UCL clears Latchman over long-running fraud allegations

David Latchman, the master of Birkbeck, University of London, “had no knowledge of, or involvement in” incidents of scientific fraud that took place on projects in which he was involved at University College London, according to an internal hearing.

According to a statement published on the Birkbeck website last month, an internal hearing at UCL “has drawn a long running case involving publications…to a close”. The hearing was related to several papers on which Latchman is named as a co-author, which were found to contain doctored images. The papers involved members of his laboratory group at UCL and were published several years ago when he was dean of the university’s Institute of Child Health.

“The hearing followed two investigations into publications connected to professor Latchman’s research group at UCL, both of which found that professor Latchman had no knowledge of, or involvement in, the image manipulation identified,” said Birkbeck. “In addition, the hearing found that professor Latchman’s management of his UCL research programme was not at fault.”