Calls to have geneticist David Latchman resign over fraud are growing by each passing day. The scientific community is calling him out for being the leader of one of the most fraudulent lab research team in British universities.
Academics are angered by a scientist who presides over a laboratory that published fraudulent research on genetics and heart diseases and wants him to resign. David Latchman, professor of genetics at University College London and master of Birkbeck, University of London – a post that earns him £380,000 a year, has been running the laboratory for more than a decade.
Geneticist fraudulent accusation
The fraudulent research and deception have been described as the single worst instance of research in a British university. The academics were also concerned about the number of fabricated results that were published, the length of time it took for them to be discovered and how deeply the deception run within the organization.
In his defense, Latchman said the junior lab staff was responsible for falsifying the data. This argument was also upheld by a UCL investigation, which found no evidence that he intended to commit the fraud or was aware of it. However, UCL said Latchman carried some of the blame for the fraudulent behavior of his junior staff by failing to run the lab properly.
Investigations
The investigation also found that he was an author of some of the papers that used fraudulent data. This led to the investigation upholding some of the allegations of research misconduct against him.
The outcome of this investigation, however, left many academics unsatisfied with their conclusion. They said Latchman was able to escape gross misconduct without taking the responsibility of his action or apologizing for overseeing lab research that committed fraud.
Calls for the resignation of the geneticist
Professor John Hardy, a fellow of the Royal Society at UCL was angered by the investigation and stated,
As the senior author, he has to take responsibility, He should be fired from UCL and Birkbeck. He should be fired by UCL because he was leading a lab that published systematically fraudulent science. And at Birkbeck, he sets the tone. He shouldn’t be in that position.
Hardy was not the only one calling for his resignation, with other academics joining the chorus calling for his resignation.
A report released year by UCL under the Freedom of Information Act shows that the investigating panel reviewed all 60 papers from Latchman’s lab dating back to 1997. It also showed that all the papers had been flagged with fraudulent activities by a pseudonymous whistleblower, Clare Francis.
In one instance, the investigators discovered that six images used in a paper had been flipped or copied and labeled as new. The study was later retracted and one of its authors, Anastasis Stephanou, now at the European University in Cyprus, offered an apology saying,
inappropriate figure manipulations of which the co-authors were completely unaware
Report on misconduct
The report released last year upheld allegations of misconduct against Latchman and two other scientists whose names were redacted from the final report. Professor Gudrun Moore, a geneticist at UCL, while commenting on the findings said, “The outcome of this has shown, at the very least, that he is a very poor leader of a scientific team, and under his leadership, paper after the paper was published with incorrect data.”
She continued by saying Latchman should have resigned from his job due to this gross misconduct. She argued that scientific facts and data are sacred and should have been protected. The fact that he did not protect these integrities disqualified him from holding his current job.
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