A university in France has stripped a researcher of her doctoral degree after she was found to have committed misconduct in at least two studies of yeast.
As we reported in May, Marjorie Petitjean, who received her PhD from the National Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of Toulouse, was accused of having fabricated and manipulated data while in the lab of Jean-Luc Parrou — who described her output as “a complete work of fiction.”
Petitjean left Parrou’s lab for a post-doc in Scotland, where, he said, she continued her bad habits:
I discovered the ‘problem’ while coming back on somehow raw data, to rework a figure that we needed for a paper in preparation (submission to Science … ), during the summer 2016, at the moment when she left for a postdoc in Scotland. Since that time, followed dreadful discoveries of misconducts and erroneous data no longer reproducible.
Parrou said the disciplinary action, which was confirmed by the university, had been pending since the spring, but had been delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic until July 1. The move brings a measure of closure for Parrou, but not a full one. As he told us in May:
This nightmare period therefore lasted for almost 4 years (4 years next summer), during which I also tried to get answers from Marjorie Petitjean about the reasons and motivations for such a misconduct. With no success.
We have been unable to find contact information for Petitjean.
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