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."
Re:Fabricated results (Score:4, Interesting)
Publish or Parish, is the motto for researchers.
In a field where everyone wants your data, that means there are a lot of people working on it.
So people may fabricate their results to what they feel would be the expected results, as a gamble, if it works they are first and they are the hero and they get a lot of money and fame. If they fail their story gets retracted, they find a way to point the finger at someone else and suffer some shame until people forget.
Re:Fabricated results (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is the explanation. The lead author convinced herself that the procedure worked. Apparently, she was rather easily convinced by her own ideas. In order to convince other scientists, she had to fabricate some results. Those fabricated results enabled publication of the papers through peer review.
The whole thing stinks. Let's say there is some merit to making pluripotent cells by stressing them with acid. Well, by lying about some of her results, the lead author essentially poisoned the whole area of research. She has made it difficult to now work on this topic because it will be overly scrutinized by any reviewer. Let say the whole idea is bogus. The lead author wasted time and energy of researchers around the world who are interested in this process.
Although this may be obvious. The lesson is just never make up data. It is so myopic to think that you will benefit in any REAL way.
Re:"Rigorous" peer-review ahahahahahaha (Score:5, Interesting)
Again, this is Nature we're talking about. Every time we get one of these situations, the apologists start up with "but peer-review wasn't meant to find that...", and yet the journals themselves are always chest-thumping about how everything they publish is infallible because it was peer-reviewed, except when it isn't, and then it's not their fault. Peer-review is just a crutch. It imparts a false sense on confidence where there shouldn't be any.
Big news in Japan (Score:2, Interesting)
This whole thing has been very large in Japanese media, largely due to the fact that it was initially reported as a huge discovery by a young female researcher.
The latest article I read just now is about how she (through her lawyer) claims that she was forced to agree to this through huge pressure, that she's very sad about how it leaked out, etc.
I don't doubt the pressure part, and I imagine that there's a lot of feelings involved for her and that she believes she's right and that she thinks that the things she did weren't really "in bad spirit", but knowing how easy it is to fool oneself it all seems a bit like someone who doesn't want to accept that it might not quite be what she wanted it to be.