News Summary

• “I absolutely believe that there are no falsified data in the paper,” he wrote in a subsequent email.This retraction is Tessier-Lavigne’s fourth in as many months, a stunning turn of events for a researcher of his stature..
• On a public lab website at that time, he wrote that he wanted to make clear to Nature readers that aspects of the paper had not held up and that certain data were unreliable..
• “I intend to issue such a correction as soon as possible,” he wrote.It is unclear exactly what led him to retract the paper entirely rather than correcting only certain parts..
• There were also unspecified errors in “certain biostatistical calculations underlying some figures,” the notice said.Concerns about Tessier-Lavigne’s research first emerged in 2015 on a scientific forum called PubPeer..
• Tessier-Lavigne, Genentech and Nikolaev deny that there was ever discussion of fraud in the paper.Tessier-Lavigne was urged to retract the paper amid the 2012 review, Genentech confirmed in April..
• Two of Tessier-Lavigne’s influential neurodevelopment papers published in Science and a third published in Cell were withdrawn earlier this fall after they were found to contain manipulated images..