Oh my goodness, how far from reality some illustrations, aka. scientific diagrams, are from the truth.  I do not understand how individuals who are supposed to “know” a topic, a “protein” a function of something like surfactant can use a ridiculous diagram like this and expect to gain any credibility whatsoever.  My gosh…. These diagrams have nothing at all to do with either SP-D or SP-A, they are fake news, provide conflicting understanding and do little to advance the knowledge of how proteins really look.  So sorry, but there is absolutely no excuse for this lack of understanding and depth of falsity.

I wonder if i could establish a monthly award for the dumbest scientific diagram ever seen.

It is interesting what individuals do for their microscopic images for publications. Looking over all the TEMs i can find for SP-D, SP-A, conglutinin, MBP, etc I find that some methods for presenting images are nice, they probably are NOT what I would have done.  In 1993 when this manuscript went to press I don’t believe that very many individuals recognized the potential for photoshop to create “pretty” images.

Changing the contrast by dodging with fingers and spoons and holey circles was about the extent that an image could be manipulated in the wet dark room.  Occasionally we huffed and  puffed on a print to warm parts hoping for more development on one side or another but other than that, there wasn’t much one could do with a print to beautify it.

In this manuscript (Eur. J. Biochem. 215, 793-799 (1993)) the authors have performed (in my opinion) the interesting, unnecessary, somewhat deceptive task of putting three SP-D molecules (the dodecamers) into a straight line portion B of their figure. It didn’t take much “looking” to see that the same SP-D dodecamer is present in a field of their part A of that figure, and again with two partner dodecamers in part B of the same figure. While this doesn’t necessarily change their data, one was rotated slightly from the other, and just a tad different in magnification. The better approach might have been to put a white division line between the first, the second and the third SP-D dodecamer in panel B, rather than to fuzz the background together…. that was just on the verge of being deceitful, since it gives the impression that lots of routine dodecamers appear close together in their prep. Probably not the case. That said. Below is their figure part A with the single dodecamer, and part B where they have cut pasted and blended the shadow background. You judge.

It might be noted that journals right about this time built (or were supposed to have built) algorithms to detect manipulation of the pixels in publication images.
And just in case you are skeptical that they are the same image, see the radial pixel pattern upon rotating half transparent images one from part A and one from part B just a few degrees (which doesn’t happen on non duplicate images (again, in my experience)).

I belly laughed when i saw this diagram. It is supposed to represent an alveolus from a mammalian lung. Those long line things with circles, are they type I alveolar cells?  ha ha… horrible perspective, and way out of proportion for the nucleus, and their thickness is too fat for the size of that pink thing at the bottom which they labeled alveolar type II cell. The nucleus of the type II cell looks to be drawn by a youngster, and the spirals (cut and carelessly pasted four times without any clue as to what they do or where they exit the cell  — i will give them credit for at least putting them in the apical portion of the cell — which is still only half correct – LOL).

Just as cute is the SP-A diagram which in this case apparently doesn’t want the neck and collagenous regions to be “twisted” together as they are repeatedly reported (even by these same authors).  SP-A and SP-D both look like the three portions of the CRD are one “ball”, which is inaccurate, even for the date of this publication…. that information was available.  I wont complain about the depiction of the  single blue alveolar macrophage, or the two polymorphonuclear leukocytes squeezing between type I cells but the black things in the alveolar space that look a lot more like millipedes or isopods or some other species of insect… than like bacteria or viruses— what!!  that’s just not even funny, it is pathetic.

I am completely baffled why perfectly competent scientists can’t illustrate their findings with any degree of accuracy.  I think they don’t even see how “off” they are.

\