Harvard’s academic dishonesty saga continues

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute – an affiliate of Harvard Medical School and the #4-ranked cancer hospital in the world – is seeking retractions or corrections to dozens of scientific papers over allegations that four of its senior researchers falsified data, the institute revealed on Sunday.

The initial fraud claims were published earlier this month by research integrity blogger Sholto David, who identified 50+ studies from Dana-Farber’s CEO, COO, and two other top researchers that showed signs of manipulated data or images. All four of the accused Dana-Farber researchers have faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School.

• In response, Dana-Farber and the four researchers requested retractions for six previous studies, as well as corrections for an additional 31 papers cited in David’s blog post.
• A Dana-Farber spokesperson said the institute is currently investigating whether any wrongdoing occurred, and that such errors are “often unintentional and do not rise to the level of misconduct.”

The presence of errors and forgery in academic work has received increased attention in recent months. Since last summer, the presidents of both Stanford and Harvard have been ousted from their roles in part due to alleged research fraud.

• Overall, nearly one-quarter of all medical papers published in 2020 were likely made up or plagiarized, per a recent analysis by neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel.

👀 Looking ahead… An international organization representing 120 scientific publishers recently launched a campaign aimed at developing new tools that can better detect plagiarized or fraudulent content.