Stanford president’s scientific papers draw scrutiny

Stanford University stated it should evaluation allegations made in its pupil newspaper that scientific articles co-authored by its president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, contained altered pictures.

A neuroscientist and biotech entrepreneur extensively identified for his Alzheimer’s analysis, Tessier-Lavigne has authored or co-authored about 300 scientific papers. Claims of anomalous pictures in just a few of them have appeared for years on PubPeer, a web site that allows nameless contributors to look at scientific papers and spotlight potential flaws.

Under scrutiny now are a number of research, some twenty years previous, co-authored by Tessier-Lavigne that had been printed in journals resembling Science, Nature and the European Molecular Biology Organization Journal.

Stanford stated in a press release it should “assess the allegations” in a way “consistent with its normal rigorous approach by which allegations of research misconduct are reviewed and investigated.”

The college stated that its Board of Trustees will oversee the inquiry, however that Tessier-Lavigne, who’s a board member, won’t be concerned.

“Scientific integrity is of the utmost importance both to the university and to me personally,” Tessier-Lavigne stated in a press release supplied by the college. “I support this process and will fully cooperate with it, and I appreciate the oversight by the Board of Trustees.”

The college’s announcement this week adopted a story in the Stanford Daily during which Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist who works as an impartial science-integrity advisor, stated there have been “serious problems” in some research that record Tessier-Lavigne as a co-author.

In addition, the EMBO Journal introduced final week that it’s reviewing a 2008 paper about axon receptors during which Tessier-Lavigne is listed because the ninth of 11 authors. On PubPeer, Bik raised considerations that a number of the pictures included within the paper may need been digitally altered.

Bik stated she is most involved about pictures in a 1999 article in Cell that lists Tessier-Lavigneas the fifth of six co-authors. In her view, the pictures seem to have been manipulated, she stated.

“I don’t think the university should handle the investigation,” Bik stated. “I don’t think they could possibly investigate him in an objective way.”

Bik stated that considerations about Tessier-Lavigne’s papers had been raised on PubPeer in 2015 and that the Stanford newspaper requested her to evaluation them.

“The question that hopefully the Stanford investigation will answer honestly is, ‘Are these intentional manipulations?’” stated Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, a weblog that experiences on scientific misconduct. “Science is based on showing your work and being honest about what you found.”

In the extremely collaborative world of laboratory analysis, it’s widespread for a scientific paper to bear the names of many authors, and the precise contribution of every isn’t all the time apparent. A Stanford University spokesperson instructed the scholar newspaper that Tessier-Lavigne didn’t generate the controversial pictures within the EMBO Journal research.

Before he turned Stanford’s president in 2016, Tessier-Lavigne served as president of Rockefeller University in New York, oversaw the event of most cancers medication as chief scientific officer at Genentech, and co-founded the biotech firm Renovis.