Concerns regarding 'Endothelial-Derived CCL7 Promotes Macrophage Polarization and Aggravates Septic Acute Lung Injury via CCR1-Mediated STAT1 Succinylation' (DOI: 10.1002/advs.202506209)

Academic fraud report · Geng Detector

Summary

This report flags a 2025 paper in Advanced Science (DOI: 10.1002/advs.202506209) by Li et al. as highly suspicious, based on textual review of the published PDF. The headline concern is an internal contradiction in the Methods: the TUNEL assay section describes paraffin-embedded 'intestinal' tissue sections, despite the study being focused exclusively on septic acute lung injury. This strongly suggests copy-paste of text from a previous intestinal-ischemia-related manuscript. A secondary concern is the unusually sparse antibody reporting for a high-impact venue (no vendor, catalog number, clone, host, fluorochrome, or dilution) in a multi-color flow cytometry panel. The short revision turnaround (received April 8, 2025; revised July 4, 2025) is also flagged as disproportionate to the workload. Image integrity and statistical forensics could not be assessed without raw figures and data. Confidence in the textual findings is high; image/statistical concerns are unverified and require raw data.

Verdict

🟠 Highly suspicious. Two textual inconsistencies in a high-impact publication raise concerns about rigor, and image/statistical verification was not possible with the available material.

Key findings

Methods section describes TUNEL assays on paraffin-embedded intestinal tissue in a study focused on septic acute lung injury — a cross-organ misattribution consistent with copy-paste from a prior intestinal-injury manuscript template.
Flow cytometry antibody list for a multi-color CCR1/CCR2/CCR3 panel lacks vendor, catalog number, clone, host species, fluorochrome, and dilution — non-compliant with standard reporting expectations for Advanced Science.
Timeline (Received April 8, 2025; Revised July 4, 2025; Published online August 4, 2025) appears short given the breadth of experiments reported (AAV knockdown mice, Ccr1 KO bone marrow chimeras, CUT&Tag, LC-MS/MS succinylation site mapping, dual-luciferase, Seahorse, K665R/K665E point mutants), with first author Xue Li listed as performing the experiments and drafting the manuscript.
Image-level duplication/PS-splicing could not be assessed because no raw figures were available.
Statistical forensics (last-digit distribution, variance patterns) could not be performed because no raw numerical tables were available.

Evidence highlights

Direct textual contradiction: Methods, TUNEL Assay (page 15) — "Paraffin-embedded intestinal tissue sections were subjected to TUNEL assays…" in a lung-injury study.
Methods, Flow Cytometry (page 15) — antibody block reads only: "anti-CD45, anti-CD11b, anti-F4/80, anti-SiglecF, anti-CD86, anti-CD206 and anti-CCR1/CCR2/CCR3," with no catalog/reagent details.
Timeline recorded in the article header: Received 8 April 2025; Revised 4 July 2025; Published online 4 August 2025.
Author contributions designate first author Xue Li as performing experiments and drafting the manuscript.
DOI: 10.1002/advs.202506209

Notes

Findings 1 and 2 are verifiable from the published text; confidence is high.
Findings 4 and 5 (image integrity, statistical patterns) are explicitly not assessable from the available PDF and are listed as indeterminate pending access to raw Western blots, Co-IP images, CUT&Tag/RNA-seq fastq files, and source numerical data.
The cross-species / cross-organ copy-paste pattern is a known marker of recycled Methods text and warrants editorial attention independent of any image issues.
This report is AI-assisted and intended for academic discussion only; formal determinations require institutional investigation.