SAN JOSE, Calif. — An academic research organization is “looking into” allegations of scientific misconduct involving Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the president of Stanford University, after online posts challenged the authenticity of multiple images published in a paper he co-authored.
Posts on PubPeer, an online forum in which users critique scientific papers, have previously alleged that a paper co-authored by Tessier-Levigne duplicated, inverted and stretched panels, despite the factors using different experimental conditions. The postings were reported by the Stanford Daily, the university’s student newspaper.
The Stanford Daily spoke to multiple scientific misconduct investigators, who confirmed there were “serious problems” with both the paper published in The European Microbiology Organization Journal and three others published in different publications, including two papers in which Tessier-Lavigne was the lead author.
In a statement to the student newspaper, university spokesperson Dee Mostofi wrote that the doctored images in two of those papers “do not affect the data, results or interpretation of the papers,” but prominent biologist Elisabeth Bik told the Daily that she did “not agree with (the) statement that these issues have no bearing on the data or the results.”
Bik also said the papers had “a lot of visible errors” and “some duplications are suggestive (of) an intention to mislead.”
Stanford University spokespeople did not immediately respond to a Bay Area News Group request for comment Tuesday morning.
Tessier-Lavigne, a native of Trenton, Ontario, Canada, spent his early career researching degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s. Before his tenure as Stanford president, he served as the president of Rockefeller University in New York City.
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