Athira chief executive resigns as company confirms she altered research

When I was a University prof, I headed a committee to select new computers for the undergraduate lab. Even though I preferred Macs, at that particular time, PC's turned out to be the better choice. This was likely to make some of my colleagues happy, some did not like Macs. One of these colleagues came into my office for a chat and I told him he would be happy because I would be recommending PCs for the lab. I showed him my report. He told me to bump up the quote we had received for the Macs "to make the case even stronger". I had two reactions:

1. Stupid - the case was strong enough and I had no doubt that PCs would win;

2. Lie to my colleagues? Never.

Now he was pretty successful at getting grants, although I never thought much of his research. But, more importantly, I never, NEVER, trusted anything he said from then on.

To me, honesty is a switch that can never be turned back on.

Note that I don’t condone the actions at all by this company or individual.

However, this story demonstrates why the publish or perish model is so screwed up today. When your promotion, funding, livelihood are directly connected to positive research findings and publications in high impact journals, deception in the face of desperation will certainly happen. Ethics be damned.

Frankly, this is one of the reasons I think I want to only do research part time, focusing the majority of my time on clinical work as a physician. My salary would not entirely or really even remotely be dependent on grants or publications, and I could just slowly build up on some projects. Is progress slower, could your project be scooped? Certainly, but it sure wouldn’t force me to falsify results to make publications more appealing.

Who knows, though. Maybe everyone is susceptible to the rat race.

The manipulated data (image)... https://pubpeer.com/publications/51C554512CE22267B2E62172DF3...

For a non paywall summary with many of the manipulated western blots and other images:

https://forbetterscience.com/2021/06/15/how-to-cure-all-dise...