Stanford College President to Give up After Evaluation of Scientific Work

(Reuters) – The president of Stanford College, one of the prestigious U.S. faculties, introduced plans on Wednesday to resign his publish after an impartial assessment ordered by its board of trustees discovered flaws in his analysis as a neuroscientist.

Marc Tessier-Lavigne stated in a letter to the college neighborhood that he would step down efficient Aug. 31 as president of Stanford, situated in Palo Alto, California, however would stay on the college.

Saying that the assessment discovered areas the place he ought to have “performed higher” and that he accepted these conclusions, Tessier-Lavigne wrote that he was resigning as a result of he anticipated ongoing discussions about his work that might “result in debate about my means to guide the College into the brand new tutorial yr.”

The assessment of Tessier-Lavigne’s previous work was launched in December after allegations of fraudulent analysis on papers he co-authored surfaced on PubPeer, a crowd-sourced platform the place scientists can elevate issues about scholarship.

The assessment, revealed on Wednesday, cleared Tessier-Lavigne of essentially the most critical accusations leveled at him – of participating in scientific fraud. These allegations had been in reference to Alzheimer’s illness analysis carried out when Tessier-Lavigne was the manager vp of analysis drug discovery on the U.S. biotechnology firm Genentech Inc.

However the assessment of 12 analysis papers relationship over twenty years discovered that when issues in regards to the analysis had been raised, “Tessier-Lavigne did not decisively and forthrightly right errors within the scientific document.”

On account of the assessment, Tessier-Lavigne stated he was going to retract three papers and proper one other two.

In his letter, Tessier-Lavigne stated he would resign though the assessment of his work didn’t discover any fraud or falsification of information on his half. Tessier-Lavigne will stay as a biology professor and proceed to hold out analysis on mind improvement and neurodegeneration.

The board of trustees named Richard Saller, a professor in Stanford’s Division of Classics, as interim president starting Sept. 1.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; enhancing by Will Dunham and Donna Bryson)

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