Harvard’s President recently resigned amidst allegations that she’d plagiarized dozens of her academic articles. Some have suggested this controversy was a “one off” or due solely to “politics.” But in January this year, the Harvard affiliate Dana Farber Cancer Center announced its retracting six major cancer studies, and correcting 31 others, due to images and tables that appear to have been copied from other studies (spotted by AI programs).
The Dana Farber story is not just about reproducing images without attribution, but that data in the published study tables may not even support the study’s conclusions – calling into question the integrity of the study authors and the validity of study conclusions.
Harvard is certainly not alone. Purdue University was recently found to have falsified data used in breast cancer research by the US Office of Research Integrity. Following that finding, it reached a settlement to repay federal grant money.
Duke University recently paid a $112 million penalty for submitting years of admittedly falsified data on lung function, which its researchers had used to obtain millions in grant funding.
It appears the incidence of scientific fraud is not only increasing but increasing exponentially. The prestigious science publication Nature reviewed the publication landscape and found that in 2013 there were approximately 1,000 scientific article retractions. This grew to over 4000 in 2022 to apparently more than 10,000 in 2023.
Implications of falsified science data go well beyond whether an institution or group of researchers dishonestly gained funding or publication credit. Rather, it appears that the validity of many studies, and therefore the state of medical knowledge, may now be corrupted by a not-insignificant number of invalid studies, whose results were massaged or dishonestly presented, now resulting in an increased portion of our body of medical “science” not actually supported by the scientific data.
Ironically, Nature was itself at the center of what many believe was a manipulation of science when it published “Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” in March 2020. That article, authored by Kristian Anderson and others allegedly “debunked” the “conspiracy theory” that SARS-CoV-2 (later better known as Covid 19) originated from a virus manipulated in a Wuhan lab.
The article’s conclusion was definitive: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
But in emails later obtained through Freedom of Information requests, the “Proximal Origins” lead author Kristian Anderson had significant doubts about a “natural” origin of Covid in emails he sent to NIAID Director Anthony Fauci about a month before publishing his paper. As stated in Dr. Anderson’s emails:
“The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered…. I should mention that after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change.”
But after further exchanges among high-level officials of the US and UK medical agencies, and whether a finding of a lab-origin could impede international scientific cooperation, Dr. Anderson’s group shifted its mission to “to disprove any type of lab theory.”
The “Proximal Origin” paper would shift the debate for the next two years. It was used to brand many scientists questioning a natural origin theory of Covid “conspiracy theorists” and help marginalize heterodox theories about Covid that would later become either commonplace or generally accepted. Now of course, many scientists favor the lab leak origin of Covid. A lab origin is now the “official” position of many government intelligence agencies.
Dr. Anderson never explained how he went from being more convinced that the genome of Covid was “unlikely” the product of natural selection, to concluding the genome “clearly shows” a natural (non-lab) origin, either in his “Proximal Origins” article or elsewhere.
One can look at examples from Duke, Purdue, and Harvard as unrelated. One could say these have nothing to do with the many (increasing number of) scientific papers “retracted” for fraud in the past two years. One could also say these have nothing to do with the many reversals by leading medical and governmental institutions about Covid over the past few years: from whether it likely originated in a lab, to whether masking or “social distancing” was science-based, to the rationale for vaccine mandates if a vaccine does not stop transmission, or the risks-versus-benefits of vaccinating young individuals, or individuals who had previously acquired natural immunity from Covid due to prior infection.
But is it coincidence that we hear so much lately about a “crisis of confidence” in our institutions, especially our medical institutions?
To speak of a “crisis of confidence” is obviously broad and imprecise. But I do think this expresses something real, and unsurprising. I think it’s hard to deny that the many, recent examples of scientific institutions engaging in what amounts to research fraud has not affected the public trust. Added to the many reversals in “generally accepted” science about Covid in the past two years, many have been taught an object lesson that all institutions run by humans, including institutional science and medicine, are ultimately subject to the same, potentially corrupting influences that can affect any other institution, e.g., money, power, ego, tribalism, etc.
This is not to propose any grand solutions. And if I thought I had any, I’m not in a position to implement them. I would only suggest as one who deals with juries in medical cases that we need to be sensitive that some of our jurors may now be more mistrustful about experts and the institutions (and business) of medicine than formerly. We need to be thoughtful in conversations with jurors: to appreciate the extent to which they may be coming from a place of mistrust, and why, and try to understand how this may interact with the facts and stories of our cases.
–Laurence M. Deutsch
- [1] “Fresh Allegations of Plagiarism Unearthed In Official Academic Complaint Against Claudine Gay.” Washington Free Beacon, 12/18/23 (https://freebeacon.com/campus/fresh-allegations-of-plagiarism-unearthed-in-official-academic-complaint-against-claudine-gay/); “Harvard University President Claudine Gay Accused of 40 Acts of Plagiarism In New Complaint,” New York Post 12/20/23 ( https://nypost.com/2023/12/20/news/claudine-gay-accused-of-40-acts-of-plagiarism-in-new-complaint/)
- [2] “Dana Farber Cancer Center to Retract or Fix Dozens of Studies,” Medical Xpress 1/23/24; “Top Harvard Cancer Researchers Accused of Scientific Fraud,” Ars Technical, 1/22/24 (https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/01/top-harvard-cancer-researchers-accused-of-scientific-fraud-37-studies-affected/)
- [3] https://retractionwatch.com/2019/03/25/duke-settles-case-alleging-data-doctoring-for-112-5-million/; https://constantinecannon.com/whistleblower/duke-settles-scientific-research-fraud/
- [4] “The situation has become appalling: fake scientific papers push research credibility to a crisis point” Guardian, 2/3/24 (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situation-has-become-appalling-fake-scientific-papers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point)
- [5] https://www.nature.com/articles/S41591-020-0820-9
- [6] “Unredacted NIH E-mails Show Efforts to Rule Out a Lab Origin of Covid,” The Nation 1/19/23 (https://www.thenation.com/article/society/nih-emails-origin-covid-lab-theory/)
- [7] “Unredacted NIH E-mails,” op cit.
- [8] https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/28/politics/wray-fbi-covid-origins-lab-china/index.html; https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Declassified-Assessment-on-COVID-19-Origins.pdf
