Stanford president to resign over concerns about integrity of his research
The president of Stanford University, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, has announced he will resign after concerns about the integrity of his research.
Tessier-Lavigne announced his plans to step down on 31 August in a letter to students and staff on Wednesday.
Tessier-Lavigne said he was stepping down because he expected continued debate about his ability to lead the university.
“I’ve never submitted a scientific paper without firmly believing that the data were correct and accurately presented,” he said in a statement. But he added that he should have been more diligent in seeking corrections regarding his work.
The announcement comes after the board of trustees of the historic institution, which sits in the heart of Silicon Valley and is often referred to as the “Ivy of the West”, launched a review late last year into allegations of fraud and ethical misconduct around papers Tessier-Lavigne had authored or co-authored.
The review assessed 12 papers that Tessier-Lavigne worked on, five of them in which he was the principal author.
The misconduct allegations about the work were first aired on PubPeer, a website where members of the scientific community can discuss research papers, the panel’s final report stated.
The panel cleared him of the most serious allegation, that a 2009 paper on a model of neurodegeneration published in the scientific journal Nature was the subject of a fraud investigation and that fraud was found. Neurodegeneration models could have great potential for Alzheimer’s disease research and therapy.
There was no investigation and no fraud discovered, the panel ruled. But it also concluded the paper had multiple problems, including a lack of rigor in its development and that the research that went into the paper and its presentation contained “various errors and shortcomings”. The panel did not find evidence that Tessier-Lavigne was aware of the lack of rigor.
“People tend to think of scientists as these individuals that they’ve heard of like Einstein and Marie Curie,” said H Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals. “The truth is that researchers run laboratories filled with people, and everything that happens in that laboratory is a product of many individuals there.”
While the report cleared Tessier-Lavigne of research misconduct, Thorp said ultimately the boss is responsible for what happens in the lab – and shouldn’t be distracted by doing other jobs.
He pointed to the report’s finding that lab culture played a role. The panel found that “the unusual frequency of manipulation of research data and/or substandard scientific practices” suggested a need for improved “oversight and management”.
Tessier-Lavigne is expected to retract three of the five papers of which he was the principal author and make heavy correction to the other two, the board’s final report says.
Tessier-Lavigne had been the university’s president for nearly seven years. He will remain on faculty as a biology professor and will continue his research into brain development and neurodegeneration.
The board named Richard Saller as interim president starting 1 September, said the board chair, Jerry Yang. In a statement, Yang said Tessier-Lavigne was key to creating the university’s first new school in 70 years, the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, and in 2019 he unveiled a strategic long-range plan that will continue to guide the university’s growth.
Tech and business magnates including Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, and Reed Hastings, who cofounded Netflix, graduated from the school.
Tessier-Lavigne did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment.