President resignation
Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned as the president of Stanford University on the 31st August 2023, due to alleged research misconduct.
However, this Stanford scandal reaches back to 2009 where Marc was found innocent of fraudulent allegations at the Genentech biotechnology company.
He was then in a similar situation in 2010, resulting in a postdoc termination, and a withdrawn manuscript.
Then in 2015, Mark said he would correct errors in some of his publications but:
"To date, the scientific record remains uncorrected"[...] "Tessier-Lavigne had not followed up for seven years on unpublished corrections to two of his papers in Science"
PubPeer had various forums discussing these issues going right back to the 2009 case.
This all came to light when Theo Baker, an 18-year-old first year, shared his findings on the Stanford University blog.
And after an 8-month independent investigation, Stanford couldn't find evidence of Marc participating in any misconduct.
Despite the report stating:
“unusual frequency of manipulation of research data and/or substandard scientific practices”
Of the 12 papers reviewed, Marc was the primary author of 5. 3 being retracted. 2 needing corrections.
This history spanning 3 institutions, dating back 20+ years raises questions around the hiring process, and workload of those at the top of academic institutions.
In 2009 when the papers were first published, photoshop and image manipulation had blurry boundaries.
Raising further questions:
What is too much cropping?
How much can you clean up an image before it becomes manipulation?
Whose job is it to look for image manipulation?
At the time of publication, there were limited answers.
Mark's papers were challenged despite meeting required standards, and arguably with too much to do, requiring his time and attention.
Raising further questions:
Are standards too high or low?
Is the enforcement of standards good?
How do busy academics prioritise post publication?
There are widely excepted standards for best practices in scientific writing, each with nuanced tweaks.
However, enforcement of those standards seem to be the first hurdle.
"our reviewers don't spend enough time on papers to pick this stuff up
Yet this seems beyond the responsibility of authors.
One may argue authors should uphold standards before submitting for review.
But others may argue that is the reviewer’s job.
In this situation:
“The photoshopping was done intentionally, there’s no way around it,”
With people like Marc, earning over $2 million a year, there are obvious financial factors to consider.
In addition to this, the research in question contributed to the birth of a new field.
I think the evidence suggests foul play by Marc, but without enough proof it is difficult to pursue further action.
With the financial, research, and institutional considerations, further action also becomes extremely delicate.
What interests me is what can be done to speed up this post publication investigation into potential malpractice in the scientific publishing industry, to try and prevent a delicate situation like this happening again.