Stanford president resigns in research row

Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne will voluntarily step down on August 31 after an independent review uncovered “serious flaws” in five academic papers of which he was the primary author.

Tessier-Lavigne’s resignation, which was confirmed in a statement to students on Wednesday, follows the launch of a review in December to investigate allegations of fraud and other unethical research conduct in scientific papers – some of which are more than two decades old.

The university president, who is a neuroscientist, said he “never submitted a scientific paper without firmly believing that the data were correct and accurately presented.” However, he also acknowledged that he should have sought more robust corrections to his work, and that tighter controls to some scientific experiments were required.

Tessier-Lavigne, the independent panel found, manipulated data in 12 research papers reviewed – but it also concluded that he was not responsible for the unethical manner of the research.

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The panel said five papers in which Tessier-Lavigne was the primary author contained “serious flaws in the presentation of research data.” Four of these, it said, contained apparent data manipulation.

Tessier-Lavigne, Stanford’s president for the past seven years, said he was aware of errors in four of the five papers but added that he had taken “insufficient” measures to address them. He also said he intends to retract three papers, and edit two others.

The issue was first raised in an investigation by the Stanford Daily, the university’s student-run newspaper, which had questioned the substance of several of Tessier-Lavigne’s scientific papers. It followed a public discussion by users of the PubPeer website, which is often used by academic researchers to discuss the integrity of published works

Tessier-Lavigne was cleared by the panel of the most serious allegation raised against him. In 2009, a paper he authored concerning Alzheimer’s disease research did not contain fraudulent research, it was found. However, it was also concluded that the article’s contents had “various errors and shortcomings.”

Tessier-Lavigne will remain as a biology professor at Stanford after his resignation as President takes effect after August 31. He has also stated his intention to continue his academic research into brain development and degeneration.