Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne has announced resignation after an investigation found that he failed to address manipulated papers, and also fostered unhealthy lab dynamics.
This follows months of intense scrutiny of his scientific work, conducted by an independent panel of scientists.
“At various times when concerns with Tessier-Lavigne’s papers emerged — in 2001, the early 2010s, 2015-2016, and March 2021 –Tessier-Lavigne failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes in the scientific record,” according to the report by Stanford’s Board of Trustees.
The report said the fudging of results under Tessier-Lavigne’s purview “spanned labs at three separate institutions”, The Stanford Daily reported.
It identified a culture where Tessier-Lavigne “tended to reward the ‘winners’ (that is, postdocs who could generate favourable results) and marginalised or diminish the ‘losers’ (that is, postdocs who were unable or struggled to generate such data).”
However, the report found no evidence that Tessier-Lavigne himself manipulated data in the papers reviewed or that he knew about manipulation at the time.
But he “has not been able to provide an adequate explanation” for why he did not correct the scientific record when presented the opportunity on multiple occasions.
I am “gratified that the Panel concluded I did not engage in any fraud or falsification of scientific data”.
Tessier-Lavigne wrote in a separate statement.
“The report identified some areas where I should have done better, and I accept the report’s conclusions,” he said.
He will also retract or issue lengthy corrections to five widely cited papers for which he was principal author after investigation revealed “manipulation of research data”.
Retracting a paper is a rare act. A database of retractions shows that only four in every 10,000 papers are retracted. It is done only when there is “clear evidence that the findings are unreliable”, according to guidelines from the nonprofit Committee on Publication Ethics.
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