Sao Paulo
The Dana Farber Cancer Institute, affiliated with Harvard Medical School and one of the most prestigious oncology centers in the world, announced this Monday (22) that it will request the retraction of six scientific articles and the correction of another 31 due to allegations of manipulation of data and pictures.
The decision is part of an ongoing investigation that is reviewing several studies, including some coauthored by the institute's CEO and president Laurie Glimcher, chief operating officer William Hahn and renowned researchers such as Irene Ghobrial and Kenneth Anderson.
The four are professors at Harvard University, an institution facing a series of allegations of misconduct. Earlier this month, Claudine Gay resigned as university president amid plagiarism allegations and after backlash over comments she made about antiSemitism at a congressional hearing in December.
Gay requested corrections to some of his writings due to what the university described as “inappropriate citations.”
Last year, Harvard Business School placed professor Francesca Gino on leave after allegations that her work contained falsified data.
According to Barrett Rollins, scientific director emeritus and research integrity officer at the Cancer Institute, some retraction and correction requests have already been sent to scientific journals and others are in the pipeline.
“We are committed to a culture of responsibility and integrity. “Therefore, each investigation is subject to comprehensive review to ensure the robustness of the scientific literature,” he said in a statement distributed to the North American press.
The Danafarbener cancer investigation comes after molecular biologist Sholto David published a blog post titled “Danafarbenerications at Harvard University” in which he claimed researchers at the cancer institute had manipulated images and data.
He cited articles published between 1999 and 2017 that contained stretched, obscured or stitched images. For David, these images suggest deliberate attempts to deceive readers.
The biologist says he used a combination of artificial intelligence image analysis software and manual detection to look for errors in the articles.
Through the use of artificial intelligence, several articles suspected of plagiarism as well as manipulated images and results were discovered.
Recently, evidence of falsified data has come to light in several articles about Alzheimer's disease. Last year, Marc TessierLavigne resigned as president of Stanford University after it was discovered that some of his published papers contained manipulated results.
According to Rollins, the institution was already analyzing “potential data errors” in several cases detailed by the blog before David's revelation, but reiterated that the problems discovered did not necessarily represent misconduct.
“The presence of image discrepancies in an article is not evidence of the author’s intent to deceive,” Rollins said in the statement.
“This conclusion can only be reached after a careful, evidencebased review, which is an essential part of our response. Our experience shows that mistakes are often unintentional and do not rise to the level of misconduct.”
He went on to explain that some of the allegations made against Dana Farber researchers in the blog were “false,” while others referred to data generated in outside laboratories. A total of 16 manuscripts are still being analyzed.