The ghosts of HeLa: How cell line misidentification contaminates the scientific literature

While problems with cell line misidentification have been known for decades, an unknown number of published papers remains in circulation reporting on the wrong cells without warning or correction. Here we attempt to make a conservative estimate of this ‘contaminated’ literature. We found 32,755 articles reporting on research with misidentified cells, in turn cited by an estimated half a million other papers. The contamination of the literature is not decreasing over time and is anything but restricted to countries in the periphery of global science. The decades-old and often contentious attempts to stop misidentification of cell lines have proven to be insufficient. The contamination of the literature calls for a fair and reasonable notification system, warning users and readers to interpret these papers with appropriate care.尽管细胞系（cell line）鉴定错误的问题已为人熟知数十年，但仍有数量不明的已发表论文在流传，这些论文报道了使用错误细胞开展的研究，且未附带任何预警或更正信息。本研究尝试对这类‘受污染’的文献开展保守估算。经统计，我们共找到32755篇报道使用了鉴定错误的细胞开展研究的论文，而这些论文又被约50万篇其他论文所引用。这类文献受污染的情况并未随时间推移有所改善，且绝非仅局限于全球科学体系的边缘国家。数十年来，为遏制细胞系鉴定错误而开展的诸多尝试往往颇具争议，且最终被证实效果不佳。这类文献的污染问题亟需建立一套公平合理的通报机制，以提醒使用者与读者在解读此类论文时保持审慎。