Harvard teaching hospital faces academic misconduct allegations

Harvard University and researchers at its affiliated medical institutions are facing multiple accusations about their academic integrity.

The investigation at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), associated with Harvard Medical School and considered one of America's top centers for cancer research and treatment, involves four of its senior cancer researchers and administrators.

Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino was put on administrative leave following claims that her work included falsified data.

Dana-Farber disclosed details about the investigation after molecular biologist Sholto David published in early January what he said were signs of image manipulation in papers by the Dana-Farber researchers.

For nearly three years, David has been engaged in identifying and publicizing information about faulty academic papers.

David contacted Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School with his concerns, submitting a list of papers he said contained problems.

Dana-Farber said it is reviewing an undisclosed number of other papers that it became aware of more than a year ago.

"We knew about many of these papers and their allegations before the blog post," Barrett Rollins, the cancer institute's research-integrity officer, told The Wall Street Journal.

The Harvard-affiliated medical institute said it already has initiated the retraction of six papers and is in the process of correcting 31 others following the investigation into data falsification.

More than 50 papers, including four co-authored by Laurie Glimcher, the institute's CEO and president, are still under review, according to Rollins.

The institute hasn't determined whether misconduct occurred.

William Hahn, DFCI's executive vice-president and chief operating officer; Irene Ghobrial, senior vice-president for experimental medicine; and Harvard Medical School Professor Kenneth Anderson also were mentioned by David in the allegations of data manipulation.

Earlier this month, Claudine Gay stepped down as Harvard president after she faced numerous allegations of plagiarism in her past academic publications. Gay had requested corrections to her dissertations that involved an academic misconduct claim, while she said she "stands by her research".

In a statement by Rollins to the Harvard Crimson, the school's student newspaper, David contacted DFCI with allegations of data manipulation in 57 manuscripts. According to Rollins, 38 were articles in which DFCI researchers "have primary responsibility for the potential data errors".

Of 19 other papers flagged by David, Rollins said that three of them required no further action. The remaining 16 are still under investigation, as the data in question was collected in laboratories not affiliated with the four researchers in question.

Glimcher and the other three researchers didn't respond to several inquiries from the Journal.

Rollins wrote that DFCI and the accused scientists have "taken prompt and decisive action" on 37 of the 38, with the final one still under investigation. He stated that while discrepancies were indeed identified in some of the papers, it didn't necessarily indicate evidence of an author's intent to deceive.