President stepping down

ColdWombat
Wed, 19 Jul 2023 19:06:09 +0000

Stanford President under investigation for research misconduct Parents Forum

The big kerfuffle in science Twitter today is that Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the President of Stanford University, is being investigated for falsified images (i.e. data) in some of his research papers. The student newspaper broke the story yesterday with remarkable reporting and then followed up today with another article announcing an investigation. There have been several scientist who have flagged his stuff over the years as suspicious, but nothing really came of it until now. I’m a neurobiologist myself and I looked at a bunch of the manipulated images. This is not good. The manipulated images appear in some papers where he is the lead author, and/or is one of only two authors. That means he can’t just claim that his co-authors did all of this without his knowledge. The people they interview will say prudent things about waiting to hear what the probe reveals, and that they can’t be sure, prior to a full investigation, that he deliberately presented fraudulent data. But I can say w…

We discussed this a bit when the investigation started.

The student paper has been doing excellent reporting, and they have a couple new articles out today. There is more that didn’t make it into the official report, and sources that weren’t interviewed due to concerns of retaliation.

The Stanford Daily – 19 Jul 23

Sources wouldn't participate in probe of Stanford president

Stanford’s investigation into its own president did not include some allegations it was made aware of in writing. It also lost out on access to some witnesses.

Sounds like there are at least 3 of his papers being retracted. Interestingly, the fraudulent papers span 3 of his different institutions. Tessier-Lavigne is the common factor, strongly suggesting that the fraud can primarily be attributed to him rather than other author(s). The fraudulent/manipulated data described here is inexcusable, and there’s proof that he knew about at least some of it years ago. The fact that he knew about it and did nothing convinces me that it wasn’t the sole work of some rogue postdoc(s).

The Stanford Daily – 19 Jul 23

Stanford president resigns over manipulated research

Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne will resign effective Aug. 31. He will also retract or issue lengthy corrections to five widely cited papers for which he was principal author after a Stanford-sponsored investigation found “manipulation of...

I’m glad (and frankly surprised) he’s out as president, but his billionaire wealth and elite connections will continue to insulate him from too much damage. Pathetic.