Harvard - It Isn't Just for Plagiarism Anymore

I'm shocked to find more academic fraud going on at Harvard. Top Harvard cancer researchers accused of scientific fraud; 37 studies affected | Ars Technica

I mean it isn't like the whole institution was run by an academic fraud or something. Oh, wait a minute...

Seriously, it seems to be the case that leaders of an organization do set the tone.

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, is seeking to retract six scientific studies and correct 31 others that were published by the institute’s top researchers, including its CEO. The researchers are accused of manipulating data images with simple methods, primarily with copy-and-paste in image editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop.

These guys were not going out of their way to cover their tracks if they were only using Photoshop.

And what was that about leadership?

The allegations are against: DFCI President and CEO Laurie Glimcher, Executive Vice President and COO William Hahn, Senior Vice President for Experimental Medicine Irene Ghobrial, and Harvard Medical School professor Kenneth Anderson.

The Wall Street Journal noted that [DFCI Research Integrity Officer Barrett] Rollins, the integrity officer, is also a co-author on two of the studies. He told the outlet he is recused from decisions involving those studies.

If your integrity officer is accused of academic fraud, you may have a problem. And his statement is classic. Basically that it is all an honest mistake, and the discovery of falsified images doesn't really mean that there is anything wrong. Sure it doesn't

The accusations come from data sleuth Sholto David and colleagues on PubPeer, an online forum for researchers to discuss publications that has frequently served to spot dubious research and potential fraud.

Apparently using Photoshop to rotate and change image parameters, like brightness or contrast, is such a common method of data falsification, that there are tools which can be used to find it.

This article doesn't say, but my guess is that there are some very big grants involved with this Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.