REVEALED: Harvard's Dana Farber cancer research center retracts 6 papers amid data manipulation allegations

Harvard University's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) has been forced to retract or issue corrections for 37 papers penned by a group of senior researchers in response to claims they falsified data. 

As of Monday, six papers are being retracted outright, while the other 31 are in the correction process.

According to the Harvard Crimson, DFCI Research Integrity Officer Barrett Rollins confirmed the reports, which were first brought to light by British PhD student and "data sleuth" Sholto David earlier this month.

David exposed claims of data manipulation against President and CEO Laurie H. Glimcher, Executive Vice President and COO William C. Hahn, Senior Vice President for Experimental Medicine Irene M. Ghobrial, and Harvard Medical School professor Kenneth C. Anderson as the alleged culprits. 

David sent the DFCI about the 57 questionable papers he had found and was told that 38 were deemed to be examples of those in which researchers from the institute "have primary responsibility for the potential data errors." 

All but one of the 38 was dealt with, with the remaining paper still being investigated. Of the remaining 19 papers, only three "required no further action." 

In a statement to the Crimson, Rollins suggested that the "presence of image discrepancies in a paper is not evidence of an author's intent to deceive,” adding, "that conclusion can only be drawn after a careful, fact-based examination which is an integral part of our response." 

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

In his exposé, which was published on the “For Better Science" blog, David decried the fact that everyone was focused on Harvard's then-president Claudine Gay's plagiarism accusations while the DFCI's papers were not facing any scrutiny. 

"As the whole world furiously argues over whether the president of Harvard did or didn't use some quotation marks in the right place," he wrote, "scientists at the affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) must breathe a sigh of relief, no one has bothered to critically read their research in years! Far worse skeletons than plagiarism lurk in the archives."

"The level of data forgery is pathetically amateurish and excessive," blog founder and editor Leonid Schneider added. "So much that we could only include a fraction of it into this article." 

He suggested the image data duplications were "the tiny tip of the fraud iceberg," and "the last resort of a failed scientist after every other trick failed to provide the desired result." 

"Billions of dollars were burned for this cancerous trash science," Schneider lamented, "but it made many academic careers, some got very rich, and entire dynasties established themselves at Dana Farber." 

None of the accused authors replied to Schneider or David when asked about their research.