> Maybe the incentive structure of academia is the actual problem There are definitely major problems in academic research (the number of retracted papers shou

> Maybe the incentive structure of academia is the actual problem There are definitely major problems in academic research (the number of retracted papers should be much higher than it is), but it's worth noting that Tessier-Lavigne did the non-reproducible research whilst working at Genentech. One of the strangest parts of this story is how Genentech apparently already knew that the claims didn't replicate, but allowed MTL to publish a paper in Nature about it anyway ... and then went ahead and presented the claims to investors. MTL left soon after Genentech was acquired, and when they concluded years later that the paper was definitely bad they had apparently lost the ability to retract it, even though it had been done by their own employees. Whilst papers are not much of anything, presenting research to a potential acquirer that you knew wasn't reliable sounds like the basis of potential legal claims. Normally companies are very careful about that because the liability from misleading investors or acquirers can be huge.