"A panel of experts concluded that Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist who has been president of Stanford for nearly seven years, did not engage in any fraud or falsification of scientific data. It also did not find evidence that he was aware of problems before publication of data."
They couldn't prove he personally did the manipulation.
He oversaw work at three different institutions over two decades that resulted in manipulated data by someone, and didn't issue corrections when those manipulations were pointed out. If he didn't do it, he was incompetent or uninterested in fixing the issues.
At most, he's guilty of fraud. That's unproven, but not impossible.
At the least, he's guilty of not noticing/caring about stuff he really should have cared about, and as a result wasted a whole bunch of money and human life (not just in his own labs, but those relying on his work) that we can't get back.
It is so frustrating when everyone is working hard to raise money for research to see it pissed away like this. I just saw a commercial for an upcoming cancer charity show put on by celebrities and I got really angry.
I.e. he's nobly taking the fall for fraud committed by others that he knew nothing about in the lab he was paid a large amount of money to run and who attached his name to said papers he had nothing to do with.
Even the spun version doesn't make him look very good.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/07/19/stanford...
"A panel of experts concluded that Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist who has been president of Stanford for nearly seven years, did not engage in any fraud or falsification of scientific data. It also did not find evidence that he was aware of problems before publication of data."