Professor of Genetics at UCL faces accusations of scientific misconduct

Darwin Building,

Source: UCL Imagestore

Felicia Hu reports on the accusations of scientific misconduct and calls for resignation surrounding a UCL Genetics Professor.

David Latchman, Professor of Genetics at UCL, has been accused of scientific misconduct due to his role in the publication of research papers containing fraudulent data. These papers were published over the course of several years.

The first allegations came to light in 2013. These were then followed by investigations conducted both that year and in 2015. It was concluded that Latchman was innocent of any deliberate fraudulent actions and therefore there was no need for disciplinary action. However, as reported by the Guardian, “the geneticist accepted that there were ‘procedural matters’ in his lab that required attention”.

A paper was retracted in January 2015 with a second being retracted two months later, both for containing manipulated images. Anastasis Stephanou, a researcher in Latchman’s lab, took full responsibility for the fraud in the second paper and resigned from UCL before any further investigations could take place. He claims that the other researchers were completely unaware of the manipulations.

Further allegations of scientific misconduct by Latchman’s lab surfaced in 2016, most likely from the same anonymous source as the initial allegations, and following two more screening panels, a formal investigation was deemed necessary.

In 2017, a panel found Stephanou and Tiziano Scarabelli, another researcher working under Latchman’s supervision at UCL’s Institute of Child Health, guilty of manipulating images in seven published papers. These manipulations include cropping and flipping images to make them appear new, cloning images (that is, pasting parts of images onto other images) and using images from past papers. The same report found Latchman partially responsible for these instances of misconduct due to his “recklessness” in overseeing the research, despite the fact that he had “no intention” to commit fraud.

In January 2020, Buzzfeed obtained an email from Andrew Copp in 2007 – then Dean of UCL’s Institute of Child Health – to Anastasis Stephanou which suggests that UCL may have been aware of fraudulent results in papers by Latchman’s lab a decade prior to any formal investigations taking place. This email was forwarded to Rex Knight in 2017, the Vice-Provost of UCL at the time.

Following the results of these investigations, several academics have pushed for Latchman’s resignation from his posts as Professor of Genetics at UCL and Birkbeck which earns him £380,000 a year, according to the Guardian.

Speaking to Pi News, a PhD student from the department commented that the faculty need to make information more available on how whistleblowers can report misconduct while remaining anonymous, and perhaps assign a team to scrutinise papers and discuss matters with authors in private to determine the legitimacy of research.

At the time of writing this article, six papers from Latchman and his team have been retracted and two more have been corrected.

A UCL spokesperson said: “As a world leading university, UCL is committed to maintaining and safeguarding the highest standards of integrity in all areas of research. We take any allegations of research impropriety very seriously and have rigorous systems in place to ensure that all allegations are investigated thoroughly and that they are constantly reviewed to ensure the highest standards are met.”