Nikon strips Xu's Small World in Motion win; Nguyen Nam Nhat takes prize

The disqualification follows a detailed review of Ning Xu's video, which had raised red flags among researchers. According to a BBC report, some expressed concern that Xu's video had structural abnormalities and that cell features appeared and disappeared in a way one would not see in actual cellular biology. Others spotted what looked like AI watermarks embedded within the source files. Xu maintained that AI was used only to help distinguish and visualize features in reconstructed grayscale images, not to generate the experimental movie, the cilia, or their motion. Nikon's investigation ultimately concluded that the entry did not comply with competition rules.

The competition itself, founded in 2011 as a spinoff of the long-running Small World Photomicrography Competition, aims to showcase the beauty and complexity of things seen through the light microscope via videography and time-lapse imaging. The other finalists each moved up a rank: Benedikt Pleyer to second, Andrew Moore to third, Patrick Hickey to fourth, and Igor Adameyko to fifth. This reshuffling underscores how a single disqualification can alter the recognition of multiple researchers in the field.