The same day the story was published, the university started an investigation in Tessier-Lavigne’s investigation and the seven years of alleged scientific misconduct detailed in the Stanford Daily story.
“It was pretty amazing,” said Stanford Daily editor-in-chief Sam Catania. “I can’t say that I expected the board of directors to act quickly.” But the launch of the investigation, he said, “just became another piece of news for us.” Baker continued to cover the story, revealing possible image manipulation in additional roles co-authored with Tessier-Lavigne. He also reported calls to the rector of the university to lower and the expansion of the group of individuals who would be investigating the allegations of scientific misconduct. (You can read all the coverage of the Stanford Daily here.)
On February 17, three days before the Polk Award winners were announced, Baker posted another massive history revealing allegations that Tessier-Lavigne had falsified data in a 2009 paper that identified a potential cause of brain degeneration in Alzheimer’s patients.
His only in-person interaction with Tessier-Lavigne was brief, Baker said. She reached out to the university president shortly after sending him an email requesting comment for the story about allegedly falsified Alzheimer’s disease data. “I approached him. I just said, ‘Hello,’ and he said, “Oh, yeah, yeah. I got your letter. I hope to be in contact. I’m in a hurry.’
“I started to say something and he closed his car door in the middle of my sentence,” Baker continued. “And of course he didn’t contact us. His lawyer did.
Shortly after the Alzheimer’s story was published, Tessier-Lavigne sent a letter to Stanford faculty and staff attacking the student newspaper reports, calling them “replete with falsehoods”.
Tessier-Lavigne’s letter solidified Baker’s conviction that her stories would never have been published if the Stanford Daily were not an organization operating outside the control of the academic institution. (The newspaper is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its independence from the university this year.) “The stakes are too high,” Baker said. “The person we are writing about is literally in charge of all of us.”
Both the reporter and the editor-in-chief of the Stanford Daily avoid questions about the impact their investigation could have on Tessier-Lavigne’s tenure as university president.
“We just want to report the facts and we want to get it right. That is the most important thing for us,” Catania said. “You know, no matter what, if at the end of the day we were just, accurate, and thorough. To me, that will be ‘mission accomplished’ for the Daily.”
For his part, Baker said he just wants to “get to the bottom of what exactly happened.” He added: “I try not to think too much about what is going to happen based on all this. The thing I’ve spent the most time thinking about is making sure we get it right and make it as complete as possible. I am not in charge of making the judgments; other people will come to their conclusions. So my only job here is to go ahead and find out what’s really there.”
