Fraud & retraction at Dana Farber/ Harvard

Who are the repeat offenders?

Recently 5 papers were retracted by Harvard faculty and 31 are facing corrections. This was discovered by David Sholto in this piece. Here is what no one has done. We compiled a frequency table of the authors of the disputed pieces. Shown here.

What strikes me is that the names which appear on the most papers are NOT THE JUNIOR PEOPLE, but the PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS of the laboratories!

How can the PIs claim they are ignorant to the fraud if they are the commonality among the bulk of the papers? How can you say a junior person did it, when there is no junior person on all the papers? You either have to postulate a series of junior people who photoshopped, or…

Will there be any punishment for this? I doubt it. I fear Harvard is already trying to sweep this under the rug.

Keep in mind, Harvard is the same institution that threatened the NYPost with litigation for documenting the obvious plagiarism of the president. That president had 11 papers, and half had plagarism! Its hard to believe they will take this current matter seriously.

In my opinion, they are using the same playbook to avoid scrutiny to their faculty who have published dozens of pieces with image manipulation (aka fraud).

These authors in particular should face some professional reprimand. When you have 12 papers with image fraud, I think it is reasonable to suspend your laboratory. I.e. close it.

What do you think? Could the junior people be responsible? What punishment should faculty face?