Eric Lander

An internal White House investigation concluded that Eric Lander had behaved in an intimidating and humiliating manner towards several Office of Science and Technology Policy staff members. Women described a toxic working environment and degrading remarks. After apologising, Lander resigned in February 2022.

State of the evidence

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Directly implicated

At the time of his nomination as Joe Biden's science adviser, parliamentarians and media outlets examined Lander's attendance at two events also attended by Jeffrey Epstein, who had already been convicted of a sexual offence. The meetings took place in the context of discussions involving donors and scientists.

State of the evidence

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Directly implicated

On joining the Biden administration, Lander disclosed holdings worth between 500 000 and one million dollars in BioNTech, Pfizer's partner in a COVID-19 vaccine. Ethics rules required him to recuse himself temporarily from vaccine-related matters until he divested his interests.

State of the evidence

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Directly implicated

Eric Lander attended James Watson's 90th birthday celebration in 2018 and gave a toast. The event drew strong criticism given Watson's repeated racist and sexist statements. Lander subsequently apologised publicly, saying that he had underestimated the symbolic impact of his attendance.

State of the evidence

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Directly implicated

In an extensive article published by Cell, Eric Lander traced the history of CRISPR. Jennifer Doudna and other scientists challenged several aspects of the account, accused the text of downplaying certain contributions and noted that Lander headed the Broad Institute, a party to a major CRISPR patent dispute. The published version initially contained no visible conflict-of-interest declaration.

State of the evidence

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Institutional responsibility

As one of the principal leaders of the public Human Genome Project, Eric Lander strongly opposed the commercial strategy of Celera Genomics and Craig Venter, notably over data access, patents and independent genome assembly. The conflict peaked with competing publications in 2001 and subsequently became a scientific controversy over the proportion of public data used by Celera.

State of the evidence

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Attribution

Direct responsibility