Oops, I ordered the wrong antibody again

The science sleuth Sholto David recently uncovered a mix up that’s affected hundreds of papers in biology. Scientists who were intending to work with the p16-INK4a antibody, to flag a tumor suppressor linked to cancer and aging, accidentally ordered another antibody p16-ARC instead, which tags a component of the cell’s internal skeleton.

Some of the consequences were mostly harmless, where scientists ordered the correct antibody but described the wrong one in their papers. Others were unfortunate, as lots of experiments may not have worked because of the mistaken antibodies. But some are potentially fraudulent, where in some experiments, scientists reported results using the wrong antibody that could have only worked if they were using the right ones.

The whole naming confusion reminds me of another related episode in biology, where hundreds of papers were affected by an error in which the gene SEPT1 got automatically converted into the date ‘1st September’ by Microsoft Excel. Eventually, the Gene Nomenclature Committee solved the problem by simply renaming the gene SEPTIN1. Let this be a warning about the dangers of dating.