Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Faces Data Integrity Scandals, Leading to Retractions and Raising Red Flags in Scientific Community

In recent years, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has been the subject of an ongoing investigation regarding data integrity. As a result, several retractions have been issued, including one involving a 2006 Science paper co-authored by Laurie Glimcher, the institute’s president and CEO.

The retraction notice, published in Science, stated that discrepancies in key scientific images had been detected, causing the authors to lose confidence in the study’s key figures. Despite opposition from the study’s lead author, the decision to retract was ultimately made.

This paper is just one of more than 50 articles co-authored by four of Dana-Farber’s top researchers that have come under scrutiny. These concerns were initially brought to light in a January blog post by scientific investigator Sholto David. Some of the issues were identified on PubPeer, a website dedicated to addressing data problems in research, while others had been posted several years prior. Many of the concerns revolved around duplicated images of experimental results, potentially impacting the scientific conclusions drawn from the data.