Eventually, they are all found out.

20 years from now, various 'scholars' will be exposed for having used artificial intelligence (AI) to create their erudite research papers.

The only occupations that cannot be replaced by AI are jobs requiring manual labor or the use of hands and workers in those areas will eventually rise to the top of the economic food chain.

App developers, paralegals, administrative assistants, teachers, marketing/sales professionals, and various entry-level jobs are history.

And in some ways this development will be good for society because college degrees are overated, costly, and for many students...a temporary escape from adult world responsibilities.

I thank Stanford's President and Board for making the high-integrity decision to seek new leadership. Now is a great opportunity to spend time casting a wide net of maximally diverse candidates -- politically, ethnically, racially, gender-wise, geographically, and otherwise.

Finding the most qualified candidates always requires searching the most diverse candidate base. Only by taking extra time to go beyond Stanford's existing networks and potentially shallow pools of candidates will Stanford find the most qualified new leader. I hope that Stanford will choose to do that extra work, drawing upon its unprecedented financial resources to succeed.

When Stanford takes the extra time and spends the extra money to maximize its search pool and optimize the quality and diversity of its candidate pool, I hope that Stanford embraces the values of diversity and representation, which provably strengthen communities and improve the quality of decision-making and judgment. Echo chambers otherwise may result, as they have at Stanford in the past.

Perhaps, when Stanford does this extra work to find the best candidate, Stanford will land on a candidate who is a woman, maybe even a minority woman, as did my other Alma Mater, Harvard University. Harvard's current President not only is diverse and representative of the Harvard community -- but also she also is a Stanford Alumna, who was potentially available to recruit until this past year.

To be clear, however, President Gay, Stanford '92, is one of numerous exceptionally qualified diverse academic leaders. Unlike in the past, the pipeline now is filled with ample brilliant, inspiring, successful, well-respected diverse potential candidates--most of whom did not attend Stanford like Harvard President Gay. Please, Stanford, take the time to find a President that can best serve and represent our values and commitment to integrity and excellence by prioritizing diversity in your search.

Thank you.
Rebecca Eisenberg
Stanford '90 BA Decision Science
Harvard '93 JD Law
Palo Alto, CA

So if he didn't do it, who did? Why is there no mention of investigations/consequences for the students and others who did manipulate the data? There were at least five publications over a period of several years, so there obviously is more than one individual at fault.

I suspect this is the peak of the iceberg. The U.S. higher education system: an insulated, unaccountable, highly funds, stratified, money guzzling system probably has a lot more to hide.

Other headlines elsewhere are calling this manipulation of data.

That description seems to be something that happens everywhere whenever certain results are expected. Surveys, polls, questionnaires, you name it. Manipulation of data to get a required result is common place. And it isn't just scientists, but journalists, politicians, even city departments, do it to get the favored results.

Let's hope the tide starts to turn now.

This article raises more questions than it answers. Why was the investigation begun? What happened to peer review? Publication is hard and peer review should have caught all this. Is this evidence of the political in academic publishing trumping scientific review? Or something else?

Sacrifical lamb, perhaps? All of the scandals of the last ten years, this is no surprise.

Character is a learned behavior. Sadly, not everyone learned. "In the University's best interest" is an understatement.

To me, the linked report reads like a justification of a predetermined course of action, not an actual reason for Dr Tessier-Lavigne to step down. IMO the evidence reported is simply not compelling. Furthermore, if the university thinks he is unfit due to his wrongdoings, why would they return him to the role of Professor of Biology in which those wrongdoings allegedly occurred? If Stanford has decided to seek new leadership for some other reason (e.g. negative press in recent years), couldn't they have achieved this without damaging Dr Tessier-Lavigne's reputation, making it more difficult for him to effectively resume his role as a Professor of Biology? This whole thing is awkward.

Fake it until you make it seems to be the norm. Who was vetting him from the beginning?
The gentleman that is going to be the interim seems to be the correct person.Better resume and well rounded.

I wonder why he's waiting so long to clean out his desk? Anybody else who is leaving a job due to dishonesty, which is basically the reason he's quitting (before he gets fired?) .... I smell an exit package with hefty compensation to reward him ... there's no other logical reason to drag it out.

Technological advances and commercial applications in recent decades have led to some investigators' labs becoming essentially research organizations. The management skills of the investigators running those labs do not always measure up, which seems to be what happened here, with a failure to promptly recognize and then deal with research misconduct by worker(s) in the lab.

Since management skills are essential for Stanford's president, it's appropriate that MTL is resigning. It's also appropriate that he will continue to employ his skills in biology research as a biology professor, albeit likely with a smaller lab.