Stanford president, after resignation, continues withdrawing scientific papers tainted by research misconduct

---

The president of Stanford University announced his resignation on July 19 after a months-long investigation found that scientific misconduct tainted multiple studies he had overseen beginning in the 2000s. Although the investigation, initiated by Stanford’s board of trustees and led by a panel of five scientific experts, did not accuse Marc Tessier-Lavigne of committing research fraud himself, it revealed data manipulation by members of his lab that affected results. 

Key Players

Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist and former executive at Genentech, has served as president of Stanford University since September 2016. As a researcher, he focused on degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and spinal cord injuries, and he authored articles that were considered groundbreaking in the neuroscience field. However, the veracity and ethics of his work came under scrutiny in late 2022 after The Stanford Daily revealed allegations of misconduct in some of his seminal papers.  

Theo Baker was a freshman and a reporter at The Stanford Daily, the student-run campus newspaper. Starting on Nov. 30, 2022 and spearheaded by Baker, the Daily began publishing articles about discrepancies and manipulations in Tessier-Lavigne’s research. The Daily’s reporting sparked the probe and earned the paper and Baker, whose parents are journalists at The New York Times and The New Yorker a George Polk Award for excellence in journalism, one of the highest honors in the field. 

Further Details

In 2015, commenters on PubPeer, a website for discussing scientific articles’ post-peer review, observed issues with the images from one of Tessier-Lavigne’s studies in the journal Science. Seven years later, Baker found those comments and asked multiple experts to review the claims; ultimately, they corroborated the online comments and sparked Baker’s exposé. Starting in November 2022 and continuing for several months, the Daily published a series of articles unearthing further allegations against Tessier-Lavigne’s research, as well as updates to and issues with Stanford’s investigation into those allegations. 

The panel was reviewing a dozen papers, and Tessier-Lavigne was the principal author on five. In the other seven, the instances of alleged data manipulation did not occur in his lab. The five papers at the crux of the investigation were a 1999 article in Cell, a 2001 article in Science Binding, a 2001 article in Science Silencing, a 2004 article in Nature, and a 2009 article also in Nature. Data manipulation was a recurring accusation against the research undergirding the papers; in one instance, the panel found that the researchers had flipped an image and passed it off as another experiment.

Although Baker and the Daily’s reporting revived the controversy, allegations against the quality of Tessier-Lavigne’s research had been known for years, even before the comments on PubPeer. For example, a colleague alerted Tessier-Lavigne about an error in one paper just weeks after its publication in Science in 2001; however, despite promising to do so, Tessier-Lavigne “did not contact the journal and he did not attempt to issue an erratum, which is inadequate,” according to the panel. 

The results of the investigation were released on July 19, finding that while Tessier-Lavigne authored multiple papers with blatant instances of data manipulation or substandard research practices, he did not knowingly commit fraud nor could he have reasonably known about the fraud. Instead, the panel took the biggest issue with Tessier-Lavigne’s reaction, or lack thereof, to learning about his substandard research. In many instances, errors were brought to Tessier-Lavigne’s attention or further research countered his findings, and proper scientific practice necessitated corrections or retractions. In addition to his run-in over the 2001 article in Science, Tessier-Lavigne knew about errors and submitted corrections for a different article in Science, but he never followed up after the corrections were not published. He also submitted corrections to Cell, but the journal found that they were unnecessary. Finally, the panel found that when communicating with the journal Nature, Tessier-Lavigne did not fully address “the range of publicly expressed concerns given the available forensic evidence.” 

Additionally, the investigation’s findings suggested culture issues might have contributed to the problems, since the research violations occurred in different labs with different sets of researchers. Tessier-Lavigne, even unintentionally and unwillingly, fostered a culture of results over ethics, where researchers were rewarded for helpful findings and thus incentivized to manipulate their data, investigators found. 

The release of the panel’s report was not without controversy; some commenters, including the former dean of Harvard Medical School, criticized the panel’s decision not to guarantee anonymity to its sources. Baker alleges that some of his sources for the more serious allegations of fraud, including those involving an influential 2009 study at Genentech on Alzheimer’s, would not speak with the panel without anonymity. 

Outcome 

Tessier-Lavigne announces his resignation 

On July 19, 2023, Stanford announced that Tessier-Lavigne would step down as president effective August 31, while remaining a tenured professor in the biology department. In his own statement, he maintained his innocence and expressed gratitude to the panel for not finding him guilty of fraud. However, he didn’t absolve himself completely of all wrongdoing, acknowledging: “I agree that in some instances I should have been more diligent when seeking corrections, and I regret that I was not. The panel’s review also identified instances of manipulation of research data by others in my lab. Although I was unaware of these issues, I want to be clear that I take responsibility for the work of my lab members.” He said that Stanford deserved a president who wasn’t associated with such claims. He also vowed to follow the recommendations of the panel and issue corrections or retractions to the articles. 

On Aug. 31, Tessier-Lavigne retracted two articles, both published in 2001 in Science. On Sept. 4 he retracted a third, published in 1999 in Cell.

Tessier-Lavigne’s resignation announcement was released the day before another high-profile Stanford resignation; on July 20, the dean of Stanford Law School (SLS) announced that Tirien Steinbach was stepping down as SLS’s associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion. In March 2023, hecklers shouted down a conservative judge speaking at the law school. Stanford and Steinbach were both criticized for improperly de-escalating the situation and not upholding the school’s commitment to free speech, and she was placed on leave in the aftermath.

The Stanford incident has also highlighted the integral role of student newspapers. TheDaily’s and Baker’s Polk Award marked the first time a student newspaper has received the honor and made Baker the youngest winner in its history. Tessier-Lavigne’s resignation came days after Northwestern University announced the firing of a longtime football coach due to allegations of institutional hazing, which were initially unearthed by that school’s campus newspaper, The Daily Northwestern.