Retraction of Dana-Farber Study Reveals Widespread Data Manipulation in Cancer Research

An investigation at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has led to the retraction of a 2006 Science paper co-authored by Laurie Glimcher, the institute’s president and CEO. This retraction is one of more than 50 articles co-authored by four of Dana-Farber’s top researchers that have come under scrutiny.

Concerns were initially brought to light in a January blog post by scientific investigator Sholto David, who identified some of the issues on PubPeer, a website dedicated to addressing data problems in research. Some of the concerns revolved around duplicated images of experimental results, potentially impacting the scientific conclusions drawn from the data. Despite opposition from the study’s lead author, the decision to retract was made due to discrepancies in key scientific images that had been detected, causing the authors to lose confidence in the study’s key figures.