Stanford president will step down after questions about research

Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced Wednesday he will resign after an investigative report found he had failed to correct mistakes in years-old scientific papers and overseen labs that had an “unusual frequency” of manipulations of data. The dramatic fall from the top of one of the world’s most respected research institutions followed a months-long inquiry prompted by allegations of research misconduct reported by a Stanford campus newspaper late last year.

A panel of experts concluded that Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist who has been president of Stanford for nearly seven years, did not engage in any fraud or falsification of scientific data. It also did not find evidence that he was aware of problems before publication of data.

But the review provides a portrait of a scientist who co-authored papers with “serious flaws” and failed on multiple occasions to “decisively and forthrightly correct mistakes” when concerns were raised. Tessier-Lavigne said Wednesday that he would ask for three papers to be retracted and two corrected. A panel of prominent scientists, engaged by a special committee of the private university’s board of trustees, examined a dozen of the more than 200 papers published during his career.

The university released the report Wednesday.

In a statement Wednesday, Tessier-Lavigne said, “the Panel did not find that I engaged in research misconduct regarding the twelve papers reviewed, nor did it find I had knowledge of or was reckless regarding research misconduct in my lab.”

“Although the report clearly refutes the allegations of fraud and misconduct that were made against me,” he wrote, “for the good of the University, I have made the decision to step down as President effective August 31.”

The conclusions upended leadership at the California university, highlighted the intense pressure in research – and reinforced the importance of corrections in science, as new efforts build on previous findings.

The board of trustees chair at Stanford, Jerry Yang, said that Richard Saller, a professor of European studies, would serve as interim president starting Sept. 1.

Saller, a former provost at the University of Chicago and former dean of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Science, will lead the university while the board launches a presidential search.

Tessier-Lavigne, who was named president of Stanford in 2016, is known for research that includes causes and treatments of neural degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. As president, he launched the university’s first new school in decades, the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, expanded financial aid and shepherded the campus through a pandemic. He will remain at Stanford as a tenured professor in the biology department.

In his statement Wednesday, Tessier-Lavigne acknowledged some missteps: In some instances, he wrote, “I should have been more diligent when seeking corrections. 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.”The university launched its inquiry in December after a campus newspaper, the Stanford Daily, reported that a prominent research journal, the European Molecular Biology Organization Journal known as EMBO, was looking into concerns raised about a 2008 paper co-written by Tessier-Lavigne. The Daily reported at the time that there were additional questions about other published research.

Questions had been raised years earlier on an online forum, PubPeer, where people can comment on published research – flagging images or data with questions and concerns – and authors and editors can respond. Some people had questioned whether some papers co-written by Tessier-Lavigne might contain altered images.

A special committee of the university’s board of trustees selected Mark Filip, a former federal judge, and his law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, to lead the review. It engaged a number of prominent scientists – including a Nobel laureate and a former president of Princeton University – for the review. Hollis Cline, Kafui Dzirasa, Steven Hyman, Randy Schekman and Shirley Tilghman served on the scientific panel.

In February, the Stanford Daily published what was arguably its most serious allegation. As an executive at a biotechnology company, the newspaper reported, Tessier-Lavigne co-authored a paper on Alzheimer’s disease that contained falsified data and allegedly kept the problems “from becoming public.” The article cited “our high-level” employees from the company Genentech, three of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Tessier-Lavigne fired back in a public statement, describing the report as “replete with falsehoods” and “breathtakingly outrageous.”

The scientific panel reviewing Tessier-Lavigne’s work found that there were problems with the paper, which was published in the journal Nature in 2009. But the report released Wednesday said the allegation of fraud “appears to be mistaken,” citing Genentech’s statement on the matter.

The potentially groundbreaking research published in Nature “lacked the rigor expected for a paper of such potential consequence,” the panel found. The panel said that around the same time as the paper was published, there was a separate unconnected allegation of fraud in Tessier-Lavigne’s lab. That allegation led to a formal investigation at Genentech, the firing of a postdoctoral student and the preemptive withdrawing of another paper on which Tessier-Lavigne and the postdoc were co-authors.

The panel found that it is “possible, or perhaps even likely” that the postdoc fraud incident, combined with “general frustration” about the irreproducibility of the 2009 paper’s research, was “conflated to produce certain allegations of ‘fraud,’ which are not accurate.”

The scientist panel’s review also looked broadly at Tessier-Lavigne’s management and oversight of scientific laboratories before joining Stanford. It concluded that he “created a laboratory culture with many positive attributes, but the unusual frequency of manipulation of research data and/or substandard scientific practices from different people, at different times, and in labs at different institutions, suggests that there may have been opportunities to improve laboratory oversight and management.”

“Stanford is greater than any one of us,” Tessier-Lavigne wrote of his decision to step down. “It needs a president whose leadership is not hampered by such discussions.”