800+ citations. I wonder how many years this paper set back Alzheimers research. How many dead ends did this paper spawn. There should be a hall of shame for researchers like this.
800+ citations. I wonder how many years this paper set back Alzheimers research. How many dead ends did this paper spawn. There should be a hall of shame for researchers like this.
I'd rather they actually do something about the insane publish or perish mindset, and other screwed up traditions in the medical field, that have led to this kind of nonsense. This just happens to...
I'd rather they actually do something about the insane publish or perish mindset, and other screwed up traditions in the medical field, that have led to this kind of nonsense.
This just happens to be a huge one because of the nature of the "breakthrough" and the person behind it having the clout to fight the pushback.
The publish or perish mindset promotes erroneous science and findings. I'm currently dealing with this at work, actually. Finished my M.S. and am now preparing a paper for publication. Realized...
The publish or perish mindset promotes erroneous science and findings. I'm currently dealing with this at work, actually. Finished my M.S. and am now preparing a paper for publication. Realized after my thesis was submitted/approved that some of my statistics weren't appropriate. My advisor initially told me to do XYZ approach and I didn't question it (if I would have explored my data more and had a better foundation in statistics I would have known better). After someone proofread my publication draft, they reminded me to check my data to make sure the approach was right and I learned many of my experiments were not analyzed correctly! So now I'm trying to educate myself to do this the right way, but I guess that's taking too long. I expressed my concerns and that I would like to talk to a statistician to validate my new techniques but they would rather me perform an analysis they are familiar with and submit the paper for publication. Don't even get me started on the data dredging that happens, I've been told to analyze data that was never meant analyzed (i.e. it wasn't designed as an experiment with certain research questions in mind).
I'm finding that some of my results (significance) are entirely different now. It's scary to think of how often this happens and what it means for science as a whole. It's truly disheartening.
Sorry for the rant. This is really bothering me. I take a lot of pride in my research and I do not want to publish results that aren't sound.
Alzheimer's is a devastating disease and it causes huge amounts of misery. We need good quality research. Unfortunately, there's huge amounts of shilling, astro-turfing, misinformation, and...
Alzheimer's is a devastating disease and it causes huge amounts of misery. We need good quality research.
Unfortunately, there's huge amounts of shilling, astro-turfing, misinformation, and outright fraud around the research. I'm not saying any of that happened here, but ...
This retraction is Tessier-Lavigne’s fourth in as many months, a stunning turn of events for a researcher of his stature. A wealthy and influential neuroscientist, Tessier-Lavigne served as chief scientific officer at Genentech and president of Rockefeller University before he assumed the presidency of Stanford. He resigned as president this summer after a Stanford-sponsored investigation confirmed a pattern of falsified research emerging from labs he ran.
The criticism of Tessier-Lavigne is valid even if the retracted paper's findings are later confirmed. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors guidelines require the following...
The criticism of Tessier-Lavigne is valid even if the retracted paper's findings are later confirmed. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors guidelines require the following responsibility of a principal author:
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
This is broadly true across disciplines - the principal author of a paper gains status and prestige, but is fully responsible for ensuring accuracy and prompt correction of any errors, up to and including retraction.
Generally, correction and retraction if merited don't happen often enough. The mechanisms of research accountability are underfunded, there's no status and prestige to be gained from attacking your peer's or superior's research, and there may be powerful non-research interests with an investment in upholding certain findings.
I'm hoping that Tessier-Lavigne's fully earned fall from grace will provide an instructive lesson, but it's really just the start of what should be broader institutional reform in science publishing and academic research.
It's worth noting that Tessier-Lavigne was not found to have manipulated any data himself, only by others working on the papers in question. It would be best to let things play out and for the...
It's worth noting that Tessier-Lavigne was not found to have manipulated any data himself, only by others working on the papers in question. It would be best to let things play out and for the scientific community to neutrally reevaluate his findings in light of this news. What would be worse than the findings in question being wrong outright would be his findings being mostly right or on the right track but being dismissed flatly as wrong because of what happened.
Yeah, no, I think this is far too generous. He wasn't some bystander, he ran labs with patterns of falsifying data. That doesn't happen without his blessing and, honestly, encouragement. It...
It's worth noting that Tessier-Lavigne was not found to have manipulated any data himself, only by others working on the papers in question.
Yeah, no, I think this is far too generous. He wasn't some bystander, he ran labs with patterns of falsifying data. That doesn't happen without his blessing and, honestly, encouragement. It doesn't matter whether he personally altered the data or made an underling do it.
His "findings" need to be replicated independently for us to have any hope of gaining insight from them, not just "reevaluated". That at minimum sets back this research by forcing researchers to spend time and resources doing so.
I'd just say that this whole issue should be arbitrated by people working in the field. .. This is also worth noting: "Concerns about three [of the five] papers—one in Cell in 1999 and two in...
I'd just say that this whole issue should be arbitrated by people working in the field.
..
This is also worth noting: "Concerns about three [of the five] papers—one in Cell in 1999 and two in Science in 2001—had first come up on PubPeer in 2015 when Tessier-Lavigne, then president of Rockefeller, was under consideration for the Stanford presidency. At the time, he submitted corrections to both journals, but Science failed to publish them because of an editorial error and Cell did not find a correction was needed." (source)
The actual research to verify (or not) the results of those falsified papers should be done by those in the field, but those outside the field are absolutely capable of criticizing scientific...
The actual research to verify (or not) the results of those falsified papers should be done by those in the field, but those outside the field are absolutely capable of criticizing scientific misconduct and insisting that Tessier-Lavigne should never work in research or academia again based on this abhorrent behavior. I don't need to know jack shit about the field to know that. It'll be fortunate if these fake results are later confirmed to line up with reality -- but only because it will mean that researchers have not been wasting their time following up on dead ends based on these faked results. That fortunate happenstance would not change the scale of the misconduct and it's weird to try and downplay it like that, especially from someone who so obviously benefitted professionally from his misconduct.
My view is that you'd need to be within the field to accurately assess what is even happening here. If you want to place pressure, place pressure on making sure that people within the field...
My view is that you'd need to be within the field to accurately assess what is even happening here. If you want to place pressure, place pressure on making sure that people within the field themselves follow through on whatever their assessment may be of the situation. You seem to be convinced that Tessier-Lavigne built a career out of fraud, which isn't the case. He built his career in the 90s over the discovery of netrins, which is a long verified result at this point. He also published papers in the years after the 2009 Alzheimer's study discrediting the claims made, so it's not clear how much he actually misled the field on this.
I don't think he only ever did fraud. But it's absurd to act like these papers didn't advance his career. He used the 2009 paper in grant applications after he was asked to retract it. The article...
You seem to be convinced that Tessier-Lavigne built a career out of fraud, which isn't the case.
I don't think he only ever did fraud. But it's absurd to act like these papers didn't advance his career. He used the 2009 paper in grant applications after he was asked to retract it. The article makes it clear that he definitely was viewed positively by his employer for the paper:
Within Genentech, there was speculation that the research could win a Nobel Prize, and Tessier-Lavigne went on a media tour to promote the paper.
Furthermore, researchers in the field have been pointing out the problems with this paper and calling for its retraction for over ten years now. This is described in the article several places as well:
As early as 2008, the year before the paper was published, experiments conducted at Genentech suggested that its central finding, a binding between two specific proteins, was at best unreliable.
By 2012, it had become clear to researchers both inside Genentech and at rival pharmaceutical companies that the research in the Tessier-Lavigne paper was not reproducible. Genentech’s Research Review Committee, a group of top-level executives at the company, authorized attempts to reassess the program and ultimately decided to cease further research.
According to eight prominent researchers and executives with knowledge of the review, executives at the company were convinced that the research had been based on falsified data.
Tessier-Lavigne was urged to retract the paper amid the 2012 review, Genentech confirmed in April. Sources The Daily interviewed said at least four senior figures within the company had urged withdrawal. Tessier-Lavigne chose not to, instead publishing subsequent papers that walked back several of the claims. He continued to cite the paper in grant applications, according to National Institutes of Health filings reviewed by The Daily. Tessier-Lavigne declined to answer questions last week about why he did not retract the paper in 2012.
Stephen Neal, the chairman emeritus of Cooley LLP who has served as Tessier-Lavigne’s lawyer, wrote in February that “Dr. Tessier-Lavigne’s later papers did not repudiate the Paper’s primary findings and a correction or retraction of those findings would have been unwarranted and inappropriate.” Neal also wrote that “the Paper’s original results were accurately reported.”
But in this week’s retraction note, Tessier-Lavigne and the other authors acknowledged that “our subsequent research showed that certain specific claims in the original article were not correct.” The paper’s central theory, about a protein bind that the authors said was hijacked by Alzheimer’s and triggered a process that caused neurons to prune themselves, was inaccurate in several ways.
I don't need a degree in the field to comprehend the allegations here or have an opinion on what happened. I don't have the ability to put pressure on people in that field but even if I did, they clearly have been following through on their assesments of the situation for over ten years. I am absolutely capable of coming to a conclusion on whether I believe Tessier-Lavigne committed misconduct based on their assessments of the paper and his behavior around those allegations over the past ten years as reported in this article.
I would agree with you, but having been employed at Stanford while he was still president, and employed at the institute he was most closely associated with, I don't know that I trust most of the...
I would agree with you, but having been employed at Stanford while he was still president, and employed at the institute he was most closely associated with, I don't know that I trust most of the researchers in the field currently to make this research without it being tarnished by his name.
800+ citations. I wonder how many years this paper set back Alzheimers research. How many dead ends did this paper spawn. There should be a hall of shame for researchers like this.
I'd rather they actually do something about the insane publish or perish mindset, and other screwed up traditions in the medical field, that have led to this kind of nonsense.
This just happens to be a huge one because of the nature of the "breakthrough" and the person behind it having the clout to fight the pushback.
The publish or perish mindset promotes erroneous science and findings. I'm currently dealing with this at work, actually. Finished my M.S. and am now preparing a paper for publication. Realized after my thesis was submitted/approved that some of my statistics weren't appropriate. My advisor initially told me to do XYZ approach and I didn't question it (if I would have explored my data more and had a better foundation in statistics I would have known better). After someone proofread my publication draft, they reminded me to check my data to make sure the approach was right and I learned many of my experiments were not analyzed correctly! So now I'm trying to educate myself to do this the right way, but I guess that's taking too long. I expressed my concerns and that I would like to talk to a statistician to validate my new techniques but they would rather me perform an analysis they are familiar with and submit the paper for publication. Don't even get me started on the data dredging that happens, I've been told to analyze data that was never meant analyzed (i.e. it wasn't designed as an experiment with certain research questions in mind).
I'm finding that some of my results (significance) are entirely different now. It's scary to think of how often this happens and what it means for science as a whole. It's truly disheartening.
Sorry for the rant. This is really bothering me. I take a lot of pride in my research and I do not want to publish results that aren't sound.
Alzheimer's is a devastating disease and it causes huge amounts of misery. We need good quality research.
Unfortunately, there's huge amounts of shilling, astro-turfing, misinformation, and outright fraud around the research. I'm not saying any of that happened here, but ...
The criticism of Tessier-Lavigne is valid even if the retracted paper's findings are later confirmed. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors guidelines require the following responsibility of a principal author:
This is broadly true across disciplines - the principal author of a paper gains status and prestige, but is fully responsible for ensuring accuracy and prompt correction of any errors, up to and including retraction.
Generally, correction and retraction if merited don't happen often enough. The mechanisms of research accountability are underfunded, there's no status and prestige to be gained from attacking your peer's or superior's research, and there may be powerful non-research interests with an investment in upholding certain findings.
I'm hoping that Tessier-Lavigne's fully earned fall from grace will provide an instructive lesson, but it's really just the start of what should be broader institutional reform in science publishing and academic research.
It's worth noting that Tessier-Lavigne was not found to have manipulated any data himself, only by others working on the papers in question. It would be best to let things play out and for the scientific community to neutrally reevaluate his findings in light of this news. What would be worse than the findings in question being wrong outright would be his findings being mostly right or on the right track but being dismissed flatly as wrong because of what happened.
Yeah, no, I think this is far too generous. He wasn't some bystander, he ran labs with patterns of falsifying data. That doesn't happen without his blessing and, honestly, encouragement. It doesn't matter whether he personally altered the data or made an underling do it.
His "findings" need to be replicated independently for us to have any hope of gaining insight from them, not just "reevaluated". That at minimum sets back this research by forcing researchers to spend time and resources doing so.
I'd just say that this whole issue should be arbitrated by people working in the field.
..
This is also worth noting: "Concerns about three [of the five] papers—one in Cell in 1999 and two in Science in 2001—had first come up on PubPeer in 2015 when Tessier-Lavigne, then president of Rockefeller, was under consideration for the Stanford presidency. At the time, he submitted corrections to both journals, but Science failed to publish them because of an editorial error and Cell did not find a correction was needed." (source)
The actual research to verify (or not) the results of those falsified papers should be done by those in the field, but those outside the field are absolutely capable of criticizing scientific misconduct and insisting that Tessier-Lavigne should never work in research or academia again based on this abhorrent behavior. I don't need to know jack shit about the field to know that. It'll be fortunate if these fake results are later confirmed to line up with reality -- but only because it will mean that researchers have not been wasting their time following up on dead ends based on these faked results. That fortunate happenstance would not change the scale of the misconduct and it's weird to try and downplay it like that, especially from someone who so obviously benefitted professionally from his misconduct.
My view is that you'd need to be within the field to accurately assess what is even happening here. If you want to place pressure, place pressure on making sure that people within the field themselves follow through on whatever their assessment may be of the situation. You seem to be convinced that Tessier-Lavigne built a career out of fraud, which isn't the case. He built his career in the 90s over the discovery of netrins, which is a long verified result at this point. He also published papers in the years after the 2009 Alzheimer's study discrediting the claims made, so it's not clear how much he actually misled the field on this.
I don't think he only ever did fraud. But it's absurd to act like these papers didn't advance his career. He used the 2009 paper in grant applications after he was asked to retract it. The article makes it clear that he definitely was viewed positively by his employer for the paper:
Furthermore, researchers in the field have been pointing out the problems with this paper and calling for its retraction for over ten years now. This is described in the article several places as well:
I don't need a degree in the field to comprehend the allegations here or have an opinion on what happened. I don't have the ability to put pressure on people in that field but even if I did, they clearly have been following through on their assesments of the situation for over ten years. I am absolutely capable of coming to a conclusion on whether I believe Tessier-Lavigne committed misconduct based on their assessments of the paper and his behavior around those allegations over the past ten years as reported in this article.
I would agree with you, but having been employed at Stanford while he was still president, and employed at the institute he was most closely associated with, I don't know that I trust most of the researchers in the field currently to make this research without it being tarnished by his name.
Sorry I'm having trouble understanding the last bit.
Do you mean that people might have their reputation damaged for verifying his research?
No, sorry, I mean that I don't think the community can do the research in this case at this institute, without it being seen as tainted.