How a freshman's journalistic sleuthing gave Stanford's prez the sack
This month, soon-incoming sophomore Theo Baker made history when Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced his resignation, largely thanks to Baker himself. Though Internet rumors had long circulated about the prez's research integrity (hello, Photoshop), it was Baker's persistent journalism that paved the way to a damning third-party investigation. An LA Times interview with Baker, below.
How did this story come to your attention?
There’s a pretty highly technical scientific forum called PubPeer where people analyze published works. People there suspected that certain images in things that Tessier-Lavigne had published over the years looked like they’d been Photoshopped.
I decided, well, if this is true, this is really interesting. I’m going to take this to an actual forensic image analyst who can take a look and say if there has been manipulation or Photoshopping....
What pressures did you experience as a student journalist reporting on your own institution?
It’s a nerve-racking thing. We’re really lucky that the Stanford Daily is celebrating its 50th year of independence from the university. That was really important. This reporting I don’t think could have happened without that. Especially after we began receiving legal threats from Tessier-Lavigne, I certainly think the fact that we are independent made it possible for us to keep digging.
Marc Tessier-Lavigne speaks at his inauguration as the 11th president of Stanford University in 2016.
(Dan Honda / Bay Area News Group via AP)
What kind of legal threats did you receive?
Stephen Neal, the chair emeritus of Cooley, one of the biggest law firms in the Silicon Valley area, represented Marc Tessier-Lavigne and sent a number of aggressive letters requesting retractions or seeking to block the publication of articles that detailed Tessier-Lavigne’s involvement in alleged incidents of fraud. Neal is also a former attorney for [disgraced former Theranos CEO] Elizabeth Holmes.
What was your reaction when the university commissioned an independent investigation into the issues your reporting raised?
It was not independent at first. They announced an investigation that was going to be led by a special committee of the Board of Trustees. Very quickly, that became another story for us to report on. I discovered that one member of the committee [fund manager Felix Baker] had an $18-million investment in Tessier-Lavigne’s biotechnology company — and this is a person who had been appointed to investigate Tessier-Lavigne.
After that, he stepped away and they hired the lawyer who then hired some other scientists.
This article originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times. Read the whole thing here.
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