Stanford President Resigning After Probe Of His Research Found Issues

STANFORD, CA — The president of Stanford University announced his resignation this week following a probe of his scientific research.

Lab members overseen by President Marc Tessier-Lavigne inappropriately manipulated data or engaged in deficient scientific practices, resulting in significant flaws in decades-old papers, a scientific panel found, according to a statement from Stanford’s Board of Trustees.

Tessier-Lavigne did not take part in misconduct nor was he aware of it prior to publication of the five papers subject to investigation, which he principally authored, the statement said, but he also took insufficient steps to correct the scientific record when the issues came to light.

“As I have emphatically stated, I have never submitted a scientific paper without firmly believing that the data were correct and accurately presented,” Tessier-Lavigne said Wednesday in a message to the Stanford community. “I agree that in some instances I should have been more diligent when seeking corrections, and I regret that I was not.”

Tessier-Lavigne will step down effective Aug. 31 after nearly seven years leading the university, but he will remain at Stanford as a tenured faculty member and plans to continue researching brain development and neurodegeneration. He will retract three of the papers that were investigated and correct the other two, he said.

The board has named Professor Richard Saller as interim president starting Sept. 1.

In a prepared statement, Chair Jerry Yang said Tessier-Lavigne was instrumental in creating Stanford’s first new school in 70 years, the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Misconduct allegations about the president’s work were first aired on PubPeer, a website where members of the scientific community can discuss research papers.

Questions resurfaced after The Stanford Daily, the university's student-run newspaper, published several stories about the integrity of information put forth by Tessier-Lavigne's laboratories.

The aggressive reporting merited investigations editor and then-college freshman Theo Baker a special George Polk journalism award. Baker told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the retractions and corrections would not have occurred otherwise.

"The fact that we're able to contribute to the scientific record being corrected for five widely cited papers is important," he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.