David Seymour Latchman CBE (born 1956) is a British geneticist and university administrator. Since 2003 he has been Vice-Chancellor of Birkbeck, University of London, and since 1999 professor of genetics at University College London.^[1]

Early life and education

Born into a Jewish family,^[2] he is nephew and heir to the childless wealthy property developer Maurice Wohl and is chair of the Maurice Wohl Charitable Foundation.^[3]

Career

Latchman worked in the medical molecular biology unit at University College London (UCL), and at Middlesex School of Medicine.

He has been professor of molecular pathology, and director of the Windeyer Institute of Medical Science, at UCL, and was dean of the Institute for Child Health (1999–2002).^[4]

He serves on several committees including London Development Agency (observer status); Universities UK Research Policy Network; National DNA Database Ethics Group; London First (board member).^{[citation needed][5]}

As Master of Birkbeck, he voiced protest at UK government proposals to cut funding for second degrees.^[6] Latchman was also a vocal advocate for part time degrees and government support to improve access for adults to higher education.^[7]

Latchman was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 Birthday Honours for services to higher education.^[8]

Beginning in 2014, Latchman’s laboratory at UCL Institute of Child Health came under scrutiny after an anonymous whistleblower alleged that dozens of papers from the lab were doctored.^[9] Two screening expert panels in 2014 and 2015 found evidence of research fraud in 14 papers from 1990 to 2013.^[10] Even though the two investigations found no evidence that he intended to commit fraud or was aware of the fraud, they found he had been reckless in his running of the lab and co-authoring on the research and upheld an allegation of research misconduct against him.^[10] A 2018 disciplinary hearing concluded that there were insufficient grounds for any formal action against him, noting that fraud was difficult to detect and urged senior research leaders to consider when to stop being named authors on papers.^[9][10] As of 2020, 6 papers have been retracted and 2 papers have been corrected.^[10] Colleagues called for his resignation, but Latchman remained a part-time professor of human genetics at UCL, and master of Birkbeck. He no longer has a lab and has stopped supervising research.^[10]