Biomedical Research Images Manipulated by Generative AI to Alter Scientific Outcomes: Diagnostic Study of Human and Automated Detection.

In a diagnostic study of 104 western blot and subcutaneous xenograft tumor images, a high-fidelity generative model produced forgeries that could alter the conclusions of a study; 24 PhD-level expert reviewers could not reliably distinguish the forgeries from authentic figures (mean accuracy 50.5%, SD 6.9%), while the best-performing commercial AI detector achieved only moderate discrimination (area under the curve 0.790, 95% CI 0.695-0.885), revealing critical vulnerabilities in current research-integrity safeguards.