Karen Ashe attended Harvard for both her undergrad and MD. With all the academic fraud committed by Harvard connected people that has come to light in the past few years, one really has to wonder what is up with that institution (and higher ed more generally).
Harvard wants academic celebrities. It's not enough to do solid work, you need awards, plaudits, research that punches through the noise, articles in the mainstream press, and so on. Harvard is a brand first and foremost. If what you want most in life is to be a tenured Harvard professor in your chosen field, you need to publish research that makes a big splash.
The most surefire way to do this was to simply commit fraud rather than conduct experiments and pray you get lucky and find an outlier result worthy of significant rewards. We are witnessing the fallout now as people no longer assume honesty and integrity, and begin to analyze the actual papers for accuracy.
Indeed. Another example of this is Forbes featuring outlier successful people on its front cover who have later turned out to be involved in criminal activities or scandals. (1) Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, who was once celebrated as a tech visionary but later convicted of fraud. (2) Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, who faced multiple fraud charges following the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange.
Forbes is just another junk brand looking to turn a profit. With Harvard and other higher education institutions there is the expectation that they are vehement proponents of scientific rigor.
It was her "protégé", Sylvain Lesné, that did the dirty work. And apparently has been rewarded with continuing employment.
Perhaps it was Ashe's Harvard education that led her to not consider double-checking the work...
Edit to add: iirc, it was the University of Minnesota that is also responsible for the "food fat is bad" advice that has made obesity than American epidemic...
