04-06-2023, 06:30 PM
A few thoughts:
1) A large thrust of the Daily's reporting has been refuted, and I think MT is right that, 15 years after the fact, the person who the Daily talked to most likely conflated two different things: A paper in Nature that couldn't be consistently reproduced and that, later, when animal models were eventually developed, was shown to have been wrong and a different paper, that was submitted and later withdrawn when misconduct was found.
2) If we take MTL's word in the STAT article at face value, that he was the one that initiated the process to investigate the paper which led to its withdrawal, then that seems like it would support the theory that he is not the one instigating fraud, and that other cases were instances of inadequate oversight on his part (which happens). Yeah, in an ideal world, he catches things during internal review and not after a paper is submitted, but sometimes you don't spot something until after the fact.
3) MTL is not completely absolved; the review did find that there were duplicate images in the 2009 Nature paper and that there is a composite image. It will be interesting to see what Nature does about it now that they have been formally reported to the Journal. I don't know enough about neuroscience to know if the duplications are critical to the central thrust of the article, or if they are ancillary; most of the images are part of the supplementary figures and not the main text. It is also impossible to know intent: was it sloppiness, an attempt to show something more clearly, or an attempt to hide something.
4) Nor is everything that the Stanford Daily reported false. Evidently someone at Genentech had suggested retracting or correcting the paper, though it was due to inconsistent replication both within and outside Genentech not due to a finding of fraud. It is reasonable for different people to disagree about whether that should be grounds for retraction, but if every article that was ever published was withdrawn because of imperfect replication, as many as 90% of articles would have to be withdrawn:
5) Lastly, and I can vouch for this since I work at the company, "The RRC is not, and never has been, an investigative body." The name sounds a bit ominous, but it isn't; it is just a committee to review the science. https://money.cnn.com/2006/01/06/news/co.../index.htm
6) I agree that the hostility to Baker is uncalled for. He is a student-journalist learning the business. Even if some of his reporting winds up being refuted, is it any different than the most benign thing related to MTL (namely, that he was sloppy and some of what he published turned out to be wrong). And, while the totality of the Genentech report pushes me away from the worst allegation towards MTL (that he committed fraud), it doesn't entirely absolve him either. There was "smoke" in MTL's work on DR6 at Genentech, so even if the eventual outcome is not as salacious as Baker made it out to be, it is a story.
7) I will nonetheless be interested to see if the Daily publishes an article based on the Genentech report. They should; if it is newsworthy enough for STAT news to publish, the Daily should as well.
BC
DISCLAIMER: I work at Genentech. I am only opining on the publicly disclosed materials. I don't know anyone involved, but I do know the structures and institutions (eg, the RRC).
1) A large thrust of the Daily's reporting has been refuted, and I think MT is right that, 15 years after the fact, the person who the Daily talked to most likely conflated two different things: A paper in Nature that couldn't be consistently reproduced and that, later, when animal models were eventually developed, was shown to have been wrong and a different paper, that was submitted and later withdrawn when misconduct was found.
2) If we take MTL's word in the STAT article at face value, that he was the one that initiated the process to investigate the paper which led to its withdrawal, then that seems like it would support the theory that he is not the one instigating fraud, and that other cases were instances of inadequate oversight on his part (which happens). Yeah, in an ideal world, he catches things during internal review and not after a paper is submitted, but sometimes you don't spot something until after the fact.
3) MTL is not completely absolved; the review did find that there were duplicate images in the 2009 Nature paper and that there is a composite image. It will be interesting to see what Nature does about it now that they have been formally reported to the Journal. I don't know enough about neuroscience to know if the duplications are critical to the central thrust of the article, or if they are ancillary; most of the images are part of the supplementary figures and not the main text. It is also impossible to know intent: was it sloppiness, an attempt to show something more clearly, or an attempt to hide something.
4) Nor is everything that the Stanford Daily reported false. Evidently someone at Genentech had suggested retracting or correcting the paper, though it was due to inconsistent replication both within and outside Genentech not due to a finding of fraud. It is reasonable for different people to disagree about whether that should be grounds for retraction, but if every article that was ever published was withdrawn because of imperfect replication, as many as 90% of articles would have to be withdrawn:
Quote:A 2011 analysis by researchers with pharmaceutical company Bayer found that, at most, a quarter of Bayer's in-house findings replicated the original results.[45] But the analysis of Bayer's results found that the results that did replicate could often be successfully used for clinical applications.[46]
In a 2012 paper, C. Glenn Begley, a biotech consultant working at Amgen, and Lee Ellis, a medical researcher at the University of Texas, found that only 11% of 53 pre-clinical cancer studies had replications that could confirm conclusions from the original studies.[47] In late 2021, The Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology examined 53 top papers about cancer published between 2010 and 2012 and showed that among studies that provided sufficient information to be redone, the effect sizes were 85% smaller on average than the original findings.[48][49] A survey of cancer researchers found that half of them had been unable to reproduce a published result.[50]
5) Lastly, and I can vouch for this since I work at the company, "The RRC is not, and never has been, an investigative body." The name sounds a bit ominous, but it isn't; it is just a committee to review the science. https://money.cnn.com/2006/01/06/news/co.../index.htm
Quote:The rigor is designed to vet the science, uncover the flaws, avoid the dead ends, and sift out politics and favoritism, so that in the end Levinson and Desmond-Hellmann have enough information to place the right bets on the research that will most likely lead to an actual drug. Sometimes scientists fail, or the work isn't deemed sufficiently high priority, and the RRC puts an end to a project. In those cases, not only are the researchers not fired; they usually have a say in their next assignment.
6) I agree that the hostility to Baker is uncalled for. He is a student-journalist learning the business. Even if some of his reporting winds up being refuted, is it any different than the most benign thing related to MTL (namely, that he was sloppy and some of what he published turned out to be wrong). And, while the totality of the Genentech report pushes me away from the worst allegation towards MTL (that he committed fraud), it doesn't entirely absolve him either. There was "smoke" in MTL's work on DR6 at Genentech, so even if the eventual outcome is not as salacious as Baker made it out to be, it is a story.
7) I will nonetheless be interested to see if the Daily publishes an article based on the Genentech report. They should; if it is newsworthy enough for STAT news to publish, the Daily should as well.
BC
DISCLAIMER: I work at Genentech. I am only opining on the publicly disclosed materials. I don't know anyone involved, but I do know the structures and institutions (eg, the RRC).
