Boston Globe publishes article about Kornbluth’s handling of cancer research scandal at Duke
Article seems to criticize Kornbluth for failing to identify Anil Potti’s research misconduct sooner
On Aug. 13, The Boston Globe published an investigative article about President Kornbluth’s delay in addressing research misconduct when she was Vice Dean for Basic Science at the Duke School of Medicine.
In 2006, former Duke professors Anil Potti and Joseph Nevins published a paper in Nature Medicine claiming that their algorithm could use a patient’s genetic markers to predict which chemotherapy drugs would be the most effective. However, biostatisticians Keith Baggerly and Kevin Coombes at the MD Anderson Cancer Center were unable to replicate the findings in the paper, which led them to send a letter to Nature Medicine questioning the paper’s methodology. Bradford Perez, a third-year medical student in Potti’s lab, also identified issues with Potti’s methodology and data analysis.
These research concerns caused Perez to write a memo to Duke School of Medicine administrators in 2008. Despite the memo, Potti and Nevins were still able to conduct a clinical trial for their research, which ultimately enrolled a total of 117 cancer patients.
In September 2009, Baggerly and Coombes published a paper in the Annals of Applied Statistics that claimed that the errors in Potti’s research could have harmful effects on the patients. As a result, Kornbluth met with Potti and Nevins regarding the alleged research misconduct case, and Duke suspended the trials. However, Kornbluth then consulted an external committee to review the case, and the committee did not identify signs of scientific misconduct. In January 2010, Duke restarted the clinical trials. A number of researchers at Duke have criticized Kornbluth for not quickly responding to the research misconduct scandal. Several past and current researchers at Duke did not respond to The Tech’s' request for comment by the time of publication.
In 2010, Lisa McShane, a biostatistician from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), conducted an investigation into Potti and Nevins’ research, as she believed that the algorithms were falsified. From the investigation, McShane found multiple discrepancies and inconsistencies in the data that Potti was unable to answer. McShane’s in-depth investigation was followed by The Cancer Letter’s report in July 2010 that found that Potti lied on his resume, claiming that he was a Rhodes Scholar when he never received the award. As a result, Potti was placed on leave. Nevins retired from Duke in 2013.
In 2015, Duke settled a lawsuit for an undisclosed sum that claimed that patients in Potti’s research were harmed in the chemotherapy trials, which was terminated in 2010. The same year, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) concluded that Potti engaged in research misconduct by falsifying research data. Many of Potti’s research papers were retracted as a result.
In response to The Boston Globe’s article, Kornbluth wrote a letter to the MIT community on the same day. In her letter, Kornbluth acknowledged her role in the research misconduct case. She stated that she was new to being an university administrator at the time, and that the incident taught her the importance of establishing “timely internal investigative processes” and “ensuring that they are entirely independent from those who undertook the research.”
Kornbluth admitted that research misconduct can be challenging to identify when an “individual is intent on deception.” She emphasized the importance of cultivating a culture of trust in data and people. “It’s crucial that we continue to foster a culture in which everyone, regardless of their position, feels empowered to raise concerns and knows they will be taken seriously,” Kornbluth further emphasized.
In a statement to The Tech, Deputy Director of Media Relations Sarah McDonnell stated that the presidential search committee in 2022 performed a thorough review of her previous record. According to McDonnell, Kornbluth mentioned the Potti case during the interview process for the purpose of transparency and honesty.