This seems like junk reporting. The 3rd-author when informed 7 years ago, immediately took steps to correct the issue including supplying new images to the publisher. Which the journal never published, presumably because it didn't change the findings in any meaningful way.
Now somebody wants to injure the 3rd-authors image, so brings this up again with breathless headlines.
You seem to have read only the introductory paragraphs to the story, and read them poorly.
> The 3rd-author when informed 7 years ago, immediately took steps to correct the issue including supplying new images to the publisher.
President Tessier-Lavigne, AFAICT, do not claim to have supplied "new images to the publisher"; only that "Tessier-Lavigne voluntarily submitted corrections to Science that were not published." They did not, at time of publishing, provide copies of those corrections, so at this point we don't even know if the corrections involved the allegedly altered images.
> Which the journal never published, presumably because it didn't change the findings in any meaningful way.
Why would you presume that this was their reason not to publish? Stanford says it has no idea why the correction never made it to print. And the journal editors did not offer explanations either. Even if it is something as benign as "it got lost in the mail" -- how does MTL's apparent total lack of follow-up supposed to be adequate?
You keep bring up "3rd-authors", presumably in reference to EMBO paper for which MTL is the 3rd-listed author for. Did you miss the entire section about the 2001 study that MTL was lead author on (with just one other co-author)?
> The University and Tessier-Lavigne did not respond to questions regarding specific concerns about the paper. “Questions regarding these data should be addressed to the lead (corresponding) authors,” the University wrote.
> A 2001 study for which Tessier-Lavigne is the lead author with just one other researcher has more than 700 citations — a towering amount in a field where most papers scarcely get ten. According to Bik, this paper, which was published in the prestigious journal Science, contains figures with image alteration. “The photoshopping was done intentionally, there’s no way around it,” said Bik in an interview with The Daily after examining the areas surrounding gel bands for patterns and with forensic tools, though she added the motivation was unclear and could have been something other than falsification.
> BREAKING: Prominent journal @ScienceMagazine has "apologized to the scientific community" after it failed to print corrections or issue public statements about two papers co-authored by Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne were alleged to contain image manipulation.
Now somebody wants to injure the 3rd-authors image, so brings this up again with breathless headlines.
No, I'm sure this is junk reporting.