Harvard University has had a rough few months.
It seemed as though the series of scandals that beset the once-revered university had culminated in the resignation of Claudine Gay, its former president. But this week brought forth revelations that dealt another blow to the reputation of Harvard University, which these days looks to be an institution defined more by overhyped prestige than by excellence.
On Monday, a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, disclosed that it is investigating over 50 papers by some of its most senior scientists. Dana-Farber’s investigations are evidently finding plentiful problems, as the institute is now seeking the retraction of six papers and the correction of 31 others.
The scientists whose work is being investigated include the hospital’s chief executive and president, Dr. Laurie Glimcher; the hospital’s chief operating officer, Dr. William Hahn; the director of its Clinical Investigator Research Program, Dr. Irene Ghobrial; and the program director of the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center, Dr. Kenneth Anderson. All four of the scientists are faculty members at Harvard Medical School.
The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s decision to seek the retractions and corrections follows the publication of a blog post in early January by molecular biologist and data sleuth Sholto David. In the post, David argues that the work of Glimcher, Hahn, Ghobrial, and Anderson displays evidence of purposeful manipulation. “[T]he level of data forgery is pathetically amateurish and excessive,” reads the blog post’s introduction.
In his article, David meticulously outlines instances where images in the published works of the four scientists appear to dishonestly present research results. Data plots, bands, and blots, he says, appear to be duplicated, suggesting that they were copied and pasted using image-editing tools like Photoshop in order to create desired research outcomes.
For example, in an image from Glimcher’s work, blots in a research image appear identical to one another even though they are purportedly showing something different. In another example, David shows research from Ghobrial in which several images of mice that are proclaimed to be under different conditions appear to be the same image. In addition, in the work of Anderson, David found many series of bands that appeared to have been copied and pasted from other parts of the research.
David even photoshopped Ghobrial and Anderson’s faces onto a picture of Barbie and Ken driving in the Barbie Dream Car. “Testing out my own photoshop skills!” he wrote. “Much to learn from the masters.”
The fact that the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is actively pursuing the retraction or correction of 37 papers implies that David has correctly identified significant issues in at least several of those papers. If this holds true, these scientists are in major trouble because David did not allege benign or accidental mistakes in the scientists’ research; rather, the problems he alleges inherently suggest research misconduct. Indeed, the manipulation of images does not happen by chance. A data plot or band doesn’t get copied to a different part of a research image by happenstance.
If the research authored by these scientists is found to contain fraudulent data and image manipulation, it constitutes a far greater offense than Claudine Gay’s copy-and-paste-happy essays on social justice. While Gay penned totally useless research papers on topics that appealed to a few woke professors in Africana studies departments, these scientists used federal tax dollars under the supposed mandate of finding cures for cancer — and, if David is right, engaged in deceit. Therefore, if at least some of these allegations are born out as true, they will constitute a much greater strike against the reputation of Harvard.
In speaking on the allegations, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s research-integrity officer, Dr. Barrett Rollins, was adamant in arguing that problems with images do not necessarily indicate a scientist was acting unethically. “The presence of image discrepancies in a paper is not evidence of an author’s intent to deceive,” Rollins said in a statement to CNN. “That conclusion can only be drawn after a careful, fact-based examination which is an integral part of our response. Our experience is that errors are often unintentional and do not rise to the level of misconduct.” Notably, Rollins authored two of the articles that David alleged contained doctored imagery. The institute has stated that it has yet to determine whether the scientists whose work is being investigated committed misconduct.
Harvard’s reputation — along with that of all of elitist higher education — is being driven into the ground. Gallup found in 2023 that 36 percent of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education; this represents a 20-percentage-point decline from the 57 percent that was reported in 2015. With research misconduct scandals like these afflicting numerous top universities alongside the rampant anti-Semitism, total dominance of DEI departments, over-the-top grade inflation, and ideological indoctrination, Americans’ trust in higher education is bound to get much worse, and universities’ positions in society are set to decline.
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