University departure puts student journalists in the spotlight

Two prominent departures from top universities this month share a common link: curious student journalists.

Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced Wednesday that he would be stepping down from his position and retracting three-decade-old research papers, after an independent review of his scientific work was prompted by coverage in the campus newspaper, The Stanford Daily.

Last week, Northwestern University fired its head football coach, Pat Fitzgerald, after the student newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, reported that its players engaged in hazing rituals.

The back-to-back revelations have highlighted the important role of college newspapers in holding the powerful institutions they house to account.

“I think it’s pretty clear that without our reporting, this report wouldn’t have happened,” said Theo Baker, the research editor of The Stanford Daily.

Mr. Baker, 18, resurfaced in a Nov. 29 article for The Stanford Daily that published neuroscience research papers in which Dr. Tessier-Lavigne was listed as lead author or co-author, images had changed. The claims have been repeated over the years on PubPeer, a website where scientists can discuss research.

The next day, Stanford University opened an investigation into Dr. Tessier-Lavigne with a panel of outside scientists. Their report, released Wednesday, found that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne “was not personally involved in research misconduct” for the 12 papers the panel reviewed, but that some of the papers did show research data manipulated by members of his labs and that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne did not take sufficient steps to correct the record.

But their report pushed back on a claim from The Stanford Daily in February that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne, a 2009 research paper on Alzheimer’s disease, wrote while an executive at the biotech company Genentech, had been the subject of an internal review that found falsified data and that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne had covered it up. Dr. Tessier-Lavigne denied those claims.

“That claim appears to be false, as Genentech has stated,” the panel’s report said, though it noted “multiple problems” with the 2009 study.

Kaushikee Nayudu, the editor-in-chief and president of The Stanford Daily, said in a statement Wednesday that the paper is sticking to its reporting.

“The Daily has never reported that Marc Tessier-Lavigne was personally involved in rigging research,” she said. “We had access to information and sources other than the panel, which acknowledged that they did not grant anonymity to sources. It is possible that different conclusions are drawn based on these differences in process.”

Mr Baker declined to comment on the report’s criticisms. But in one article Published on Wednesday after the review was released, Mr Baker reported that some witnesses had declined to speak to the Stanford panel because their anonymity was not guaranteed and that the panel was aware of additional allegations not included in the final report.

Mr. Baker is the son of New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker and Susan B. Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker. In February, he became the youngest recipient of a Polk Award for his research on Dr. Tessier-Lavigne.

“For me, this should primarily spark conversations about the value of student journalism,” said Baker. “If you like a place, and I really like Stanford,” he added, “you want to push it to be more transparent.”

At Northwestern, student coverage sparked a hazing scandal in the football program. A articlewritten by Nicole Markus, Alyce Brown, Cole Reynolds and Divya Bhardwaj on July 8, reported the extent of allegations of hazing among college football players, including forced nudity and forced sex acts, and showed how the university mishandled its investigation into the hazing, resulting in Mr. Fitzgerald, the coach, being suspended for just two weeks.

Reporters followed two days later an article about the racist culture in the football program. Mr Fitzgerald does dismissed that day. (Mr. Fitzgerald said in a statement to ESPN at the time that he was “surprised” and that his agent and attorney would “take appropriate steps to protect my rights in accordance with the law”.)

The students’ research led to a court case against Northwestern and Mr. Fitzgerald filed Tuesday by a former Northwestern football player alleging he was subjected to hazing, physical abuse and racial discrimination.