| They’re burning their brand in every way possible. |
[WSJ] The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, is seeking to retract six studies and correct 31 other papers as part of a probe involving four of its senior cancer researchers and administrators.
More than 50 papers, including four co-authored by Chief Executive and President Dr. Laurie Glimcher, are part of a continuing review, according to Dr. Barrett Rollins, the cancer institute’s research-integrity officer. Some requests for retractions and corrections have already been sent to journals, he said. Others are being prepared. The institute has yet to determine whether misconduct occurred.
| Given that many papers are involved, including the leadership, a culture of misconduct can be assumed, or at least a very unscientific carelessness. |
Also under investigation are papers co-authored by Chief Operating Officer Dr. William Hahn; Director of the Clinical Investigator Research Program Dr. Irene Ghobrial; and Dr. Kenneth Anderson, program director of the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center.
All four researchers have faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School, making it the latest tranche of misconduct allegations leveled at Harvard researchers. Claudine Gay resigned as Harvard University president early this year, facing allegations of plagiarism. Last year, Harvard Business School placed Prof. Francesca Gino on administrative leave after accusations that her work contained falsified data.
Glimcher and the other researchers didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Dana-Farber’s disclosure about its probe arrived after a data sleuth pointed to irregularities in the researchers’ papers.
In early January, molecular biologist Sholto David published a blog post describing what he said were signs of image manipulation in papers by the Dana-Farber researchers. David contacted Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School with his concerns, submitting a list of papers he said contained problems.
The most serious, he said, had to do with images of experimental results that had signs of copy-and-pasting by software such as Adobe Photoshop. "Those are pixel-perfect matches for the same area, but it’s supposed to be a different sample," he said.
Scientific studies are assessed by experts in the field for quality before they are published in peer-reviewed journals, but the process doesn’t reliably catch fabrications or errors. As a stopgap, some scientists have taken up policing the scientific record on their own, often posting their findings on social media or the scientific discussion forum PubPeer. David has been looking for faulty papers and posting about them for nearly three years.
The rot's lot deeper than DEI humanities faculty or baby bolshevic students.
| Yes, indeed. And the rot in scientific research has been going on a lot longer than those new issues, especially on fashionable topics where a great deal of grant money and prestige are involved. That papers are being retracted after other scientists show that they’re bad is a positive sign. Trying — and failing! — to reproduce key research started almost as a joke over a decade ago, and now has become a regular practice, resulting in corrections and some deservedly destroyed careers. |
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