Key Researcher Agrees To Retract Disputed Stem Cell Papers 61
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "After several months of fiercely defending her discovery of a new, simple way to create pluripotent stem cells, Haruko Obokata of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, has agreed to retract the two Nature papers that reported her work. Satoru Kagaya, head of public relations for RIKEN, headquartered in Wako near Tokyo, confirmed press reports today that Obokata had finally agreed to retract both papers. He said the institute would be notifying Nature and that the decision to formally retract the papers would be up to the journal."
Fabricated results (Score:5, Insightful)
Another article I read about this mentioned that she confessed to fabricating "at least some results". Now, there are various reasons why a researcher would fabricate results, from the pressure to publish to just literally being evil, but in this case how would she ever expect to get away with it? This is not like a paper in my sub-field, which if I'm lucky five people will ever read. EVERYONE wants pluripotent stem cells, so of course a simple method to create them is going to be tested and replicated over and over and over.
Re:"Rigorous" peer-review ahahahahahaha (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you know understand publication and peer review?
Nature peer review means that the data and methodology looked good and rigorous.
If they laid about the data, or some methodology it's very hard to know that unless if is really obvious.
This is why publication is only the beginning of peer review. After publication other experts can look at it and try to reproduce the results. This is also why the most interesting papers are the second papers.
Re:"Rigorous" peer-review ahahahahahaha (Score:3, Insightful)
And this is Nature fer chrissakes; not the Journal of Homeopathic Chiropractic Aroma Therapy and Crystal Meditation.
Sigh, I'll point out what gets said it every one of these topics:
The point of peer review isn't to uncover fraud. That's the job for follow-up studies (like we saw in this case).
The point of peer review is to catch things like logical flaws. Do the conclusions follow from the data? Are there any obvious problems in the experimental setup? Did they mess up any math anywhere?
Catching fraud usually requires that the experiment be repeated. The initial peer review process of the initial article doesn't (and generally can't) do that. The whole point of the initial article is to put the experiment and the result into the literature and the community consciousness, THEN have other scientists attempt to reproduce the results. The fraud will presumably be caught then, if it exists. It worked in this case.
Now, I'll give you that science has a problem right now where not enough follow-up studies are being done. This means that there is way too much fraud, especially in the life sciences. But this is actually a case where the process seems to have worked pretty well.
Re:Fabricated results (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know, if they're out of work because their faith in their theories was strong enough to make them falsify data, they might be good candidates for priests.
Re:"Rigorous" peer-review ahahahahahaha (Score:5, Insightful)
Peer review is not a crutch. It is a necessary, but not sufficient check and balance. That said, the peer reviewers MAY have performed less than admirably (hey, it happens). The part that really has turned up under closer review is her methodology is awful. Peer reviewers tend to work along the assumption that the researcher knows what they are doing. That assumption appears to be incorrect (recall the first three letters of the word). Looking a detailed Materials and Methods is amazingly boring and often not even possible because editors don't want to 'waste' space in their precious journal having somebody detail where they got a reagent from or exactly how they (supposedly) did things.
There is an increasing trend to require authors to put such details in the paper. Typically in a web based supplement (so it doesn't waste space in the precious journal). This trend has started for precisely these reasons.
Nature is going to eat some deserved crow on this one. Fortunately, that is the time tested recipe for improvement.