Prominent Harvard Medical School research scientists accused of 'data fraud'

“Data Sleuth” detects data fraud

Sholto David, a British scientist with a doctorate in cellular and molecular biology from Newcastle University has called out four prominent research scientists with Harvard Medical School's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) for “data forgery.” Harvard Medical School is a teaching hospital.

David, described by the New York Post as a “data sleuth,” made his accusations public with a January 2nd blog post naming DFCI's CEO Dr. Laurie Glimcher, COO Dr. William Hahn, Director of the Clinical Investigator Research Program Dr. Irene Ghobrial, and Jerome Lipper and Multiple Myeloma Center program director Dr. Kenneth Anderson in the alleged scandal. 

Cortney Weil, writing for The Blaze,[fn]Weil, Cortney. “Following Gay’s Resignation for Alleged Plagiarism, Doctors with Harvard Medical School Accused of Falsifying Research Data.” Blaze Media, Blaze Media, 23 Jan. 2024, www.theblaze.com/news/following-gay-s-resignation-for-alleged-plagiarism-doctors-with-harvard-medical-school-accused-of-falsifying-research-data [/fn] pointed out that David's post fell on the same day that Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned amid allegations of having committed 50 separate instances of plagiarism.

Images manipulated

According to David, images had been manipulated, and in some cases copied and pasted, in 57 published manuscripts. According to DFCI's Research Integrity Officer Barrett Rollins, as reported by The Harvard Crimson, the researchers have already retracted six papers with allegedly doctored images and will be correcting their work in 31 others. 

Rollins admitted that 38 papers had “potential errors,” claimed three had no errors, and stated that 16 contained research conducted by other laboratories not affiliated with the four scientists. Rollins added that DFCI has contacted, to the extent possible, the heads of those other laboratories to help them correct the papers. Three papers were said to already be under review before David's blog post.

“Errors” not intentional?

Although Harvard was concerned that the “errors” be corrected according to Weil, Rollins and David disputed the implications of the manipulations. Rollins did not agree that falsifying data was a breach of ethics, as David averred. Rollins claimed that errors are often unintentional and do not meet the criteria of misconduct. David, on the other hand, believes that so many errors by a cluster of scientists are anything but unintentional.

Rollins . .  cautioned that those errors may not have been as ethically egregious as David makes them out to be. "Presence of image discrepancies in a paper is not evidence of an author’s intent to deceive. That conclusion can only be drawn after a careful, fact-based examination which is an integral part of our response," Rollins insisted.

"Our experience is that errors are often unintentional and do not rise to the level of misconduct," he added.

David, however, stands by his work. "You’ve got a cluster of people at one institution with image problems," he said, according to U.S. News and World Report. "How many mistakes are we happy with people making and just kind of saying, 'That’s an innocent error'?" [Emphasis added].

David called these acts of deception "the last resort of a failed scientist after every other trick failed to provide the desired result." 

Endemic integrity issues

Are Harvard's ethics problems endemic? In addition to the data manipulation by the four scientists and allegations of plagiarism by its president, Harvard Business School put professor Francesca Gino on administrative leave last year after it was alleged that she, too, falsified data, the Washington Examiner reported.[fn]Thies, Breccan F. “Harvard Teaching Hospital to Retract Top Research Papers after Data Falsification Investigation.” Washington Examiner, 22 Jan. 2024, www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2811466/harvard-teaching-hospital-retract-research-papers-data-falsification/ [/fn] 

“Publish or perish” behind data fraud

Professors and scientists, under pressure to publish as a requisite for career advancement and to receive funding for projects, have long been known to succumb to various types of fraud. This hurts not just the doctors, researchers, and the public who rely on the data but, in the case of authorship fraud, the individuals who do the actual work and deserve the real credit.

A student who experienced authorship fraud by professors wrote about the phenomenon for The Guardian.[fn]“‘My Professor Demands to Be Listed as an Author on Many of My Papers.’” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 5 June 2015, www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/jun/05/my-professor-demand-to-be-listed-author-on-research-paper  [/fn] Providing insight into how the fraud occurs and how pervasive it is in the academic world, the student, remaining anonymous, wrote that it even goes as far as authors being listed on papers who may not even “be aware of the work being done.” The student revealed:

The “publish or perish” motto of academic careers is true – and professors and group leaders take it seriously.

It’s a vicious circle: the more papers you write, the faster your career progresses, and the more money you get from funding bodies. This means you can hire more people, who will publish more papers – which you can put your name to – progressing your career even further. A lot of well-known professors have groups so big that it is practically impossible for them to spend enough time on each project to warrant authorship of papers. Yet in most cases they still claim authorship.

By the rules of my own university, my professor shouldn’t be listed as an author on many of my papers, but I still add him because he demands it. 

. . . 

There are people listed as authors on several of my papers who were unaware of the work being done. I know of a PhD student whose work was attributed to a postdoctoral researcher in his lab, but there was nothing he could do because the group leader was complicit in the fraud. (Emphases added.)

Guest author for the journal Nature, neurologist Simon Gandevia, lamented how the pressure to publish leads to scientific misconduct:[fn]Gandevia, S. Publication pressure and scientific misconduct: why we need more open governance. Spinal Cord 56, 821–822 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41393-018-0193-9 [/fn] He stated:

Not only has it been argued that most published research findings must be false [2], but statistical power is commonly low in the biomedical and clinical sciences. Perhaps not surprisingly then, the rate of translation of new findings to the clinic is slow and problematic [3]. Second, the number of papers retracted from the peer-reviewed literature is also increasing [4]. Third, there is an over-reliance on a scientist’s publication metrics (numbers, journal impact factors, citation numbers) for progression, promotion, prizes, and research grants. Indeed, gaming the metrics of science is an occupational requirement for scientists, journal staff and university administrators. Publications now contain more spin (reliance on findings which are not justified by the statistics) and more liberal use of words such as ‘novel’ [5]. These trends are driven by an unhealthy culture in which it can be more important to publish a result than publish a correct result [6, 7]. The trends also expose deep flaws in the current systems of peer review. [Emphases added].

The pressure to “publish or perish” is not just a phenomenon in Western nations, as Polish researchers, Pazura-Czachura, et al, set out to confirm in their review of two studies on the subject.[fn]Paruzel-Czachura, M., Baran, L., & Spendel, Z. (2021). Publish or be ethical? Publishing pressure and scientific misconduct in research. Research Ethics, 17(3), 375-397. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747016120980562 [/fn] 

They wrote, in their paper titled, “Publish or be ethical? Publishing pressure and scientific misconduct in research:"

We understand publication pressure, or pressure to collect points (Haven et al., 2019a, 2019b), or “pointing pressure” in Poland, as:
Subjectively perceived psychological tension that is related to the requirement for a particular number of publications in a specified timeframe, which attests to one’s academic development, and is a condition of maintaining one’s position or even retaining one’s job.
In the literature, this pressure has been referred to as “point-mania”, “impactophrenia”, or “pointosis” (Kulczycki, 2017) whereby greater value is attached to the number of publications or points (either publications or points are collected, depending on the country) than to the quality of research work . . . [Emphases added].

The conclusion of their study, as noted in their abstract, is that scientists who experience pressure are more likely to engage in fraud in the future: 

The primary conclusions are: (1) most scholars are convinced of their morality and predict that they will behave morally in the future; (2) scientific misconduct, particularly minor offenses such as honorary authorship, is frequently observed both by researchers (particularly in their colleagues) and by their managers; (3) researchers experiencing publication pressure report a willingness to engage in scientific misconduct in the future. [Emphases added].

Big Pharma unduly influences medical research

Another factor in data fraud is that researchers who rely on pharmaceutical funding for their grant money (which many university professors and institutional researchers do) feel the need to provide their benefactors with the “desired” results in order to receive continued funding in the future.

Dr. Marcia Angell,  a member of Harvard Medical School’s Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, explained how Big Pharma has gained undue influence over medical research in her book The Truth About the Drug Companies: How they deceive us and what to do about it. Retired geriatric physician Fred Charatan reviewed her book for the BMJ,[fn]Charatan F. The Truth About the Drug Companies: How they deceive us and what to do about it. BMJ. 2004 Oct 9;329(7470):862. PMCID: PMC521592[/fn] noting that Angell drew attention to the use of third-party contract research organizations (CROs) to control research findings: 

Among the many wiles exposed are big pharma's use of contract research organisations to exert undue influence over clinical research . . .  [Emphasis added].

FDA complicit

The FDA often fails to notify the public or scientific journals when it discovers research fraud in clinical trials, thereby enabling publication fraud. Investigative journalist Maryann Demasi, in a paper published by the BMJ,[fn]Demasi, Maryanne. “FDA Oversight of Clinical Trials Is ‘Grossly Inadequate,’ Say Experts.” The BMJ, British Medical Journal Publishing Group, 16 Nov. 2022, www.bmj.com/content/379/bmj.o2628 [/fn] states that this is a longstanding problem, predating COVID-19 and is not only due to lack of inspections. It is also a result of failure to notify the public and journals once the fraud is detected:

Now, facing a backlog of site inspections, experts have criticised the FDA’s oversight of clinical trials, describing it as “grossly inadequate.” They say the problem, which predated covid-19, is not limited to a lack of inspections but also includes failing to notify the public or scientific journals when violations are identified—effectively keeping scientific misconduct from the medical establishment. (Emphasis added.)

Who will be the first to do something about research fraud?

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the Lancet, stated that perhaps as much as 50% of all published research is fraudulent. This was his perception, after having attended a symposium in London in 2015 on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research, where Chatham House rules were observed. Writing about what they all knew but wouldn't admit publicly, he stated:[fn]Horton, Richard. “Offline: What is Medicine’s 5 sigma?” The Lancet, vol. 385, no. 9976, 11 Apr. 2015, p. 1380, https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(15)60696-1 [/fn]

“A lot of what is published is incorrect.” I’m not allowed to say who made this remark because we were asked to observe Chatham House rules. We were also asked not to take photographs of slides. Those who worked for government agencies pleaded that their comments especially remain unquoted, since the forthcoming UK election meant they were living in “purdah”—a chilling state where severe restrictions on freedom of speech are placed on anyone on the government’s payroll. Why the paranoid concern for secrecy and non-attribution? Because this symposium—on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research, held at the Wellcome Trust in London last week—touched on one of the most sensitive issues in science today: the idea that something has gone fundamentally wrong with one of our greatest human creations.

[P]erhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest . . . science has taken a turn towards darkness. As one participant put it, “poor methods get results”. . . . In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors . . . . love of “significance” pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale. We reject important confirmations. . . .Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent, endpoints that foster reductive metrics, such as high-impact publication. National assessment procedures, such as the Research Excellence Framework, incentivise bad practices. And individual scientists, including their most senior leaders, do little to alter a research culture that occasionally veers close to misconduct.

. . .

The conclusion of the symposium was that something must be done. . . .  precisely what to do or how to do it, there were no firm answers. Those who have the power to act seem to think somebody else should act first. . . .The good news is that science is beginning to take some of its worst failings very seriously. The bad news is that nobody is ready to take the first step to clean up the system.  [Emphases added].

Publishing house Elsevier, in a November 2023 article by Ann-Marie Roche,[fn]Roche, Ann-Marie. “Fighting the Problem of Fraud in Publishing.” Www.Elsevier.Com, Elsevier, 20 Nov. 2023, www.elsevier.com/connect/fighting-the-problem-of-fraud-in-publishing[/fn] explained that Elsevier is working to eliminate fraud in publishing. Elsevier publishes 2,800 journals and employs a Research Integrity and Ethics team that is moving to a proactive stance to identify fraudulent papers before they are published.

“It's really important to shift from a reactive stance to a proactive stance, to be able to identify issues pre-acceptance — that's key,” says Dr Daniel Stuckey, also a Senior Publishing Ethics Expert on the team. Dr Stuckey emphasizes the importance of the ethics team working with authors, editors and reviewers to ensure they are knowledgeable about Elsevier’s policies and standards:

We are developing resources to be shared externally, and this is to help train researchers — early career researchers, for example — on best practice so they know the kinds of ethical pitfalls to avoid and our recommendations for being able to construct or formulate really clear, transparent and well-reported research that can then be submitted for publication. (Emphases aded.)

Perhaps Harvard will become part of the solution and start its own clean-up.