MIT president Sally Kornbluth responds to Globe report on academic fraud case at Duke
""MIT President Sally Kornbluth responded in a statement Wednesday to a Globe report detailing her time as an administrator at Duke amid a cancer research scandal more than a decade ago, saying she learned lessons from the case that “have powerfully shaped my approach to leadership ever since.”
Kornbluth said she described the case to MIT’s search committee before she was selected as the institute’s new president in 2022.
The Globe’s story, which published online Wednesday morning, said Kornbluth was the dean overseeing clinical research at Duke Medical School when researchers raised concerns about the work of Dr. Anil Potti, who claimed to have created algorithms that could analyze tumors and pick the best chemotherapy cocktail to treat cancer patients.
Potti’s work led to clinical trials that began enrolling patients in 2007. A federal investigation later revealed that Potti had been manipulating data. Critics said some leaders at Duke, including Kornbluth, were slow to shut down the trials after other researchers raised serious concerns.
Patients and their loved ones sued, and Duke settled in 2015 for an undisclosed sum.
In her statement Wednesday, Kornbluth said she was “new to university administration” at the time.
“One formative lesson was the vital importance of establishing and following rigorous and timely internal investigative processes and ensuring that they are entirely independent from those who undertook the work,” she said.
Kornbluth said the case “led to concrete improvements in Duke’s research infrastructure.”
https://www.statnews.com/2025/08/14/mit-president-response-duke-cancer-fraud-investigation/
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