Monday, January 22, 2024

Holy... what the HELL is wrong at Harvard?

I'm copying this from Instapundit, because the full article is paywalled.  The bold is mine:
The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, is seeking to retract six studies and correct 31 other papers as part of a probe involving four of its senior cancer researchers and administrators.

More than 50 papers, including four co-authored by Chief Executive and President Dr. Laurie Glimcher, are part of a continuing review, according to Dr. Barrett Rollins, the cancer institute’s research-integrity officer. Some requests for retractions and corrections have already been sent to journals, he said. Others are being prepared. The institute has yet to determine whether misconduct occurred.

Also under investigation are papers co-authored by Chief Operating Officer Dr. William Hahn; Director of the Clinical Investigator Research Program Dr. Irene Ghobrial; and Dr. Kenneth Anderson, program director of the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center.

All four researchers have faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School, making it the latest tranche of misconduct allegations leveled at Harvard researchers. Claudine Gay resigned as Harvard University president early this year, facing allegations of plagiarism. Last year, Harvard Business School placed Prof. Francesca Gino on administrative leave after accusations that her work contained falsified data.

Glimcher and the other researchers didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Dana-Farber’s disclosure about its probe arrived after a data sleuth pointed to irregularities in the researchers’ papers.

In early January, molecular biologist Sholto David published a blog post describing what he said were signs of image manipulation in papers by the Dana-Farber researchers. David contacted Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School with his concerns, submitting a list of papers he said contained problems.

The most serious, he said, had to do with images of experimental results that had signs of copy-and-pasting by software such as Adobe Photoshop. “Those are pixel-perfect matches for the same area, but it’s supposed to be a different sample,” he said.

Holy shit.  This is worse than plagiarism, this seems to be falsification of data in important studies.  And all four of these clowns are Harvard Medical School staff?

Which, once again, brings up "How the hell can you trust the science when the people in charge are faking things?

6 comments:

Mind your own business said...

This is far more serious than plagiarism charges.
This is falsification of scientific/medical research data. Lives could be at stake.

Anonymous said...

Fake research to support fake cures?

Anonymous said...

The AMA was created in the early 19 century to sell pharmaceuticals by quack doctors that didn't work
I believe the guys name was Morris Fishbein, probably a alias.
Today's modern medicine will be considered voodoo magic 100 years from now!

monkmcg said...

And the guy who ran the Harvard body donation program was selling off body parts for fun and profit.

rickn8or said...

Looks like a lot of people will be scrubbing "Harvard Medical School" from their resume'.

Avraham said...

medicine is not science, but supposedly uses results of science