific process, they have broken faith with the American taxpayers, and in the case of medical research, may have endangered lives. And that is precisely what a senior researcher at the National Institute on Aging has done.

The whole mess started in 2016.

In 2016, when the U.S. Congress unleashed a flood of new funding for Alzheimer’s disease research, the National Institute on Aging (NIA) tapped veteran brain researcher Eliezer Masliah as a key leader for the effort. He took the helm at the agency’s Division of Neuroscience, whose budget—$2.6 billion in the last fiscal year—dwarfs the rest of NIA combined.

As a leading federal ambassador to the research community and a chief adviser to NIA Director Richard Hodes, Masliah would gain tremendous influence over the study and treatment of neurological conditions in the United States and beyond. He saw the appointment as his career capstone. Masliah told the online discussion site Alzforum that “the golden era of Alzheimer’s research” was coming and he was eager to help NIA direct its bounty. “I am fully committed to this effort. It is a historical moment.”

He wasn't fully committed to the effort. The only historical moment about it was his betrayal of the trust placed in him by the American people — but then, we've seen this from government-funded researchers before. On the surface, Masliah seemed the ideal candidate; he had been a brain researcher at the University of California/San Diego for decades, had published over 800 papers on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and was one of the most-cited scientists in this field.

What he wasn't was honest.

But over the past 2 years questions have arisen about some of Masliah’s research. A Science investigation has now found that scores of his lab studies at UCSD and NIA are riddled with apparently falsified Western blots—images used to show the presence of proteins—and micrographs of brain tissue. Numerous images seem to have been inappropriately reused within and across papers, sometimes published years apart in different journals, describing divergent experimental conditions.

This isn't just fraud — it's stupid, easily detectable fraud. It's not only defrauding the American taxpayer, it's defrauding an entire research community working on some of the most tragic diseases that affect our elderly — our parents and grandparents.

It gets worse.

After Science brought initial concerns about Masliah’s work to their attention, a neuroscientist and forensic analysts specializing in scientific work who had previously worked with Science produced a 300-page dossier revealing a steady stream of suspect images between 1997 and 2023 in 132 of his published research papers. (Science did not pay them for their work.) “In our opinion, this pattern of anomalous data raises a credible concern for research misconduct and calls into question a remarkably large body of scientific work,” they concluded.

Neither Masliah nor the various drug companies, universities, or federal ­agencies that were provided the dossier have so far rejected or challenged any of its examples of possible misconduct despite being given the material more than 2 weeks ago. And today, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a statement saying that following an investigation, it had “made findings of research misconduct” against Masliah for “falsification and/or fabrication involving re-use and relabel of figure panels” in two publications. According to the statement, Masliah no longer serves as NIA’s neuroscience division director, but NIH declined to further clarify his employment status.

It's important to note that Masliah's work drove actual clinical trials. That is to say, trials on humans based on dishonest, falsified data. It's hard to see this as anything but depraved indifference to human life; it's hard to see how this isn't just a breach of trust or fraud, but actually a criminal act. The National Institutes of Health, as noted above, made "findings of research misconduct" — that is belaboring the obvious — and while Masliah was removed from his director's role, which presumably commands a healthy government salary along with great government benefits, the NIH has "declined to further clarify his employment status," meaning, almost certainly, that has not been fired.

He hasn't been fired. For falsifying data that was used to underpin the development of, and clinical trials on, drugs intended to treat Parkinson's disease.

The dossier challenges far more studies than the two cited in NIH’s statement, including many that underpin the development and testing of experimental drugs (see sidebar). Masliah’s work, for example, helped win a nod from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for clinical trials of an antibody called prasinezumab for Parkinson’s. Made by Prothena—a company backed by big money—the drug is intended to attack alpha-synuclein, whose build up in the brain has been linked to the condition’s debilitating physical and cognitive symptoms.

This is a long and complex story, and I urge you to read the entire article to get the full picture. But the conclusion? Not much has happened to Eliezer Masliah despite his deliberate and ongoing fraud.

See Related: What Happened to Science Journalism?

Academic Publisher Retracts Over 11,300 Papers and Shuts 19 Journals As It Is Overwhelmed by Fraud

So, kindly return your seatbacks and tray tables to the upright and locked position, and I'll bring this thing in.

Eliezer Masliah has committed several unforgivable acts. But so has the National Institutes of Health. It's unclear when Masliah's fraud began, but he certainly has been exposed for the last several years; his work at UC/San Diego is now, we should note, also in question. But the NIH has not fired Masliah unless I miss my guess; had he been released, it would be to the NIH's advantage to say so. 

But Masliah should face greater penalties than this. His falsified data was used in the development of an experimental drug that was used on human beings in a clinical trial. This can only be seen as depraved indifference for human life on the part of Masliah, and here's where, in a sane world, the Justice Department would be exploring criminal charges.

We all know this won't happen, of course. Not under the current administration, and not in any hypothetical Harris/Walz administration. But if the alternative holds true, a newly reinaugurated President Trump could do a lot worse than to bring in someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., give him a great big broom, and point him at the NIH with the mission to sweep it clean.