Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of Stanford University, announced his resignation from his position after months of thorough assessment of his scientific work revealed serious faults in the studies he supervised.
The Stanford Daily reported, quoting Jerry Yang, chair of the Stanford Board of Trustees, that Tessier-Lavigne will step down "in light of the report and its impact on his ability to lead Stanford."
According to The Washington Post, the panel of scientists concluded that Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist who has been president of Stanford for nearly seven years, did not engage in any fraud or falsification of scientific data. It also did not find evidence that he was aware of problems before the publication of the data.
According to The New York Post, the independent review refuted the most serious claim involving Dr Tessier-Lavigne's work: that an important 2009 Alzheimer's study was the subject of an investigation that found falsified data and that Dr Tessier-Lavigne had covered it up.
The panel concluded that the claims, published in February by The Stanford Daily, the campus newspaper, "appear to be mistaken" and that there was no evidence of falsified data or that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne had otherwise engaged in fraud.
But the review also stated that the 2009 study, conducted while he was an executive at the biotech company Genentech, had "multiple problems" and "fell below customary standards of scientific rigour and process," especially for such an influential paper.
According to Stanford University, Dr Marc Tessier-Lavigne was born in Trenton, Ontario, Canada. He received undergraduate degrees in physics from McGill University and in philosophy and physiology from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He earned a Ph.D. in physiology from University College London (UCL) and performed postdoctoral work at UCL and Columbia University.
He then held faculty positions at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and subsequently at Stanford University, where he was the Susan B. Ford Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences. While at UCSF and Stanford, he was also an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
At a national and international level, Dr. Tessier-Lavigne has been an active spokesperson for societal support of science, through editorials, advocacy, and congressional testimony.
Dr Tessier-Lavigne serves on several scientific advisory, non-profit, and corporate boards. He has cofounded two start-up companies, targeting neurological disease and neurodegenerative disease.
