Explained | Why has Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Stanford University president, resigned? Premium

The President of Stanford University, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, has resigned from his post after an investigation found evidence of “manipulation of research data” in his research papers

The president of Stanford University, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, resigned from his post and will be stepping down on August 31 after an investigation found evidence of “manipulation of research data” in widely-cited papers in which he was the principal author. 

According to The Stanford Daily, the university’s news outlet, the investigation found that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne failed to correct mistakes in several scientific papers published over the years. The investigation also found that his lab fostered an unhealthy lab dynamic where Dr. Tessier-Lavigne would reward ‘winners’ while marginalising or shunning ‘losers’. 

Dr. Tessier-Lavigne who is a neuroscientist has been the president of Stanford University for the last seven years.

The investigation was launched by the Stanford Board of Trustees after an article by the same news outlet reported in November that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne’s research was under investigation for misconduct. 

After eight months of inquiries, the Scientific Panel constituted by the university’s Board of Trustees special committee released a 95-page report on July 17. The investigation was conducted by Mark Filip, a former deputy attorney general and other well-known scientists such as the Nobel laureate Randy Schekman, former Princeton president Shirley Tilghman, former Harvard provost Steve Hyman and two other members of the National Academies. 

The investigation specifically looked at twelve papers where Dr. Tessier-Lavigne is a co-author which was part of the allegation that emerged for the first time on a website called PubPeer — a crowd-sourced platform where the scientific fraternity discusses issues regarding scientific publications.

The Panel was also charged with looking into any other issues and leads pertaining to the integrity of the scientific process in Dr. Tessier-Lavigne’s work. Under this, certain allegations came up against Dr. Tessier-Lavigne’s work when he was working as an executive and scientist at Genentech, a San Francisco-based biotechnology company.