Harvard University’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston is to retract six research articles and ask for corrections of 31 more, many of them by its senior leaders, after a blogger raised concerns about image manipulation.
Sholto David, 32, a molecular biologist based in Pontypridd, Wales, highlighted apparently duplicated images from 30 articles in a 2 January guest post on the website For Better Science.1 The articles’ lead authors were four prominent Dana-Farber scientists, including the institute’s chief executive, Laurie Glimcher, and its chief operating officer, William Hahn.
The papers spanned the past …
The studies in question, conducted by researchers affiliated with the Harvard Cancer Institute, cover a range of topics from cancer genetics to treatment efficacy.
The blog post that has shaken the leadership of Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute was written some 3,000 miles away by an unemployed scientist who spends his time poring over research papers looking for images that may have been manipulated.
A cancer centre and research institute affiliated to Harvard University had to retract six studies and correct 31 others as part of ongoing investigations into fraud allegations.