Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the former president of Stanford University who resigned earlier this year after an institutional research misconduct investigation, has retracted a paper from Nature. The journal’s editorial office marked another of Tessier-Lavigne’s articles with an expression of concern. 

The two Nature papers – which have together been cited more than 1,000 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science – were among five the university investigation examined on which Tessier-Lavigne was the principal author. The other three have been retracted – two from Science and one from Cell. In a statement posted to his lab website July 19, Tessier-Lavigne wrote that he planned to correct the two papers in Nature. 

The retracted article, “APP binds DR6 to trigger axon pruning and neuron death via distinct caspases,” appeared in 2009. It has been cited 816 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science. The retraction notice stated: 

The authors have retracted this article. Our subsequent work confirmed aspects of the article, notably that DR6 and APP interact and function in a genetic pathway involving caspases to control axon pruning and neuron death. However, our later research also showed that certain conclusions reached in the article were incorrect, notably the role of caspase-3, the necessity for beta-secretase enzyme activity for APP-DR6 binding, and the model for the APP-DR6 interaction.

More recently, the following anomalies were identified:

Figure 1d: the NGF-deprived +IgG panel appears to be identical to the NGF-deprived, 24h + Control IgG panel of Figure 5e.

Supplementary information Figure 9c: the NGF-deprived + Bax inhibitor control panel appears to be identical to the + anti-NGF control panel of Supplementary information Figure 17c.

Supplementary information Figure 6d: the fourth beta-Actin blot for Casp-3 siRNA appears to be identical to the first beta-Actin blot for Casp-6 siRNA.

Certain biostatistical calculations underlying some figures contained errors.

We believe that these additional anomalies do not affect the conclusions presented in the affected figures. However, given the lack of original data for several of these figures due to the age of the paper, and since our subsequent research showed that certain specific claims in the original article were not correct and we reported a correction for those claims elsewhere, we consider that the appropriate course of action is to retract the article. All the authors agree with this retraction.

The listed “anomalies” refer to images PubPeer users raised concerns about in February and March of this year. 

Tessier-Lavigne did not immediately respond to our request for comment. In his statement from July, he wrote: 

Importantly, the Panel found that allegations of fraud regarding this paper are “not accurate.”

That said, while most aspects of this paper have withstood the test of time, a number of its key findings required revision, which we addressed through subsequent publications. In addition, multiple anomalies in the paper have come to light in the past several months, and the investigation has uncovered certain inconsistent experimental results prior to publication. It is important to emphasize that I informed the Panel that I was unaware of these new issues prior to publication, and the Panel found no evidence to suggest otherwise. The Panel also found that the approach of publishing follow-on papers was “within the boundaries of normal scientific practice,” but that it was “suboptimal” not to additionally retract or directly correct the paper.

I agree with the Panel that it is important to issue a robust correction in Nature both to address the recently discovered anomalies and to explicitly spell out the revisions to certain key findings in the paper that we presented in subsequent papers but that would not necessarily be apparent to all readers of the Nature paper. I intend to issue such a correction as soon as possible.

The article that now bears an expression of concern, “The netrin receptor UNC5B mediates guidance events controlling morphogenesis of the vascular system,” appeared in 2004. It has been cited 402 times. 

The notice stated that Nature was publishing the expression of concern:

to alert the readership that image integrity issues have been raised with some of the data. A report to the Stanford University board concluded that this article reflects evidence of manipulation of research data. We have considered the issues and find that the far-left lanes of the top and bottom panels of Supplementary Figure 2E appear to be duplicated. Given the age of the article there is insufficient information to conclusively assess how the duplication occurred. However, the authors have provided contemporaneous replicates that confirm the validity of the data presented in Supplementary Figure 2E.

Tessier-Lavigne agreed to the journal’s decision, according to the notice. In his July statement, he’d written: 

Issues with several figures in this paper were raised last December, which is when I first learned of them. The Panel found no evidence that I knew nor should reasonably have known of these issues. Two of the figures that have been questioned were generated in my laboratory. At least one of them shows evidence of manipulation of research data. Although one of my coauthors located primary data that confirms the result presented in the figure, it nevertheless requires a thorough correction. I am already in touch with the journal about this.

In December 2022, a user on PubPeer posted concerns about the figure called out in the expression of concern.

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It was that rarest of things: a sliver of good news about climate change.

According to calculations published last year in Nature, our planet was keeping pace, and then some, with rising emissions from tropical forest clearance by gobbling up more and more atmospheric carbon. 

“What we can mainly prove is that the worst nightmare scenarios of an impaired carbon sink have not yet materialised and that the news is not quite as bad,” Guido van der Werf, a professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, said in a press release at the time.

His coauthor Dave van Wees added:

It may well be that some of the climate feedback loops that we are concerned about, such as the thawing of permafrost or more forest fires, are already making their mark but are being offset by other mechanisms. 

But on Monday, Nature retracted the article, “New land-use-change emissions indicate a declining CO2 airborne fraction.” It has been cited 20 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science, and was covered on at least one climate-skeptic blog.

Writing in the retraction notice, van der Werf and his colleagues acknowledged that their “statistical approach needs to be corrected and therefore accept a retraction as requested by the editor.”

We emailed van der Werf, van Wees and the paper’s first author, Margreet J. E. van Marle, for comments, but either did not hear back or received automatic replies stating they were unavailable.  

The retraction follows an editor’s note from December stating the results were in question, and a short communication from April by researchers in Denmark and the Netherlands who took a fresh look at the data. 

“A re-examination of the data using a variety of statistical tests finds no evidence of a trend on the whole sample and some evidence of a positive trend,” wrote Mikkel Bennedsen of Aarhus University, in Denmark, and his colleagues. In other words, a stable or growing fraction of anthropogenic emissions would remain in the atmosphere.

Bennedsen declined to comment for this article. According to the retraction notice, his team assisted van der Werf and his coauthors in revising their calculations, which will be re-submitted for publication.

Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at team@retractionwatch.com.

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