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It’s important to recognize that this would be a different story had he been ousted and protested or attempted a cover up.I think it's very early to give a positive judgment for MTL's decision to resign. First of all, the most serious allegation by the Stanford Daily — that MTL knew of fraud at his Genentech lab and made an effort to cover it up — is still denied by MTL, Stanford, and Genentech.
Either MTL & Genentech are lying, or the Daily made a mistake in its reporting. As of now, the Daily still stands by its reporting and Theo Baker published a follow-up about how Stanford's investigation may have been fundamentally flawed [0]
But let's assume that the Daily is wrong, MTL's resignation statement omitted any accountability for the lesser but still damning charge: negligent leadership that fostered a research culture optimized (inadvertently or not) for fraud. As the Daily puts it:
> The report concluded that the fudging of results under Tessier-Lavigne’s purview “spanned labs at three separate institutions.” It identified a culture where Tessier-Lavigne “tended to reward the ‘winners’ (that is, postdocs who could generate favorable results) and marginalize or diminish the ‘losers’
In MTL's letter to Stanford [1], he limits his culpability to not being diligent enough in correcting the errors and alleged fraud, all of which were the fault of his subordinates:
> I agree that in some instances I should have been more diligent when seeking corrections, and I regret that I was not. The Panel’s review also identified instances of manipulation of research data by others in my lab. Although I was unaware of these issues, I want to be clear that I take responsibility for the work of my lab members.
> ...These findings have also caused me to further reassess the processes and controls I have in place. While I continually maintain a critical eye on all the science in my lab, I have also always operated my lab on trust – trust in my students and postdocs, and trust that the data they were presenting to me was real and accurate.
I get that there's a limit to how much self-flagellation he can do right now, but he's basically limited his culpability to: "my biggest weakness is that I respect and trust my colleagues and students too much!" In this era of Stanford-associated stories like Theranos and FTX, the prospect and danger of a leader who fosters fraudulent "winners" is something that should be addressed explicitly.
[0] https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/sources-refused-to-part...
[1] https://tessier-lavigne-lab.stanford.edu/news/message-stanfo...