The fourth day of the FENS has been characterized by the controversial absence of Yoshiki Sasai, whose participation to the conference was in the schedule but it was very recently cancelled. It seemed to me that, as the proverbial elephant in the room, all of the attendants knew about it but few commented. Although no official communications were given, it would be easy to guess that her absence might be connected to the recent retraction of her paper by Nature. As this particular piece of news reached many researchers over the last few weeks,