>One red flag should be that nowhere in this news article is the reader made aware of the exact nature of the manipulated images or their implications.

Because that was covered in detail when the manipulations were first reported and those articles are linked to in the above article. This is just reporting on the resulting retraction two years after that initial report.

>it's much less dramatic and all the findings were also replicated following this inquiry to show that any image alteration, that might have been made for editorial purposes, does not affect conclusions

Other groups had issues replicating the results with the same oligomer (often just chalked up to its instability), it's not like someone just happened to stumble upon these manipulations casually. This retraction only happened because Nature rejected the author's attempt to publish a correction. This whole thing is a black mark on Nature's record as well so if it really was just some minor change to make a picture look prettier for publishing purposes, I doubt they would have insisted on this action

“All the findings were replicated” is a claim by the accused, which is disputed by the researcher who originally found the issues, and he detailed all the contradicting claims right in that thread https://pubpeer.com/publications/8FF7E6996524B73ACB4A9EF5C0A.... Image alteration “that might have been made for editorial purposes” is a laughable euphemism for fraud, even the accused didn’t dare to use that phrasing. Not sure what’s in it for you to seriously misrepresent scientific fraud.

I disagree with this assessment. If Bik sees "shockingly blatant" copying, it's almost certain the author (or one of the authors) specifically, with intent, committed fraud. The other main explanation is incompetence (it's not impossible to misattribute a specific figure if your data handling is poor).