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Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will retract 3 papers

• jononomo 3y ago
  Doesn't it seem like this kind of fraud should result in prison sentences? I'm so sick of frauds in academia. I really wish the elites in our society still took the idea of Hell seriously. Also: "will resign effective August 31"??? Shouldn't this guy be locked out of his office, have his laptop confiscated, and be banned from campus immediately?
  • EMCymatics 3y ago
    >Doesn't it seem like this kind of fraud should result in prison sentences? It should but it probably wont.
    • jojobaskins 3y ago
      I remember a student who doctored his whole CV to get into Harvard (and win awards) was sent to probation: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/12/16/harvard-wheeler-college-guilty/ https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/12/16/harvard-wheele... Although his case was more egregious.
  • amelius 3y ago
    And pay back his salary ...
  • Method-X 3y ago
    Definitely. And on a broader note, white collar crime effectively having zero repercussions is the main reason so many of our institutions are failing.
  • Tao3300 3y ago
    The prison system wouldn't be able to handle the influx.
  • nerdchum 3y ago
    He prob had millions in government grants to write those papers. Theres no accountability.
    • mrguyorama 3y ago
      You know barely any of the money goes to him personally right? Grants aren't lottery tickets.
      • nerdchum 3y ago
        Ive worked in government labs and at universities. The grant money literally pays their salary. That aside... the amount of ways to commit corruption are endless... The amount of conferences they had in Italy and Malibu and places like that... The hot research assistant that never showed up to the lab but got paid. The endless tech project that took a decade and millions of dollars to write a simple LMS because their buddy ran the LMS company. The showing up at 10Am and leaving at 3 with a long lunch and working 20 hour work weeks. The university creating a team devoted to hacking the grant process. The elite university people in charge of the funding giving their other elite university alumni preferential treatment. Zero diversity labs because scientists hire their buddies. You can literally walk through university research buildings and see all Indian Labs, all Chinese labs, etc. The waste is massive and insane with our tax dollars. Its literally white collar welfare. And it happens everywhere and theres no accountability. Its a giant scam wrapped in the virtue signaling of altruistic science. It needs to end.
        • ke88y 3y ago
          > The showing up at 10Am and leaving at 3 with a long lunch and working 20 hour work weeks. Mostly this. The conferences honestly aren't that much of a perk, relative to the pay differential, at least in STEM fields. The "hot research asst" thing was common in the past but died down significantly with #MeToo (still a lot of egotistical creeps ofc). But the amount of general laziness dressed up as busyness in academia is astounding. Most professors retire in place some time in their early to mid 30s. The solution is to end higher ed carve-outs in federal grant awards. Let anyone qualified apply for and receive NSF funds. Stop tying tax dollars to university affiliation.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • digdugdirk 3y ago
    Absolutely, but given the magnitude of the impacts, I'd like to go after white collar crime first.
    • chimeracoder 3y ago
      > Absolutely, but given the magnitude of the impacts, I'd like to go after white collar crime first. This is literally white collar crime. Like most white collar crime, it's not reported in "crime statistics", and it may not be prosecuted for any number of reasons, but it's literally the definition of white collar crime.
  • londons_explore 3y ago
    A transition period for a leadership role tends to be a good plan, especially when the misconduct of the old leader is rather tangential to the role (ie. he wasn't caught buying Ferraris with university funds).
  • aliwrjtliawerj 3y ago
    [flagged]
  • ke88y 3y ago
    > Doesn't it seem like this kind of fraud should result in prison sentences? It depends on the nature of the fraud. I'm no fan of academia (see my post history), but this has to be close to the bottom of my list of priorities. The last car salesman I interacted with probably deserves more jail time than even the most unscrupulous academic (and the car salesman actually did commit a crime, but prosecution would be highly surprising). Medical and drug insurance is another case where there is systematic, intentional, and legal fraud literally killing people every day. The insurance case in particular is pernicious and full of literally deadly Catch-22 "tricks". See also all the obviously criminal web3 stuff that will definitely hit statute of limitations before any LE/prosecutor finds the time to investigate and prosecute. Most fraudsters don't see any legal punishment because LE and prosecutor time is so limited relative to the amount of fraud. And in the worst cases because the fraudsters have so much money and power that even obvious bullshit is at least de facto not criminal (see insurance). So, anyways. Should it be criminal? Yes. Is it criminal? IDK. Probably somehow. Is it where finite resources should be spent? Not usually; IMO there are far worse types of fraud where the people's LE+legal+legislative resources should be spent. > Also: "will resign effective August 31"??? Shouldn't this guy be locked out of his office, have his laptop confiscated, and be banned from campus immediately? Conjecture: there is probably a lot of "hand-off" work to be done. Excluding my first two jobs, where I was a junior/mid-level IC, I have always been asked to stay a least a month longer than the typical 2 weeks to handle hand-offs. I guess the best we can hope for is that the last month of employment is living hell as he has to attend a bunch of hand-off meetings as a totally disgraced academic/leader.
  • tptacek 3y ago
    That depends on what percentage of grant money you believe should be spent on extra administration and ass-covering, which is the standard institutional response to liability. Bear in mind: a healthy chunk of grant money is already taken as a rake by the sponsoring university. Again, the optimal amount of research misconduct isn't zero!
• vorpalhex 3y ago
  What are the actual papers?
  • akhayam 3y ago
    Not sure which ones, but here is the whole history of Marc's research publications: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Marc+Tessier-Lavigne&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Marc...
  • drakythe 3y ago
    I haven't found a specific list, but did find this article with a bunch more details https://www.statnews.com/2023/07/19/marc-tessier-lavigne-stanford-president-resignation/ https://www.statnews.com/2023/07/19/marc-tessier-lavigne-sta...
  • sva_ 3y ago
    Here's a list if you scroll down and also the altered images with annotations. The photoshopping is pretty brazen. https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/29/stanford-presidents-research-under-investigation-for-scientific-misconduct-university-admits-mistakes/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/29/stanford-presidents-res...
  • capableweb 3y ago
    > Today, the Stanford board’s special committee released the law firm’s and scientific panels’ findings, which are based on more than 50,000 documents, interviews with over 50 people, and input from forensic science experts. Its report finds that for seven papers on which Tessier-Lavigne was a middle, or secondary, author, he bears no responsibility for any data manipulation. The primary authors have taken responsibility and in many cases are issuing corrections. > But the 22-page report (plus appendices) found “serious flaws” in all five papers on which Tessier-Lavigne is corresponding or senior author: the 1999 Cell paper, the two 2001 Science papers, a 2004 Nature paper, and the 2009 Nature paper from Genentech. In four of these studies, the investigation found “apparent manipulation of research data by others.” For example, in one case, a single blot from the 2009 Cell paper was used in three different experiments, and a blot from that paper was reused in one of the 2001 Science papers. > The 2004 Nature paper also contains manipulated images, the report found. Although the report says the allegations of fraud and a cover-up at Genentech involving the 2009 Nature paper were “mistaken”—people likely conflated the fraudulent paper a year earlier, and Genentech scientists’ problems replicating the work, it suggests—that paper showed “a lack of rigor” that falls below standards. https://www.science.org/content/article/stanford-president-to-step-down-despite-probe-exonerating-him-of-research-misconduct https://www.science.org/content/article/stanford-president-t... PubPeer alsoshows which papers they've been involved with that has "Errata" or "Expression of Concern": https://pubpeer.com/search?q=authors%3A+%22tessier-lavigne%22 https://pubpeer.com/search?q=authors%3A+%22tessier-lavigne%2...
• doh 3y ago
  > According to Jerry Yang, chair of the Stanford Board of Trustees, Tessier-Lavigne will step down “in light of the report and its impact on his ability to lead Stanford.” Jerry Yang, as the same Jerry Yang that co-founded Yahoo. Didn’t know he is on the board of trustees at Stanford.
  • poorbutdebtfree 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • swyx 3y ago
      lol is this a dig at Andrew Yang? why discuss hypotheticals. a fraud is a fraud.
  • valarauko 3y ago
    He's been Chair since July 2021. At Stanford, Yang has served twice on the board of trustees, the first time from 2005 to 2015. He joined the board again in October 2017 and has served as its vice chair. Yang & his wife have also given over $75 million to Stanford.
  • ykonstant 3y ago
    It's a small world up there.
• gnicholas 3y ago
  The provost has also stepped down, presumably because she knew the new president will select a new provost. Given that she announced her resignation 10 weeks ago, she must have known that this outcome was the likely one. [1] 1: https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/05/03/persis-drell-step-stanford-provost/ https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/05/03/persis-drell-ste...
  • jxramos 3y ago
    wow, I didn't see that one coming. There was something underwhelming after the John L Hennessy handoff and the new cast of characters I couldn't put my finger on at the time. The tone of the alumni magazine changed in a direction I wasn't too fond of but too complex to nail and articulate at the time why.
• p1esk 3y ago
  He probably didn’t even read those papers.
  • capableweb 3y ago
    Yet listed as co-author, so good thing we're getting rid of him.
• panarky 3y ago
  The student-run newspaper broke the story and relentlessly pursued it. Stanford president’s research under investigation for scientific misconduct, University admits ‘mistakes’ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/29/stanford-presidents-research-under-investigation-for-scientific-misconduct-university-admits-mistakes/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/29/stanford-presidents-res... Stanford president dodges research misconduct questions https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/25/stanford-president-dodges-research-misconduct-questions/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/25/stanford-president-dodg... Internal review found ‘falsified data’ in Stanford President’s Alzheimer’s research, colleagues allege https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/17/internal-review-found-falsified-data-in-stanford-presidents-alzheimers-research-colleagues-allege/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/17/internal-review-found-f... The reporter, Theo Baker, is a freshman. https://stanforddaily.com/author/tabaker/ https://stanforddaily.com/author/tabaker/
  • quailfarmer 3y ago
    All written by freshman reporter Theo Baker: https://twitter.com/tab_delete/status/ https://twitter.com/tab_delete/status/ His parents are NYT chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser. It’s an interesting story for sure.
    • AndrewKemendo 3y ago
      Wow! You can't make this up. It's like one side of the "legacy elite" came around and smacked down a whole different side of the "legacy elite."
      • lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Why would you classify Baker’s family as “legacy elite”?
        • drBonkers 3y ago
          Are you serious? > His parents are NYT chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser.
• akhayam 3y ago
  I hear the calls for blood here, but will offer a contrarian point of view. The pressures academic researchers have to face today are unparalleled, even in 95% of industry jobs. The pressure to publish continuously, pressure to win grants, pressure to be a great teacher, pressure to be a role model for students and younger faculty, pressure to balance all this with families that really need you too. So we basically take the brightest minds and have them compete in a gladiatorial rate race. This system is so broken that something fundamental has to change here.
  • Analemma_ 3y ago
    "When you're in a hole, stop digging". Yes, academia is terribly broken at the moment, the incentives are fucked, and fraud is rampant. But the solution there is not to just look the other way at misdeeds, that just makes the incentives even worse. Highly-visible career executions for misconduct aren't the entire solution, but they are part of the solution.
  • bob1029 3y ago
    I didn't realize academic research was a mandatory life sentence.
  • stefan_ 3y ago
    The guy went on to become Stanford president, it's not the system that broke him, it's that he was a cheater all along and flourished in it. There are a lot of good honest hard working people losing out, but you won't find them at an administrator luncheon because they are spending 70h in the lab every week on a temp contract.
  • bowsamic 3y ago
    I agree. I'm a physicist and if everyone I knew who lied in their research got fired, there would be no one left.
    • edgyquant 3y ago
      What the actual fuck. There should be none of you left if that’s the case.
• nerdchum 3y ago
  This is modern science. This is our tax dollars. And this is at the highest levels.
  • tptacek 3y ago
    The optimal amount of scientific misconduct is not zero.
    • its_ethan 3y ago
      Care to elaborate on why you think it's optimal to have a non-zero amount of fake data supporting scientific claims?
      • tptacek 3y ago
        Because the only way to get zero misconduct is to drastically reduce the amount of science that is done, probably by orders of magnitude. This is an old saw when talking about government waste: the optimal amount of waste isn't zero, because there are diminishing returns to pursuing waste, and at some point the losses you avoid by eliminating waste are swamped by the costs of eliminating it. It doesn't follow that waste and misconduct are good, only that when we talk about policy responses to scandals, we should consider the costs involved in avoiding those scandals, and whether it's rational to pay those costs. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
        • Brusco_RF 3y ago
          I am somewhat mind-blown by that government waste adage. While I supposed that in some technical sense it could be true, I would like to have a blunt conversation with anyone who believes government waste is anywhere near parity with the costs of trying to eliminate government waste
          • tptacek 3y ago
            The logic of the statement, which is pretty hard to dispute, doesn't establish that the current amount of waste in any given program is or isn't optimal, only that the optimal level isn't zero.
• AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  > Tessier-Lavigne defended his reputation but acknowledged that issues with his research, first raised in a Daily investigation last autumn, meant that Stanford requires a president “whose leadership is not hampered by such discussions.” This speaks volumes about his character. Any organization led by someone with questionable ethics poisons the trust and confidence of the entire organization. So good for him! Those kinds of ethics questions have a real impact on everyone else in the organization trying to do the right thing - as they bear the reputational harm with much less ability to just choose to go elsewhere. Knowingly, or even just negligently, putting your colleagues and employees in such a situation is a tragedy of leadership. It’s important to recognize that this would be a different story had he been ousted and protested or attempted a cover up. People mess up, but sometimes that means you don’t get to be a leader anymore. That’s what’s happening here and it seems like the right way we should treat these things.
  • peteradio 3y ago
    If he knows he is at fault he should admit it as well as resign. Conversely, people should not be ousted based on false allegations.
  • koheripbal 3y ago
    Given the rampant nepotism in Stanford admissions, the whole school needs to shut down.
    • gnicholas 3y ago
      When you say nepotism, do you mean legacy admissions, or something else? I know a prominent alum who was able to get her kids into undergrad at Stanford, but not into their professional schools. Considering where they went after being rejected from Stanford, they were not remotely in the ballpark. It's good to know that there are limits to legacy admissions, even for rich/famous alums.
      • mrguyorama 3y ago
        Sounds like she didn't pay someone enough.
• drakythe 3y ago
  Additional info available from https://www.statnews.com/2023/07/19/marc-tessier-lavigne-stanford-president-resignation/ https://www.statnews.com/2023/07/19/marc-tessier-lavigne-sta... I'm glad to see someone take some personal responsibility that isn't forced on them (that we know of). I realize that I don't know enough about the circumstances to know if this is "enough", and I am curious about his staying on as faculty, but from purely appearances this is a pleasant surprise given most recent public figure screw-ups have just posted through it.
• btheshoe 3y ago
  On the whole, all these scandals in manipulated research have deeply shaken my trust in many of our scientific institutions. It's clear by now this isn't the case of a few bad apples - our scientific institutions are systemically broken in ways that promote spreading fraudulent results as established scientific truth.
  • downWidOutaFite 3y ago
    It's the same everywhere not just science. The fake-it-till-you-make-it type-A charismatic bullshitters rise up the ranks in all organizations.
    • akhayam 3y ago
      I feel this trend taking root in academia is still a new-ish thing. The boundaries of academia and research, especially for computer science, really started blending 15-20 years ago as Big Tech took over Oil for the best paying job / grant. The decay has been super fast though. Maybe some academics will find the courage to do a longitudinal study of this decay. Now that'll be an interesting paper to read.
      • bugglebeetle 3y ago
        It’s most certainly not a new trend, but is perhaps a quintessentially American disease. But one need only look at the so-called “luminaries” in many fields during the mid-20th century to see that this is not in anyway a novel phenomenon. Once you get slightly afield from the hard sciences, it’s charlatans all the way down, especially in fields like psychology and economics.
  • edgyquant 3y ago
    Yep. After years of pushing back against claims that researchers skewed scientific results to fit their agenda this is a huge, demoralizing blow. Even if it isn’t widespread, how can you honestly blame anyone for being skeptical anymore.
    • 3y ago
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• mochomocha 3y ago
  Between Marc Tessier-Lavigne, operation Varsity Blues and SBF parents, the scandals involving Stanford keep on coming. It's not sending a good signal when it comes to the overall integrity of the institution.
  • 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y ago
    People forget VERY quickly. Think of all of the Meta scandals. People will still gladly hire anyone who worked there, it's an amazing brand name to have despite whatever damage to society. You'd have to get to an Enron-level fiasco for people to start looking at you suspiciously.
    • Brusco_RF 3y ago
      I think that is reasonable. The alternative is that all 80,000 Meta employees have their professional reputations tarnished by something that happened a decade ago that they probably had nothing to do with
    • hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
      It's not about forgetting, it's about other people not caring about things that aren't relevant to a job they're hiring for. For example, Meta is known for having a relatively high bar for engineering talent, and that is the signal people are looking for. Even in the Enron case, I know a bunch of people who were snapped up from Enron after they collapsed. The Enron fraud was concentrated among relatively few people at the company, so it's not like their failure tarnished people who weren't in on the fraud.
    • srcreigh 3y ago
      Fraud isn’t even negative at a certain point. Whichever person is the top of a prestigious fraud ring still deserves a kind of clout. There’s skills and talent involved not to mention how fraud itself is sadly valuable for most organizations.
    • stcroixx 3y ago
      This isn't true - I've been hiring programmers for many years and Meta/FB are definitely on my blacklist. I consider the damage they've already done far worse than Enron and they're not finished yet.
• okintheory 3y ago
  Very glad to see this. The Stanford Daily did a great job reporting this. Reposting a comment that I found instructive from the discussion on this piece [1]. About the Genentech report [2] which made MTL look very very bad. ``` APersonWhoCanRead 3 months ago It seems to me that the linked report goes as close as possible to accusing MTL of fraud as one could hope given that it's coming from Genentech lawyers that are trying to keep the company out of trouble: "In order to assess whether the 2009 Nature paper contains duplicate images, the diligence team consulted an independent, outside expert who specializes in detecting image manipulations in scientific publications. This expert concluded that two sets of figures, Figures 1d and 5e and Supplementary Figures 9c and 17c, include duplicate images. The expert also concluded that a Western blot panel for Caspase 6 in Supplementary Figure 6d appears to include a composite of two images. We have not determined how these anomalies occurred." "Genentech scientists and research associates had difficulty reproducing certain results reported in the 2009 Nature paper, in particular, the binding interaction between DR6 and N-APP (the N-terminal portion of APP). Prior to publication of the paper, employees other than the authors performed binding experiments that showed inconsistent results – sometimes binding between DR6 and N-APP was detected, and other times, it was not. Some of the employees who performed those experiments attributed the inconsistent results to variability in the purity and quality of the reagents used." --> Clearly, some employees attributed the inconsistent results differently - I'm guessing as fraud. --> These determinations were made before the paper, which contained fabricated data (c.f. above), was published. Clearly, the first author would have been told, and most likely also MTL. "Senior leaders at Genentech including Dr. Tessier-Lavigne knew of the inconsistent binding results, and there was uncertainty and speculation within the Genentech Research organization about why the binding interaction between DR6 and N-APP could not be reliably reproduced or confirmed." "Also following Dr. Tessier-Lavigne’s departure, one senior leader in gRED urged that the 2009 Nature paper should be retracted or corrected in light of the inconsistent binding results. Other senior leaders recognized at the time that this was an action only Dr. Tessier-Lavigne or another co-author could take with the journal." --> MTL was asked to retract and did not. TLDR: the report is very damning. Why don't you try to dispute some of the facts reported by the Daily, instead of writing nebulously that their headline is misleading. ``` UPDATE: To clarify, that comment is responding to another comment saying "the report is very positive for MTL" [1] https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/06/stanford-president-research-misconduct-concerns-genentech/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/06/stanford-president-rese... [2] https://www.gene.com/download/pdf/Findings-of-2023-Genentech-Review-of-2009-Nature-Paper-and-Related-Research.pdf https://www.gene.com/download/pdf/Findings-of-2023-Genentech...
• akhayam 3y ago
  Breaking the rat race of academic publications is long overdue. In some domains, the call to break this vicious cycle is already happening. E.g. ACM Sigcomm is one of the most prestigious and exclusive conference in Networking and Distributed Systems research. Some of the most profound researchers in that domain are driving a pledge to fundamentally rethink what the conference accepts and what gets presented: https://sigcomm.quest/proposal.html https://sigcomm.quest/proposal.html.
  • Upvoter33 3y ago
    And it's a bad proposal. To wit: "Concretely, after a paper has been thoroughly discussed, any paper that still has at least one advocate for acceptance should normally be accepted." This is a terrible idea. People will have friends who get their papers in, in return for the favor of the same. Agree with your general point though. No easy answers though.
    • awesomeMilou 3y ago
      >This is a terrible idea. People will have friends who get their papers in, in return for the favor of the same. But this is already the case. In some fields even double blind doesn't work because community members are aware of each others research. If you're one of two people worldwide who's specific specialization is the compression of semantic knowledge streams, you're probably willing to be money on your ability to spot your colleagues research.
• justsayit 3y ago
  MSG got a bad rap due to a joke by scientists. No matter how well educated, they’re still just people and biology is optimized for success. At this point society needs to have a good long think about enabling the reach of any specific individual. Our math is not holistic truth as it’s been shown there can never be one true set of axioms. All philosophy is relative to human awareness and agreement. The masses have always agreed rent seekers are leaches who externalize providing for themselves. We need to stop creating landed gentry; they’re all just one of billions like the rest. The work is important, not their figurative identity; we don’t need them to carry out the work. 3 months labor, 3 months off, 6 months white collar work. A rotation such as that would effectively act as term limits on social influence.
• veave 3y ago
  Trust the science, they say.
  • foogazi 3y ago
    Trust but verify
    • raincom 3y ago
      Verify then trust
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• nomilk 3y ago
  For every false paper, I wonder how many other researchers waste time pursuing research on false premises. And worse, how much do fake papers influence broader society, through policy and individual decision making. I wonder if any economists have tried to measure the $ cost of fake research.
  • EMCymatics 3y ago
    Dont forget people who spend resources just replicating studies.
  • tptacek 3y ago
    Papers don't establish ground truths in science; they start a conversation. When bad papers are published due to misconduct, there's a cost --- a pointless conversation occurs. But it doesn't shake the foundations of science. People that actually do science understand the implications of a published paper.
    • surement 3y ago
      > Papers don't establish ground truths in science > it doesn't shake the foundations of science the comment doesn't say any of that, just that resources are wasted participating to these "conversations"
    • thaw13579 3y ago
      Papers are often rejected due to lack of novelty compared to previous work, especially if they contradict it. How many paper were similarly rejected because this fraudulent work was published?
  • AtNightWeCode 3y ago
    And doping. Now you think what? But. It is hard to compete with people doing drugs to be able crunch 16h seven days a week to get a result.
  • rcxdude 3y ago
    It's definitely a source of wasted effort (I think almost every postgrad student has a story of trying and failing to get something described in a paper to work), but I would say that fraud is only a small fraction of failure to replicate cases. It's also quite common that there is some other factor making it difficult to get something working in your lab that worked somewhere else (which to be clear is still a problem, but a different one).
• stuckinhell 3y ago
  Unbelievable, no wonder people don't trust the science!
  • MengerSponge 3y ago
    Thankfully Daddy Business always tells us when he lied to us. Science is self-correcting. Not always right. This is part of what self-correction looks like. It beats all known alternatives.
    • stuckinhell 3y ago
      Science didn't self-correct here. The checks and balance in the scientific systems failed so badly, a student journalist uncovered the fraud. The problem is that Science has become in your words "Daddy" Business.
      • MengerSponge 3y ago
        Oh, I see. Was the fraud revealed during discovery? Or was it a deathbed confession? No. But it was revealed, and championed by an undergraduate journalist. It's important to track the provenance of ideas, and Theo Baker wasn't the first person to identify the falsified data. He has done great work keeping Stanford from burying the story, but he isn't Elizabeth Bik, combing through old Science articles looking for duplication. And now the papers have been retracted, and the responsible party faces laughably trivial consequences, all things considered. A self-correcting system isn't going to get it right all the time. The papers were under the aegis of a powerful man, so it's not surprising that it took some time for them to be corrected.
  • scrum-treats 3y ago
    There's a reason for maintaining separation of corporate capitalism and science/academia. People are persuaded by the almighty dollar and the prestige. Before you know it academic institutions and "prestigious" scientists are pushing propaganda, for kickbacks. While it may be difficult at times to maintain ethics and integrity, it's always worth the commitment. Always.
• dcsommer 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • panarky 3y ago
    If you have evidence of scientific misconduct then show what you've got. If not, the culture-war bullshit is off-topic.
    • gnicholas 3y ago
      She repeatedly misquoted research in her papers. This has been well documented. Here's a comprehensive critique of her, by Stanford math professor Brian Conrad: https://sites.google.com/view/publiccommentsonthecmf/?ref=stanfordreview.org#h.ns5n6hdqa4x8 https://sites.google.com/view/publiccommentsonthecmf/?ref=st...
      • panarky 3y ago
        The investigation into these allegations was terminated after finding no wrongdoing.
        • gnicholas 3y ago
          There was a previous investigation, years ago, which failed to dismiss her as a tenured professor (which is very difficult to do — as we've seen with MTL). But the document I linked to is from 2023, related specifically to her misrepresentations in the CMF. That has not had a hearing, AFAIK. If you have more information, please share it! I would be surprised if misstatements in such a document (which is not published research) could lead to a tenured professor being fired. But I would welcome an investigation by the Daily into the issue, which could turn up evidence of other misrepresentations in contexts that are more likely to receive administrative scrutiny. She surely has freedom of speech, as a professor. But purposely and persistently misquoting research is precisely the sort of thing that professors can be punished for.
          • 3y ago
• anoxor 3y ago
  The rot goes SUPER deep team
• contemporary343 3y ago
  What is concerning is there were even more allegations that weren't included because they could not offer anonymity to those providing them: https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/sources-refused-to-participate-in-stanford-investigation-of-president-after-they-werent-guaranteed-anonymity/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/sources-refused-to-part...
• jxding 3y ago
  Link to full pdf of the Report issued by Stanford's "special committee:" https://boardoftrustees.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/07/Scientific-Panel-Final-Report.pdf https://boardoftrustees.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/site... Some extracts: "There were repeated instances of manipulation of research data and/or subpar scientific practices from different people and in labs run by Dr. Tessier-Lavigne at different institutions" "At various times when concerns with Dr. Tessier-Lavigne’s papers emerged—in 2001, the early 2010s, 2015-16, and March 2021—Dr.Tessier-Lavigne failed to decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes in the scientific record." "However, a second theme emerged among some of the interviewees that the same lab culture also tended to reward the “winners” (that is, postdocs who could generate favorable results) and marginalize or diminish the “losers” (that is, postdocs who were unable or struggled to generate such data)" Considering that Stanford's special committee has every reason to protect Tessier-Lavigne and damage control, the findings are quite damning. Good on Theo Baker for continuing to provide a more critical perspective compared to the cushy political speak of the report.
  • brutusborn 3y ago
    Interesting that Stanford found the 2009 paper "lacked vigor" and Genentech found no-one "reported observing or knowing of any fraud, fabrication, or other intentional wrongdoing in the research leading to and reported in the 2009 Nature paper." [0] So basically the euphemism "lacked vigor" = "wasn't scientific" but since it wasn't "intentional" or "known" no-one can be blamed for it? Am I the only one who doesn't really care if bad science is intentional or fraudulent? They should be judged on their science, which was objectively dogshit, not on their morality, which is subjectively dogshit, but conveniently can't be judged by the relevant parties because everyone involved got amnesia. Maybe I'm being too harsh but shadiness in public health really irritates me. [0] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiV9ofrqJyAAxU--DgGHXcXAEQQFnoECBIQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gene.com%2Fdownload%2Fpdf%2FFindings-of-2023-Genentech-Review-of-2009-Nature-Paper-and-Related-Research.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3hT5yVs4_CeURk45-d1nyW&opi=89978449 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
  • pcrh 3y ago
    >For the five reviewed papers where Dr. Tessier-Lavigne was a principal author (sometimes referred to as the “primary papers”), the Scientific Panel has concluded that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne did not have actual knowledge of the manipulation of research data that occurred in his lab and was not reckless in failing to identify such manipulation prior to publication. I've read some of the papers that contain duplicated data; such duplications can be seen as "honest errors" similar to typos (e.g. maybe the file names were too similar?). It would be negligent of MTL to overlook these, even if it would not be fraud.
• moralestapia 3y ago
  The issue with academia is much broader and larger than people know of, but I'm happy that (slowly) some of these things are starting to come out to light. Broader, because fraudulent research is only one of the multiple crappy things that a person with no ethics will do to grab a place and keep it. But another common thing is academic abuse towards students, which is another HUGE problem that needs to be addressed. There's a lot of real crimes happening here, extortion, sexual abuse, you name it. Guess who's talking about it? Almost nobody. Larger, because people tend to believe that these are just a few bad apples while in reality this is pretty much how many large academic institutions operate de facto. If I'd put an estimate of how many of these "bad apples" are actually there, I would say it is as high as 7 out of 10 people involved in academia. I love science, I've been doing it for about 15 years. That is the reason why I'm very vocal around this subject. This is a swamp that needs to be drained.
  • voakbasda 3y ago
    It goes even deeper than all that. Schools basically give away undergraduate degrees now, as those who should fail will magically receive passing grades. They cannot afford to fail too many students (relative to other institutions), as that ultimately would damage either their finances or reputation. Absolutely everyone involved in teaching (professors, instructors, grad students) are complicit in this scam. This endemic condition demonstrates the complete lack of integrity present in these institutions. If they are willing to lie and cheat the system that grants the very entry level credentials required to get into the upper echelons of academia, it becomes a very safe bet that they are lying and cheating in countless other ways from the comfort of their ivory towers.
    • mathisfun123 3y ago
      >It goes even deeper than all that. Schools basically give away undergraduate degrees now, as those who should fail will magically receive passing grades. how exactly did you make the leap to undergrads?
  • squarepizza 3y ago
    > There's a lot of real crimes happening here, extortion, sexual abuse, you name it. Guess who's talking about it? Almost nobody. And institutions are very good and very fast at sweeping these under the rug, often if not always at the expense of the students.
• msie 3y ago
  I'm confused. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/07/19/stanford-university-marc-tessier-lavigne-research-controversy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/07/19/stanford... "A panel of experts concluded that Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist who has been president of Stanford for nearly seven years, did not engage in any fraud or falsification of scientific data. It also did not find evidence that he was aware of problems before publication of data."
  • skilled 3y ago
    Let me clear up the confusion, > Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will retract at least three papers
    • yborg 3y ago
      I.e. he's nobly taking the fall for fraud committed by others that he knew nothing about in the lab he was paid a large amount of money to run and who attached his name to said papers he had nothing to do with. Even the spun version doesn't make him look very good.
  • ceejayoz 3y ago
    It helps if you read the following paragraph. They couldn't prove he personally did the manipulation. He oversaw work at three different institutions over two decades that resulted in manipulated data by someone, and didn't issue corrections when those manipulations were pointed out. If he didn't do it, he was incompetent or uninterested in fixing the issues.
    • msie 3y ago
      Yes, I think most people (like me) will get the impression that he was personally involved in fraud but at most he is guilty of what you speak of.
      • ceejayoz 3y ago
        At most, he's guilty of fraud. That's unproven, but not impossible. At the least, he's guilty of not noticing/caring about stuff he really should have cared about, and as a result wasted a whole bunch of money and human life (not just in his own labs, but those relying on his work) that we can't get back.
• fdsafdsava 3y ago
  Still a member of the national academy of sciences. https://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/members/20010006.html https://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/members/20010006....
• nradov 3y ago
  The entire field of Alzheimer's Disease research has been a mess for years. None of it has led to really effective clinical treatments. I get the sense that many researchers are feeling pressure to show positive results in order to justify continued funding, and at the margins some make unethical choices.
  • mrguyorama 3y ago
    Well most of the problems probably come from "Well this expirement was inconclusive but surely this mechanism is real and is the cause so I will just be a little selective in my data so it won't get dropped" And after six iterations of this it just never pans out. Real replication is whether you can reliably build on top of a previous study.
  • norwalkbear 3y ago
    This is why fraud in science especially when funded by taxpayer money in important fields deserves PRISON. Damn my father has Alzheimer's, so this really hurts deep.
    • outside415 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • ceejayoz 3y ago
        > 7 orders of magnitude more effective at crossing the blood brain barrier In rats. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121011090653.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121011090653.h...
        • outside415 3y ago
          Human trials are underway. I’ve been taking it for 2 months. It’s very powerful. If it were my relative I would try everything (lions mane, fasting, dihexa, etc). Neurodegenerative diseases are horrifying. If you’re waiting for human clinical trials of the peptides that are up and coming it will be too late for people already starting to decline to benefit.
• kaptainscarlet 3y ago
  Trust the science.
  • nvaofdv3332 3y ago
    [flagged]
• whatscooking 3y ago
  More evidence that science in its current state is more of a religion than science. People only using it to further their agenda
• cameldrv 3y ago
  Underplayed here is the role of Elisabeth Bik (@microbiomdigest on Twitter). She’s spent years doggedly finding photoshopped images in published research papers, including these ones.
  • umeshunni 3y ago
    Super fascinating. Do you have any links to this research?
    • cameldrv 3y ago
      Her site is: https://scienceintegritydigest.com/about/ https://scienceintegritydigest.com/about/ https://scienceintegritydigest.com/ https://scienceintegritydigest.com/ She wrote an op-ed in the NYT last year: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/29/opinion/science-fraud-image-manipulation-photoshop.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/10/29/opinion/scien... She says her work has led to 938 papers being retracted. One of the interesting parts to me is that most of her work seems to be completely manual. She seems to have an eye for seeing photoshop on microscopy images or images of gels. The biggest method of fraud that she seems to find is researchers cutting and pasting from one image to another, for example, the scientist runs a gel but the results don't work out the way they hoped, so they paste in a line from another gel to make the experiment look like it worked. The uncomfortable part is that this is just one of many ways that you could fabricate or alter research results, and Dr. Bik is only one person finding it in her spare time. Probably a whole lot of fraud goes undetected.
      • crtified 3y ago
        > One of the interesting parts to me is that most of her work seems to be completely manual. She seems to have an eye for seeing photoshop [...] Brings to mind the skills of the 'super recogniser'. Perhaps her manual work involves similar aptitude. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_recogniser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_recogniser -- Later edit: Indeed, the NYT article mentions - "Since childhood, I’ve been “blessed” with what I’m told is a better-than-average ability to spot repeating patterns. It’s a questionable blessing when you’re focused more on the floor tiles than on the person you’re supposed to talk to. However, this ability, combined with my — what some might call obsessive — personality, helped me when hunting duplications in scientific images by eye." - Elisabeth Bik
• JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  For his work that was funded with federal grants [1], are there criminal charges prosecutors can bring? [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19225519/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19225519/
• hackernoteng 3y ago
  And they wonder why we dont all just "trust the science!"
• hackernoteng 3y ago
  Anyone else vomit when they try to read academic "papers"? Its like they are all written by some kind of Borg cult
  • kstrauser 3y ago
    Nope. Sorry, that's on you.
  • RugnirViking 3y ago
    Its a very different kind of "reading". Condensing 50 pages into about 7. I can read papers in my field fairly well because I have understanding of the ideas but it takes me hours to read a single paper from outside my field. This, and I cant stress this enough, is a good thing. You've probably complained that people spend way too much time waffling nonsense instead of simply writing the ingredients in cooking recipies. Scientific papers ARE the list of ingredients without anything else. If you feel like they missed three steps, go back and actually read it, bit by bit. Read the prior art if youre really confused. You simply cannot skim read them, each sentence is important.
• jl6 3y ago
  Wikipedia discusses the reliability of academic sources here[0], advising “extreme caution” when using primary research papers, preferring reviews. This incident is a case in point, and I wish media wouldn’t rush to publicize papers until they have been through much more extensive validation, replication and review. It’s especially worrying when primary medical research is enthusiastically rushed into the hands of doctors many years ahead of the systematic reviews that temper them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Some_types_of_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Som...
  • swyx 3y ago
    looks nervously at the arxiv culture in AI...
    • tmpz22 3y ago
      Hello I work for Hubris Ventures and noticed you had AI in your comment. Are you interested in funding?
      • klabb3 3y ago
        Hello I work for Hype Bank and noticed you had venture in your comment. Are you interested in some cheap loans?
    • whimsicalism 3y ago
      I think publication of code culture in AI mitigates this relatively well compared to other fields, but it is getting strained recently.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • zeroCalories 3y ago
    I don't think there is a lot wrong with doctors, or specialists getting hold of individual or preprint papers. Sometimes they're the best you have when you need to make decisions. I think the problems start when you have a layman trying to understand a topic. You can find all kinds of papers and results with contradicting evidence, so you need foundational knowledge to interpret them.
• DanAtC 3y ago
  Putting the scam in Scamford
• zx10rse 3y ago
  A good reminder about Aaron Swartz and his story - https://youtu.be/gpvcc9C8SbM?t=3238 https://youtu.be/gpvcc9C8SbM?t=3238
• ericpauley 3y ago
  Dupe: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-30-mn-131-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-07-30-mn-131-st... /s
• seydor 3y ago
  To be blunt, running an institution does not necessarily require the scientific creds in question. But interesting that they cast the first stone
• latenightcoding 3y ago
  So what happens next? does Stanford and his past employers sue for what he has already been paid? Does he lose his prestigious degrees? Because if this ends with his resignation, the fraud was totally worth it.
  • boeingUH60 3y ago
    Lavigne holds board positions at two biotech companies, Denali and Regeneron. He has sold over $70 million of shares over the past three years and still has Denali shares worth around $63 million [1]…he can live the rest of his life on a luxury beach if he wishes, lol 1 - https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1437435.htm https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1437435.htm
• lnwlebjel 3y ago
  Richard Feynman on the subject: "researchers must avoid fooling themselves, be willing to question and doubt their own theories and their own results, and investigate possible flaws in a theory or an experiment. He recommended that researchers adopt an unusually high level of honesty which is rarely encountered in everyday life, and gave examples from advertising, politics, and psychology to illustrate the everyday dishonesty which should be unacceptable in science. Feynman cautioned,[3] 'We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.'" from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science The frauds and bad scientists will be found out, eventually.
  • cryptonector 3y ago
    > The frauds and bad scientists will be found out, eventually. That's nice, but some frauds could potentially be very, very costly for society. There needs to be some deterrent as well.
    • hgomersall 3y ago
      As well we are discovering from 40 years of neoclassical economics being a dominant force in policy.
    • zeroCalories 3y ago
      There needs to be heavy deterrent, but there also needs to be room for genuine failure. A lot of research, in both academic, public, and private domains, is worthless. When you spend months, or years on dead end research it can be a disaster for your career. The temptation to misrepresent or fabricate results is strong in those situations.
• JoshTko 3y ago
  Research papers seem to be fundamentally flawed in that the person who has most to gain, is essentially the person measuring the results - classic conflict of interest problem. The peer review is clearly ineffective against a highly motivated nefarious individuals.
• tempsy 3y ago
  I don't know what's been going on at Stanford lately but feels like there's been numerous scandals piling up one by one.
• bufordtwain 3y ago
  Unfortunately scientists are often rewarded/celebrated for research that finds groundbreaking or new results as opposed to results which are actually true but less interesting. This incentive is very difficult to resist.
• rossdavidh 3y ago
  Ok, I know this is a bit of a stretch, but bear with me: I think we are seeing something similar to the doping scandal that took down Lance Armstrong and many others a while back. There was at least one year's Tour de France in which all but one participant were later found to have been doping. In other words, you didn't get to that level of that competitive activity, if you didn't cheat, because it wasn't possible to outperform people with such a significant advantage. It actually became a contest, not just of bicycling, but of doping, because getting away with it was quite difficult and it took years for the world of cycling to get good enough countermeasures to shift the advantage to non-doping. Academic research has, for decades now, been a very competitive, high stakes endeavor. Many fields have more people trying to work in it, than there are spots (i.e. grants and endowed chairs) available. If you have twice as many aspirants as slots available, and "only" 25% of them cheat (in this case, fudge their data to get more interesting results), then you get something like 50% of your field filled with fraud. Moreover, the closer they are to the top, the higher the likelihood that they are "doping". I live in Austin, TX, and I remember when nearly all of Lance Armstrong's competitors had been busted, but he had not yet. I said to other people, "well, that's it then, he must have been doping. You can't win the Tour de France 7 years in a row against doping opponents, if you're clean. Either doping doesn't work, or he was doping." I recall several people disagreeing, convinced that he was clean. He wasn't clean.
  • nemo44x 3y ago
    Universities are in the business of creating/discovering truth and shipping it. A Positivist review quickly shows things like math are easy to prove true. As you work your ways down to the humanities it becomes increasingly difficult. And competitive. Shipping truth that isn’t powerful isn’t as attractive to your customers as truth that is. So you’re incentivized to develop truth that is. And you do this by hacking the accepted standards in knowledge pursuit by starting with a conclusion and working backwards. You tell a story based on the evidence that’s useful. Now it’s “the science” or at the very least “there’s studies” and this is useful to both the customers (NGOs, journals, activists, lobbyists, media, anyone that wants to influence policy) and the university (attracts money, reputation and status) and the people shipping it (tenure, book deals, speaking fees). It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just simple incentives. The poor guy who spends his time figuring out what the truth is not or that ships truth that isn’t immediately useful to the customers is looking for a new job after his grant dries up.
• Atatator 3y ago
  Мехмат отзывает 500 000 своих выпускников. Причина отзыва: во втором томе Фихтенгольца на странице 187 в формуле XVIII.56 отсутствует нормирующий оператор.
• FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Have to say. Pretty surprised that on HN there is such a strong emotional desire to tear down 'Academia', or even science really. For several months I've noticed that any story about Academia that hints at a problem, or a misstatement, or something over-stated, anything dealing with science, there is just a mad rush to grab torches and scythes, pikes, etc... "Crucify", these people are all con-men. But, if it's a tech company, then all good, just lie all you want, that's just salesmanship, 'selling hype' to promote a product. I fear it is part of the 'post-truth' America where nothing is trusted.
• dluan 3y ago
  Aside, what do you even do now if you are Tessier-Lavigne? Where do crooks go after they are caught but not properly punished? Some pharma company?
• jklinger410 3y ago
  All of these comments and articles and no mention of what the studies were about, and why he manipulated them.
• momirlan 3y ago
  so much for "this is science, anything saying otherwise is conspiracy".
• exac 3y ago
  > The report, at 95 pages in length, contained a number of unflattering details about Tessier-Lavigne’s lab, including the conclusion that at least four papers with Tessier-Lavigne as principal author contained significant manipulation of research data I am surprised that Marc didn't retract a fourth paper, based on: https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/sources-refused-to-participate-in-stanford-investigation-of-president-after-they-werent-guaranteed-anonymity/ https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/sources-refused-to-part...
• tomlockwood 3y ago
  And yet people think the sokal hoax contains some revelations about an entire field.
• obblekk 3y ago
  I wonder if there should be criminal liability for this... literally billions of dollars of misdirected research effort for what may be a fraud. Are amyloid plaques not an issue at all then, or coincidentally still an issue (but not justified by the research this person did)? Would be funny if this is a real world Gettier case.
• dayvid 3y ago
  I personally know two people who quit their PhD programs because of fraud. One was given the option to resign and basically not speak about it or face repercussions.
  • juicybilberry 3y ago
    Yes I've personally heard similar stories. Students who were prevented from graduating until they produced significant results, even though their dissertation studies were approved by committees. So they'd eventually resign because they got fed up with it. Or students and postdocs threatened with presenting or publishing null findings that run counter to senior scientists' previously published theories. Etc etc etc
• jacquesm 3y ago
  How does academia deal with the fall out 'downstream' from such retractions? Does this automatically invalidate each and every paper that cited this one as a source? If not why not? Because if that were the consequence I think a lot of people would be far, far more cautious about what they cite and whether or not it has been reproduced.
  • throwanma 3y ago
    I've been thinking about this for a while, what if we had a web of fraud explorer where you can follow the citations of fraudulent papers. And this just might align incentives more in a direction of caution.
  • jraph 3y ago
    Not many things are automatic in research paper publishing… It all good old PDFs in which even the publication date doesn't always appear. You have to look up the title and find out in which journal / conference it's been published, and you get the date. Anyway, it would not be fair to automatically invalidate papers citing retracted ones. Including: - reproduction attempts - some minor citation in related works - it's usually not obvious that a paper is manipulated or even wrong without any bad faith involved Now, I wish we could update papers with disclaimers and notes, but again, we are dealing with good old PDFs that are never going to be updated… Good luck even noticing that a paper was retracted. I wish we had better formats and publication processes.
    • jacquesm 3y ago
      You could deal with that in a reader or in a service where you upload a draft of your paper which then spits out a list of potentially problematic citations, even if those are more than one step removed from your first citation.
      • jraph 3y ago
        Sounds like a useful tool!
    • 3y ago
• d136o 3y ago
  So… what’s going to happen now with all the behavioral science people and their fabulous data
• itsoktocry 3y ago
  Remember that these are exactly the "type" of person the media will trot out on front of the public to make wild claims about "the science". Questioning their claims can have consequences.
• beefman 3y ago
  Which papers are being retracted?
• gloryless 3y ago
  This guy is like an actual billionaire. I have no idea if his fraud extends to the actual drugs he's made money from, but I wish these kinds of people were held to higher standards. Zero chance he's gonna have any legal repercussion.
• dwrodri 3y ago
  I really think there needs to be some deep reexamination of the current way we quanitfy the value of research output in the academic world. I don't have the time or energy to develop a full argument in favor of an alternative replacement, but I'll do my best to share a "cut down" version. Some of the biggest problems with the current system are: * Peer Review has its share of problems[1][2][3] that create horrible second order effects, especially among those pursuing PhDs[4] * Elsevier, Nature, Science/AAAS and others perform rent-seeking behavior to the extent where I think it's worth asking whether they hinder the funding and dissemination of good science more than they help. As a personal aside, I always found it very off-putting that DeepMind regularly publishes in Nature in Science, despite the fact that outside of AlphaFold, their work often has little overlap with the readership that typically frequents these journals. Personally, I am of the opinion that platforms like Semantic Scholar, arXiv and OpenReview are doing a better job of promoting open and transparent academic research with improved accessibility to both the public and the researchers doing good work. Given the power of being mentored by great scientists, it makes sense to have filtering processes which concentrate great researchers in a small amount of schools. My point is that if there is too little oversight, these institutions become incentivized to all but encourage bad behavior in order to maintain their image. We need systems which encourage MORE transparency into the process of creating science and MORE accessibility because an important part of scientific research is it's uncertainty. Tools like arXiv, Semantic Scholar, and OpenReview are all steps in the right direction, and it would be good to promote the useage of these tools outside of their current userbase as I think they provide a system for people to observe science more easily, and for important parts of the research process to be accessed by all. 1: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/115231/why-is-peer-review-so-random https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/115231/why-is-p... 2: https://blog.neurips.cc/2021/12/08/the-neurips-2021-consistency-experiment/ https://blog.neurips.cc/2021/12/08/the-neurips-2021-consiste... 3: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/194989 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/19498... 4: https://medium.com/@tnvijayk/potential-organized-fraud-in-acm-ieee-computer-architecture-conferences-ccd61169370d https://medium.com/@tnvijayk/potential-organized-fraud-in-ac...
• harry8 3y ago
  The whole field of psychology shifts uncomfortably in it's chair. Replication crisis. My prediction is a well rehearsed closing of ranks and naked abuse of anyone questioning integrity. Not all psych research will be unreliable just like not all professional cyclists take drugs, maybe, given the apt tour de France Armstrong analogy made by rossdavidh here.
• pperi11 3y ago
  Another win for berkeley
• tppiotrowski 3y ago
  "The EMBO Journal wrote in a public post last week that it is reviewing the allegations regarding a 2008 paper about receptors within the brain for which Tessier-Lavigne is listed as the *third author of 11*" 11 authors? I thought the kickbacks of "I'll publish your name on my paper if you publish my name on yours" in Computer Science were bad...
• gkanai 3y ago
  Theo Baker was interviewed on the Longform Podcast recently: https://longform.org/player/polk-award-winners-theo-baker https://longform.org/player/polk-award-winners-theo-baker
• cvoss 3y ago
  The quotes from the chair of the board and from the president himself in the second paragraph of the article are very important. Neither concedes that Tessier-Lavigne's conduct disqualifies him from his position as a preeminent researcher. (Indeed, he will retain his tenure as a professor.) It is the impact of the report and the discussions of the allegations which make his continued presidency untenable. Do you note the subtlety? Secondly, I encourage every interested reader here to pull up the actual report and read it. (The report and other statements from the board can be found on the board's website [0].) In a large laboratory, both honest mistakes and intentional data manipulation will occur. They just will. There is no evidence to suggest Tessier-Lavigne participated knowingly in fraudulent activity. All the evidence points to the fact that he was made aware of the issues at some point or another, proceeded to take some corrective action, but did not ultimately do enough. Pass your judgments on his actions and inactions, by all means, but make sure you're passing judgment on what happened, not on the impression you get of what happened from reading news articles. [0] https://boardoftrustees.stanford.edu https://boardoftrustees.stanford.edu
• jpcfl 3y ago
  Trust the science (TM).
• telltruth 3y ago
  Below summarizes the epidemic at many labs, especially in AI. If you want funding, GPUs and head count then you must prove yourself to be in top 5. The result is relentless pressure for the results that can create headlines. It identified a culture where Tessier-Lavigne “tended to reward the ‘winners’ (that is, postdocs who could generate favorable results) and marginalize or diminish the ‘losers’ (that is, postdocs who were unable or struggled to generate such data).”
• alexfromapex 3y ago
  I know of some similar misconduct around research at another well known university. Hopefully the field can be reformed further to protect against manipulated research because it’s extremely dangerous to the public interest.
• satisfaction 3y ago
  I would imagine this is more common that we know or expect. The incentives are too great and university administrators exist is such large numbers that cheating your way into those positions must be a common tactic for 50% of the people in those positions.
• Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  [dead]
• balozi 3y ago
  Corporatized academia is far worse than Hollywood and Wall Street when it come to protecting bad actors. The name of the the game is "don't rock the boat and keep the grant money flowing". Nobody wants to bring focus on another's questionable activities lest their own receive focus.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• dilawar 3y ago
  Sometimes I wonder, even after getting caught, academics has the least to loose? The guy with still be a professor, right? Can a doctor, and lawyer remain in his profession after such a malpractice? PS: Politicians dont count. Corrupt as they maybe, they still have to face the music every 4-5 years.
• throwawaywww 3y ago
  [flagged]
• fortran77 3y ago
  [flagged]
• wly_cdgr 3y ago
  Why is bro not also getting fired from his biology prof job there? They're letting the old boy down way too easy.
• sgammon 3y ago
  stanford daily absolutely killing it
• jbverschoor 3y ago
  Trust the science, bro
• seewhydee 3y ago
  Looking through report issued by Stanford's scientific panel, it seems quite clear that (i) Tessier-Lavigne and/or people in his group have been very naughty indeed, and (ii) most of their image manipulations might have escaped notice if they'd only used fuzzy select.
• catsarebetter 3y ago
  Wild that this wasn't covered up
• chakintosh 3y ago
  Academia is rotten to the core. My wife is doing her PhD and the stories she tells me are absolutely scary. It's about how you can easily fake your entire research, manipulate the numbers and writing a borderline fictional thesis and still earn your PhD. And all that with no oversight, and in lots of cases, the little oversight there is turns the blind eye because the professors have a lot to gain from having their name mentioned in the papers.
• gregwebs 3y ago
  There’s a lesson here- if manipulated research is so game changing that drug companies are trying to reproduce it and it is used to propel a career to a university president then there will be consequences. Otherwise the estimates of published research being manipulated range from 20 percent to being a majority and it’s difficult to get corrections or retractions. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0132382 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-health-research-is-fraudulent-until-proved-otherwise/ https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-hea... http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3655010/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3655010/ http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v10/n9/full/nrd3439-c1.html http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v10/n9/full/nrd3439-c1.htm... http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-reproducibility-1.19970 http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-...
• j7ake 3y ago
  Was this fake research funded by tax payers? Can they sue this scientist to get some money back ?
• sylware 3y ago
  Smart and skills do not rule out malice.
• zero_shift 3y ago
  I am not familiar with Tessier-Lavigne's work, except that it concerns Alzheimer's disease. Is there a summary of what findings / hypotheses are now in question?
• darkclouds 3y ago
  The problem with these people is, they are allowed to resign and say sorry, they dont get treated as potential murder suspects or criminal assaulters by proxy, if such a law exists, because we dont know if their work is being cited and used for drug treatments. Here in the UK, the part of NHS that decided what drugs can be prescribed by GP's called National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE), hide behind secrecy when choosing what drugs GP should prescribe. There just isnt enough accountability of the people at the top.
• tlogan 3y ago
  I have a question: how to fix this? Could enhanced peer review provide a solution? However, the peers are not detectives so I really do not know. It appears we are caught in an inevitable cycle: success in academia is intrinsically tied to more published papers. That inevitably fosters widespread fraud, as a small proportion of unscrupulous individuals will ultimately corrupt the entire system. As noted in the report, his lab had trend of favoring the winners. Furthermore, we need to consider that there are very powerful external influencer such as politics and corporations, which can sometimes lead to the distortion of data.
• hanlec 3y ago
  > It identified a culture where Tessier-Lavigne “tended to reward the ‘winners’ (that is, postdocs who could generate favorable results) and marginalize or diminish the ‘losers’ (that is, postdocs who were unable or struggled to generate such data).” I am honestly very curious who hasn't observed the same behavior in large corporations too. (And to be clear, I'm not defending this behavior; rather curious if it's not an unfortunate generalized situation that occurs not only in academia).
• adamsmith143 3y ago
  Just another result of the terrible Publish or Perish incentives in Academia.
• fredgrott 3y ago
  I have a stupid question. What should we think of Stanford ethics when said individual still retains a board position? If his excuse of not enough detail investigation of lab reported data before sub mitting research report than should not same lack of skillset be a requirement for his firing form Stanford board?
• dehrmann 3y ago
  > According to Jerry Yang, chair of the Stanford Board of Trustees... Also the co-founder of Yahoo!.
• mzs 3y ago
  the 2009 paper repeatedly referred to in this article: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07767 https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07767
• BS_Alarm 3y ago
  Like president, like new hire! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36501194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36501194 https://profiles.stanford.edu/azalia-mirhoseini https://profiles.stanford.edu/azalia-mirhoseini
• macinjosh 3y ago
  he should retract himself from his job.