The president of the Californian University of Stanford, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, has expressed his intention to resign, following an investigation that examined many researches of which he was the author and co-author. The panel of teachers who evaluated the texts agreed on the effective manipulation of many data used by research and published studies. Tessier-Lavigne, former neuroscientist and important researcher of the university, would have altered with repeated corrections and suspicious revisions of at least 12 papers and is the main author in at least five of these. “I had to be more diligent in my work,” said the outgoing president. “I take full responsibility for what happened in my research laboratory.”
There is no evidence that the president of Stanford was aware of these changes or that it was he who directly made them in front of a research laboratory that sees many active collaborators. However, the university committee that examined the case starting last November found important changes to the texts, especially in relation to the data and sources used. An outcome that was also defined as “clear manipulation” by federal judge Mark Filip and by five scientists who compared the research with dozens of documents and publications from other academic institutions and more than 50,000 official documents.
Tessier-Lavigne’s resignation, communicated in an open letter to the whole university, will be effective on August 31, even if the neuroscientist will remain part of the teaching staff.