Harvard Medical School, a renowned institution, is set to retract six studies and amend 31 papers amid an ongoing investigation into several senior cancer researchers and administrators, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The investigation encompasses over 50 papers, with four co-authored by Dr. Laurie Glimcher, CEO and President of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The institute is yet to ascertain whether research misconduct has occurred, despite several retraction and correction requests being dispatched to journals.
Other notable figures under investigation include Dr. William Hahn, Chief Operating Officer, Dr. Irene Ghobrial, Director of the Clinical Investigator Research Program, and Dr. Kenneth Anderson, program director of the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center. Each of these individuals has co-authored papers currently under scrutiny, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In a blog post penned in January, molecular biologist Sholto David highlighted potential signs of image manipulation in scholarly works by the Harvard researchers. The institute also acknowledged an unspecified number of other papers with potential issues, which are currently under review. "We knew about many of these papers and their allegations before the blog post," Dr. Barrett Rollins, the institutes research integrity officer, informed The Wall Street Journal. However, three papers criticized by David were deemed not to require corrections or retractions.
Adding to the controversy, Harvard President Claudine Gay stepped down on January 2, following a series of plagiarism allegations and a contentious congressional hearing on December 5. During the hearing, Gay declined to comment on whether advocating for the genocide of Jews violated the school's code of conduct. Gay had previously endorsed a diluted plagiarism policy during her tenure as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2019, a policy later invoked in her defense.
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