Journal Published Flawed Stem Cell Papers Despite Serious Misgivings About Work 35
sciencehabit writes: As two discredited, and now retracted, stem cell papers have produced an almost unimaginable fallout — a national hero accused of scientific fraud, the revamping of one of Japan's major research institutes, and the suicide of a respected cell biologist — researchers have privately and publicly asked how Nature could have published work that, in retrospect, seems so obviously flawed. Another piece of the puzzle has now come to light. The Science news team received a copy of email correspondence between a Nature editor and Haruko Obokata, the lead author of the papers, which indicates the work initially received as rocky a reception there as at two other journals, Cell and Science, that had rejected the work previously. The email, dated 4 April 2013, includes detailed separate criticisms of the two papers and suggestions for new data to support the authors' claims of a simple and novel way to make stem cells that could form the myriad cell types within a body. The Nature editor rejected the papers, but left open a window, writing, "Should further experimental data allow you to address these criticisms, we would be happy to look at a revised manuscript." The two papers were published 10 months later.
Not that unusual (Score:5, Insightful)
It's very common for a paper to get rejected on the initial go-around but for the journal in question to provide hints about how the problems with the paper could be addressed to make it publishable.
The bigger issue here appears to be that the followup process didn't happen in a thorough and rigorous manner or that all the extra data the journal requested ended up being manipulated/faked.
This is how science works (Score:3)
Notice: it was science that led to finding out they were wrong and the retraction.
People make mistakes, that why the normal scientific process is to check it.
Publishing is the first step of the peer review process.
The suicide is sad.
Re: (Score:2)
Publishing is the first step of the peer review process.
Actually, I'd say writing the paper is step 1,
Step 2 is the paper being accepted by the journal, where it is then sent out to peers for review
Step 3 is the peer review, if it passes -
Step 4 is final editing and publication
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Notice: it was science that led to finding out they were wrong and the retraction.
Yes, but it was also common sense. The journal published something that was demonstrably false. A newspaper that was given bad information from a source doesn't need "science" or some sort of formal scientific review to publish a retraction saying the source was wrong.
People make mistakes, that why the normal scientific process is to check it.
Actually, not really. Sure, in an ideal world this is true, but not necessarily in the "normal scientific process" as practiced.
Research grants are awarded, publications are selected, tenure is granted, etc. mostly on the basis of NEW res
peer review is a low bar (Score:5, Interesting)
If the scientists are lying about their data, it's hard for peer review to catch that. That's why reproducibility is important. If it's a result you care about, you can reproduce it.
Re:peer review is a low bar (Score:4, Interesting)
Peer review filters out the stuff that is obvious crap, stuff that doesn't even fit the form of a proper scientific article. The purpose is not to say that articles are true, but rather to get rid of articles that are obviously wrong.
If the scientists are lying about their data, it's hard for peer review to catch that. That's why reproducibility is important. If it's a result you care about, you can reproduce it.
Well, reproducibility is part of peer review. If anyone is making decisions based on the results of one paper, they're idiots. Even if the research methodology was flawless, and the researchers are brilliant and honest with all their data, certain results can still come about as a result of chance. Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]
I wish we'd put more emphasis on reproducing published results, though. I've mentioned this before, but I feel like this would be the ideal work for grad students during their first few years, before they're deep in their own research. They need to get papers published, there should be journals devoted to publishing data from reproducing results. Students get experience writing papers and conducting research and everyone gets stronger peer review in their fields.
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there should be journals devoted to publishing data from reproducing results. Students get experience writing papers and conducting research and everyone gets stronger peer review in their fields.
Which is all fine and good until the results aren't reproducible, then the 2nd year grad student is left challenging The Distinguished Expert Doctor Professor Smith's results, which tends not to go over so well. (Good luck getting funding/grants in the future, when Dr. Smith just happens to sit on a few NSF committees. And don't expect the advisor to risk their funding/grants.)
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OK, 100% in agreement that there should be more emphasis on reproducing results, but someone needs to step up and pay for it - the current funding situation is far from pretty. Also, in the current "publish or perish" climate, nobody is going to spend time working on reproducing somebody else's results unless it directly impacts their own work. So we'd need to change that mentality as well.
However, if you truly believe that reproducibility is part of peer review, I've got a bridge to sell you. With most (a
Re: (Score:2)
I feel like this would be the ideal work for grad students during their first few years, before they're deep in their own research
That is a good idea.
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If anyone is making decisions based on the results of one paper, they're idiots.
btw, a lot of the problems mentioned in the second half of this article still exist today [columbia.edu]
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Peer review filters out the stuff that is obvious crap, stuff that doesn't even fit the form of a proper scientific article. The purpose is not to say that articles are true, but rather to get rid of articles that are obviously wrong. If the scientists are lying about their data, it's hard for peer review to catch that. That's why reproducibility is important. If it's a result you care about, you can reproduce it.
However in this case, the reviewers at science did indeed complain about aspects of the paper that ended up being part of the faked results http://www.sciencemag.org/cont... [sciencemag.org]:
For the Cell submission, there were concerns about methodology and the lack of supporting evidence for the extraordinary claims, says [stem cell scientist Hans] Schöler, who reviewed the paper and, as is standard practice at Cell, saw the comments of other reviewers for the journal. At Science, according to the 8 May RIKEN investigative committee’s report, one reviewer spotted the problem with lanes being improperly spliced into gel images. “This figure has been reconstructed,” the RIKEN report quotes from the feedback provided by a Science reviewer. The committee writes that the “lane 3” mentioned by the Science reviewer is probably the lane 3 shown in Figure 1i in the Nature article. The investigative committee report says [co-author Haruko] Obokata told the committee that she did not carefully consider the comments of the Science reviewer.
and even the nature reviewers complained http://news.sciencemag.org/sit... [sciencemag.org]
All three Nature reviewers concluded that the data presented in the submitted manuscripts were not enough to support such radical claims. “I would recommend the authors to be extremely cautious in their claims . The authors should look into the actual effect that the treatment elicits in the genome and they should assess genomic instability,” one writes. “There are several issues that I consider should be clarified beyond doubt because of the potential revolutionary nature of the observations,” writes another.
So in the end the editors seemed to just want the sensational paper published and let the community sort it out later. Retraction watch has a nice compilation about it all http://retractionwatch.com/cat... [retractionwatch.com]
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So in the end the editors seemed to just want the sensational paper published and let the community sort it out later.
I subscribed to Science for a while, and that more-or-less matches the quality of article I found there.
Not so schocking (Score:1)
Human beings are flawed, even scientists. People pursue agendas and that which will make them both money and garner attention. The problem is that group think impacts scientists every bit as much as any other profession. The question is, how can we verify science when most of the population don't even understand it? Much like politicians and covert policy, the public has to trust experts in their fields. With so little oversight what can we do?
Re:Not so schocking (Score:4, Interesting)
Human beings are flawed, even scientists. People pursue agendas and that which will make them both money and garner attention. The problem is that group think impacts scientists every bit as much as any other profession. The question is, how can we verify science when most of the population don't even understand it? Much like politicians and covert policy, the public has to trust experts in their fields. With so little oversight what can we do?
Science is, eventually, self correcting. It may take months (in this case), decades (cf, Plate Tectonics [cambridge.org]) or hundreds of years (the nonsense spouted by Pliny [wikipedia.org] and Aristotle [wikipedia.org]). There are probably large swaths of what we take for scientific understanding that are still wrong (or not even wrong). But there is a self correcting mechanism. In this, Science is rather unique among human endeavors.
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With respect to science being unique in being self-correcting.... bullshit. Almost all areas of "human endeavor" are self correcting, even religion, Virginia. Babies would never learn how to walk or talk, otherwise. You might tell I'm a little tired of hearing science being treated like it is a special little snowflake of truth or fact. (And the myth that Pliny and Aristotle get lumped into being "scientists.") And I'm actually a supporter of science, BTW.
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Science is, eventually, self correcting. It may take [snip] ... hundreds of years (the nonsense spouted by Pliny and Aristotle).
While it's somewhat refreshing to see someone here acknowledge that ancient writers did do something akin to modern science, it's a little strange to try to lump Pliny, Aristotle, and modern science into one continuous method.
Pliny the Elder was trying to write an encyclopedia, essentially a collection of anything anyone had ever reported or discussed about the natural world. While Pliny did some notable investigations of his own, his work in the Natural History is more of a collection of claims rather t
So, you're saying that... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I think you accidentally a verb there.
not a fair criticism (Score:2)
I think the majority of the scientific publishing culture and industry is bad for science. That said, this is not a fair criticism. It's entirely reasonable to tell someone you expect to see more data in order to publish and to start a conversation among the editor, reviewers and PI as to what is necessary to prove a point. Research is not a perfect process and does not progress in an orderly, predictable manner. There are going to be typos and blind spots in any paper.
In this case, obviously Nature sho
This changes anything? (Score:2)