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Dr Marc Tessier-Lavigne
Stanford College has launched a proper investigation into its personal president, neuroscientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne, PhD, for alleged analysis misconduct pertaining to 5 scientific articles on which he was lead or coauthor. Stanford’s Board of Trustees is main the investigation.
The college’s scholar newspaper, the Stanford Every day, broke the information of the investigation on November 30 — someday after it had reported on the alleged misconduct.
“The college will assess the allegations introduced within the media, in keeping with its regular rigorous method by which allegations of analysis misconduct are reviewed and investigated,” Dee Mostofi, spokesperson for Stanford College, advised Medscape Medical Information.
“Within the case of the papers in query that listing President Tessier-Lavigne as an writer, the method shall be overseen by the Board of Trustees,” she added.
By means of Mostofi, Tessier-Lavigne acknowledged that “scientific integrity is of the utmost significance each to the college and to me personally. I help this course of and can absolutely cooperate with it, and I recognize the oversight by the Board of Trustees.”
“Critical Points”
Allegations relating to scientific discrepancies printed in papers Tessier-Lavigne authored or coauthored first got here to mild 7 years in the past on PubPeer, a web site that enables scientists to establish attainable issues or anomalies in scientific publications.
Journalists on the Stanford Every day labored with biologist and world-renowned scientific misconduct investigator Elisabeth Bik, PhD.
After investigating 5 of Tessier-Lavigne’s papers, Bik acknowledged that they contained “severe points.”
The scholar newspaper printed concerning the misconduct allegations in a November 29 article, and famous {that a} research was underneath evaluate after being printed in 2008 in The European Molecular Biology Group (EMBO) Journal.
The College advised the Stanford Every day in a press release the day earlier than that article printed that Tessier-Lavigne “was not concerned in any means within the era or presentation of the panels which were queried” in two of the papers, which included the one in The EMBO Journal that’s underneath evaluate.
Of the opposite two papers, the College wrote that the problems “don’t have an effect on the information, outcomes, or interpretation of the papers.”
Deliberately Altered?
Bik advised Medscape Medical Information that, initially, considerations a couple of 1999 paper in Cell that was coauthored by Tessier-Lavigne had been raised on PubPeer in 2015 by an nameless individual underneath the display screen identify Peer 1.
“I’m not positive if that individual reported the issues to the journal, however their considerations concerned attainable undisclosed splicing, i.e. vertical cuts between lanes. That was not thought-about to be an issue again in 1999, nor even perhaps in 2015,” she famous.
“However 2 days in the past, I checked out that paper in additional element and I noticed a further drawback in Determine 3A that’s far more severe,” she mentioned.
Bik despatched Medscape Medical Information a duplicate of the PubPeer thread wherein she introduced her proof. She famous that a number of blots in Determine 3A of the paper “seem to indicate repetitive patterns,” which she marked in inexperienced, cyan, and blue.
Moreover, she mentioned the photographs look to have been deliberately altered and reported her discovery to the editors of Cell on the night of December 1.
The papers underneath investigation embrace a 1999 paper in Cell, two 2001 papers in Science, a 2003 paper in Nature, and a 2008 paper in The EMBO Journal. 4 had been neuroscience papers, whereas the fifth was concerning the morphogenesis of endothelial cells.
Tessier-Lavigne hails from Trenton in Ontario, Canada, and obtained his PhD in physiology from College Faculty, London. In 2003, he turned CEO of Genentech, Inc, a biotech firm in south San Francisco, California, earlier than changing into president of The Rockefeller College in New York Metropolis in 2011. He assumed his function as president of Stanford in 2016.
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