IKEA shopping bags provide “efficient” storage for 500 year old skeletons

August 10, 2014

It would be just as easy to consecrate an IKEA shopping bag as a shrine or a piece of turf – so I don’t see anything sacrilegious or anything to be much indignant about. This story from The Local:

The Kläckeberga church is using Ikea bags to store the remains of around 80 people who were once buried under the floorboards. The macabre collection, which is almost overflowing from a set of large blue Ikea bags, was found by local woman Kicki Karlén. 
“There were around 80 skeletons,” she told The Local.
Woman finds Ikea bags stuffed with 80 skeletons

Ikea bags stuffed with 80 skeletons – photo The Local

“I was on the team called in to dig out the bones five years ago,” archaeologist Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay told The Local.  
“Our mission was to document and rebury the bones, which may be as much as 500 years old. But the reburial was delayed and I have no idea why. The plan was to rebury them as soon as possible, but that’s up to the church. The county board said they couldn’t leave church ground, and it became complicated.”  
He explained that the bones were likely reburied in a secondary deposition many years ago in what he called a “bone house”. The collection is mostly skulls and longer bones, he added.  
While Papmehl-Dufay denied storing the bones in the Ikea bags himself, he admitted that it sounded like an efficient storage technique.   
“It’s not standard practice, definitely not for archaeologists, but the Ikea bags aren’t actually that bad. They’d be great for stopping the moulding process. But it can’t be that good to have them in the basement for so long.”
But what will future archaeologists and anthropologists make of the bags (which may well survive) when they are rediscovered in a few hundred years time. Possibly of the existence of an IKEA cult (which would not be so far from the truth)? With strange burial rituals?  or perhaps that the Swedish church was a department within IKEA?

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Roll on midnight – or why the Doomsday Clock is an abdication to cowardice

August 10, 2014

August 6th is Hiroshima Day and it is now 69 years since the Enola Gay dropped its bomb and the nuclear weapons age began. In 2010, there were about 227,00 hibakusha (被爆者) still alive. In 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki met their Doom. But such is the resilience of man that, today, less than 4 generations later, both are thriving cities. Hiroshima has a population today of 1.2 million compared to the 340,000 before the bomb. For Hiroshima and Nagasaki their Doomsday Clocks reached midnight and moved on – into yet another day.

The Doomsday Clock was “invented” in 1947 and, of course is purely symbolic. It is “set” by a group of alarmists to represent the time left before a human induced catastrophe (nuclear war, global warming, genetic modification, disease …) strikes at the “symbolic” hour of midnight. But this symbolism is flawed, rather stupid and just plain wrong. They use midnight as a symbol of the end of things whereas – certainly for me and, I suspect, for most people – midnight is just the start of another day. And when that day ends there will be yet another one to come. When it was first set in 1947 the alarmists of the time reckoned that humanity was 7 minutes away from their “midnight”.  In 1953 the clock was set to 2 minutes to midnight. The time to catastrophe has gone up and down over the years and reached 17 minutes in 1991 when the Berlin Wall fell and optimism ran high – even among the professional pessimists. Currently pessimism has taken over again and we stand just 5 minutes from catastrophe.

Doomsday Clock - Wikipedia

Doomsday Clock – Wikipedia

The Doomsday Clock is nothing more than a subjective – and less than qualitative –  assessment of the state of the world by a group of alarmist pessimists.

Naom Chomsky has a new article in The Unz Review – “How many minutes to midnight”. I’m afraid I do not have the same high opinion of Chomsky – even on language which is his own field – that others seem to have . But on the concept of the Doomsday Clock and the time left for impending disaster, his article is little more than well written drivel. He looks down on most of humanity – apart from himself of course – with a great deal of contempt when he writes

…. August 6, 1945, the first day of the countdown to what may be the inglorious end of this strange species, which attained the intelligence to discover the effective means to destroy itself, but — so the evidence suggests — not the moral and intellectual capacity to control its worst instincts.

Chomsky’s article is not particularly insightful but it serves as an example of the cowardice that alarmists exhibit. Cowardice is the subjugation of actions to fear whereas courage is the subjugation of fears to actions for a purpose. Alarmism and the Doomsday Clock pander to fear. Catastrophe theories never – ever – come to pass. But raising false alarms gets headlines, gets funding and usually provides lucrative opportunities for some. Fending off Doomsday rather than working to some objective becomes the priority of the hour. Political action is diverted to avoidance rather than to achieve goals.

Roll on midnight – and the start of another day!

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Swedish Environmental Party makes a fool of itself (again)

August 9, 2014

The Swedish Environmental Party (Miljöpartiet) has not been slow in trying to cash in on the large forest fire in Västmanland. The Swedish General Elections are in September and “anything goes”. Especially if it is alarmist. I don’t expect much intellectual or scientific honesty from them any longer but I though their behaviour yesterday was particularly opportunistic and crass.

  1. Never mind that forest fires in Sweden reduced from over 250,000 hectares destroyed every year before 1850 to less than 1,000 hectares per year in recent times when forest “cultivation” increased.
  2. Never mind that because of the reduced incidence of forest fires the owners have reduced their fire watches.
  3. Never mind that the number of military helicopters suitable for fire fighting have reduced from 33 to 3 in the last 20 years.
  4. Never mind that Sweden no longer has any planes suitable for water bombing.
  5. Never mind that in the grip of complacency, fire fighting equipment has reduced under 3 successive governments.
  6. Never mind that global temperatures have been stagnant for the last 18 years and have actually reduced slightly in the last decade.
  7. Never mind that carbon dioxide emissions by humans are apparently having no impact on real global temperatures (but are absolutely fundamental to every climate model)
  8. Never mind that temperatures in Västmanland this summer are nothing out of the ordinary.

Never mind the facts, just feel the fear. They came out with this picture yesterday even though the Västmanland fire has yet to be brought under control.

“We cannot afford to ignore Climate Change” it reads.

I get the impression that the Swedish Greens have prostituted themselves on the altar of global warming orthodoxy (sorry – climate change >> sorry – extreme events >> sorry – global cooling?).

mp västmanland

mp västmanland

But the temperature anomalies in Västmanland are nothing out of the ordinary.

Västmanland temperatures - The Stockholm Initiative

Västmanland temperatures – The Stockholm Initiative

 

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Another duck species being exterminated for being successful

August 8, 2014

The inconsistencies in the “conservation” movement and the meaningless defence of “biodiversity” have never been so apparent as in this case where the UK is wiping out all the females of a duck species just because the males are too successful.

Once again an inadequate and failing species is being “protected” by exterminating a successful one for no other reason than that it is successful. The nonsense spouted in the name of “conservationism” is amusing but always expensive and without any real benefit.

The Guardian:

It is American, oversexed and over here, but the days of the ruddy duck in the UK are finally numbered, with the latest culling data revealing that just 10 females remain.

The shooting of the final few – at about £3,000 a bird – will mark the end of half a century of occupation by the species. At their peak, their numbers reached 6,500 but their breeding prowess threatened the native European white-headed duck. 

The invasion began in 1948 when the famed conservationist Sir Peter Scott’s love for ducks led him to import three pairs of the colourful US birds to his Slimbridge reserve in Gloucestershire. But their escape and consequent flourishing in the British countryside led to an anguished debate among ornithologists decades later, as well as a nationwide cull that has cost more than £5m. …… 

Apart from their success in the duck world they don’t seem to pose any particular threat to humans

The problem is that the “sexy” males ruddy ducks (Oxyura jamaicensis) are preferred by female white-headed ducks. The resulting hybrid offspring threatened the survival of the white-headed duck, which was already struggling with habitat loss due to development. “Ruddy duck males are particularly aggressive when it comes to breeding and court females more vigorously,” said Madge. “That makes them more attractive to female white-headed ducks.”

The UK ruddy ducks also spread their wings across Europe, into France, Belgium, the Netherlands and into Spain. The discovery of hybrids in the latter country in the 1990s showed the ducks had grown into a continent-wide threat and that sealed their fate. The following year, an eradication programme began in the UK and a marksmen who has been part of the cull since then told the Guardian the birds fulfil the idea of a sitting duck.

Clearly gender equality is not something for ducks when the females are culled for the “sins” of the males. If ruddy duck males are preferred by the female white-headed ducks (and they have no problem in breeding together) why are these “conservationists” not allowing natural selection to take its course?

If male conservationists were preferred by normal females then perhaps the solution is to eradicate all female conservationists?

Related: Too much biodiversity – time to let some species die out

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Posted in Alarmism, Animals, Biodiversity, Evolution, UK, Wildlife | 1 Comment »

Breeding for intelligence?

August 8, 2014

I take intelligence to be a capability – a potential. For every human it is – by my definition – genetic. Knowledge, not intelligence, is what is acquired. No matter how we define it, intelligence is a composite consequence of many genes. Epigenetics suggests that some of these genes may be switched on or not depending upon nurture but the existence of the relevant genes must surely be inherited (nature). The supremely idiotic goings-on in Iraq and Syria and Gaza and Africa and in all the instances of barbarism and mayhem around the world are all consequent to a lack of intelligence. They only convince me that human intelligence is not on the increase and- clearly – is not a trait that is being selected for.

But it should be.

Though intelligence does seem to be positively correlated with survival to reproduction age, it seems that it leads to a lower reproduction rate which more than negates the effects of the increased survival. Assuming that IQ is at least a partial measure of intelligence, fertility rate seems to reduce with increasing intelligence. If the lower reproductive rate is actually a consequence of the higher intelligence, then the human race – without intervention – is doomed to remaining where it is on the scale of intelligence and its proportion of idiots. The paradox is that there is nobody who does not want to be more intelligent – but it does not seem to be an evolutionary trait.

IQ and fertility: A cross-national study

Many studies have found a small to moderate negative correlation between IQ and fertility rates. However, these studies have been limited to the United States and some European countries. The present study was a between-nation study using national IQ scores and national fertility rates. There were strong negative correlations found between national IQ and three national indicators of fertility.

“Evolution” is actually just the result of the those who failed to reproduce. So while intelligence may be a survival trait it does not seem to result in increasing reproduction and is therefore not an evolutionary trait.

Demographically then the human race – without human intervention – is condemned to a  “dumbing down”.

Is human intelligence declining?

If “intelligence” is an inherited characteristic – as it seems at least partially to be –  then it is only a matter of simple arithmetic that unless the “more intelligent” reproduce at a higher rate than those of “less intelligence” then the “average intelligence” of the population will inevitably decrease.

There is little doubt that there is a connection between intelligence and brain size. But brain size alone is not a measure of intelligence. Intelligence was probably selected for (and therefore an evolutionary trait) during the period when the size of the human brain was increasing. Possibly at some point the collateral genetic cost of increasing intelligence led to a leveling off. There could well have been trade-offs during the period when – simultaneously – food supply was more secure, human brain size was increasing, intelligence increased, language was evolving and social interaction was increasing. Quite possibly there is an optimum combination of these (and possibly other) traits for any given set of prevailing environmental conditions.

Brain size does not seem to have increased for anatomically modern humans (AMH) and that means for around 100,000 years – perhaps 200,000. But during this time the physical differences between the various “races” of humans have evolved. Possibly these physical changes have occurred fastest during the last 20,000 years since the end of the last glacial period. But even coping with this massive change of environmental surroundings has not led to the further development of brain size and – apparently – intelligence. There is some suggestion that intelligence peaked with the hunter-gatherers. Intelligence has not been a decisive factor for survival and subsequent reproduction. Perhaps human intelligence cannot increase unless the conditions first exist which lead to an increase of brain size? Or perhaps brain size increases only as a consequence of intelligence being selected for?

The question is whether we should now explicitly be trying to increase the intelligence of humankind?

We are now within a paradigm where “natural selection” by the prevailing environment has been decoupled from survival and subsequent reproduction. Natural selection is apparently obsolete and of no great value for the further development of humankind.  Social factors rather than the surrounding environment control fertility. The welfare state has seen to it that physical disabilities after birth generally do not act as a de-selector. “Artificial selection” does not yet dominate but is of increasing importance in determining who survives to subsequently reproduce. Abortion (25 -30% of all conceptions) de-selects for some serious, detectable, physical disabilities but is also often for the social convenience of the mother.  Surrogacy and IVF are driven by social needs and are providing the possibility of selecting for specific characteristics – though the “selection” is still largely hit-and-miss. I am not sure that IQ is necessarily the best measure of intelligence, but it seems ridiculous that where we do use “artificial selection”, intelligence is not also a criterion for selection.

Humans have learned to overcome the limitations of the surrounding “natural” environment. We cannot predict – let alone control – earthquakes and volcanoes, but we do build houses which make the vagaries of most weather irrelevant. We breed other species to suit our needs. We overturn the natural order of things by protecting the weak and healing the sick and caring for the old.  Modern living is fundamentally “unnatural” in that it is dominated by human intervention to mitigate “natural” effects. The many deficiencies we still have – poverty and gratuitous violence and famine and rape and genocide and intolerance and religious insanities – can all be put down to insufficiency of intelligence.

There is nothing wrong with eugenics. It is the methods by which it is applied which can be ethical or unethical.It is inevitable that we try and achieve a growth of intelligence. And perhaps it has already started – in China.

iO9: Chinese parents will be able to engage in what’s called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in order to select the most “intelligent” babies. It’s not genetic engineering — instead, doctors look at the DNA of several zygotes and choose the most promising one for implantation. Put this reproductive technology in the hands of enough parents, and the next generation of Chinese citizens could start to exhibit rates of intelligence five to 15 IQ points higher than what’s typically seen today.

China passed its so-called “Eugenics Law” in 1994, what it formally calls the “Maternal and Infant Health Care Law”:

This law regulates support for maternal and child health and also requires physicians to recommend a postponement of marriage if either member of a couple has an infectious, contagious disease or an active mental disorder. If one member of a couple has a serious hereditary disease, the couple may only marry if they agree to use longterm contraception or to undergo sterilization. If prenatal tests reveal that a fetus has a serious hereditary disease or serious deformity, the physician must advise the pregnant woman to have an abortion, and the law states that the pregnant woman “should” follow this recommendation.

The introduction of novel biotechnologies could allow the communist government to take its eugenic-like policies to the next level (though it’s not clear at this time if China will insist that PGD be enforced in this way). But rather than just screen for a “serious deformity,” the Chinese may eventually designate any kind of “deleterious” trait — like low IQ — as something that can and should be eliminated from the gene pool (with “low” IQ being a potentially normative and scalable characteristic).

Put that together with the Chinese Genetic Program:

Vice: At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation’s intelligence by five to 15 IQ points. 

Related: On birth rates, abortions and “eugenics by default”

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Rosetta finds its new stone

August 8, 2014

The Original Rosetta Stone – BBC

The new stone is a comet identified as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

  • It was first observed in 1969 and named after its Russian discoverers
  • The comet is in an elliptical 6.45-year orbit that takes it from beyond Jupiter at its furthest point, to between the orbits of Mars and Earth at its closest to the Sun.
  • It is approximately 3.5 x 4 km in size, has a rotational period of 12.7 hours and a mass of 3.14±0.21×1012 kg
  • The surface temperature appears to be around -70ºC, which is warmer than expected
  • It is currently about 405 million km from earth (about 22.5 light-minutes) and moving at 55,000 km/hr

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta craft has now arrived at 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a 10 year, 6.4 billion km long journey and has entered orbit around its new stone

Rosetta is a cornerstone mission to chase, go into orbit around, and land on a comet. It will study the Jupiter-family comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko with a combination of remote sensing and in situ measurements. The spacecraft will orbit the comet and release the Philae lander, which carries a suite of instruments for imaging and sampling the comet nucleus. The mission will track the comet through perihelion, examining its behaviour before, during and after.

Rosetta Trajectories by Christian Simoes astronoo.com

Rosetta Trajectories by Christian Simoes astronoo.com

The spacecraft was launched from Kourou aboard an Ariane 5G+ on 2 March 2004. It required four gravity assists for its journey, one by Mars and three by Earth. Rosetta had already flown by the asteroids 2867 Steins (in 2008) and 21 Lutetia (in 2010), before entering deep space hibernation in June 2011.

Rosetta’s main goals will be reached in 2014. Following a planned exit from hibernation on 20 January, the spacecraft’s instruments were checked as it continued on its journey to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The spacecraft arrives at the comet in August 2014, and deploys the lander in November 2014.

Comet 67P-CG on 3rd August 2014 ESA

Comet 67P-CG on 3rd August 2014 ESA

Rosetta is just 100 km from the comet’s surface, but it will edge closer still. Over the next six weeks, it will describe two triangular-shaped trajectories in front of the comet, first at a distance of 100 km and then at 50 km.

At the same time, more of the suite of instruments will provide a detailed scientific study of the comet, scrutinising the surface for a target site for the Philae lander.

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“Pass the Mustard, please”

August 6, 2014

“Pass the Mustard, please”.Colman's bulls-head logo

I like most real mustards which are not sweet, but the only ones which come close to my favourite, Colman’s, is a hot Chinese mustard and a Japanese wasabi-mustard. I don’t consider Heinz mustard  or all the others used at McDonalds or hot dog stands to be real mustards. I cannot imagine having my full English breakfast (which happens quite rarely these days) without my Colman’s. Adding some Colman’s mustard powder can also do wonders for a salad dressing and of course it is essential to bring some life to cheese-on-toast or to a cheese sauce.  I find that a judicious amount of Colman’s can even add a little oblique bite to an already spicy onion chutney or Indian curry.

It is now two hundred years since a flour miller Jeremiah Colman started selling his mustard powder for people to mix into a paste. Colman’s is now a Unilever brand.

In 1814, Jeremiah Colman first advertised his mustard in the Norwich Chronicle. He made his mustard at a water mill just south of Norwich, and in keeping with the day, the business was family-run. Still produced in Norwich today, the town in steeped in Colman’s history and, in particular, the family’s pioneering achievements in social welfare: in 1857 a school was opened for the employees’ children, while in 1864 the company employed a nurse to help sick members of staff – a social revolution at the time.

The familiar bull’s head logo has been part of much of the brand’s long-standing history, first appearing on the company’s English Mustard in 1855. 

In celebration an archive of advertisements and photographs has been assembled. A gallery is here at the Daily Mail.

Advert celebrating Colman’s use on the 1901-04 Antartic expedition. It gained even more popularity when in 1911 the factory donated a ton-and-a-half of Colman’s Mustard and nine tons of flour to Captain Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole.
Capt Scott wrote a letter at the time thanking the company for the mustard they had donated.

Captain Scott's letter to Colman (Unilever)

Captain Scott’s letter to Colman (Unilever)

1905 - Colman's (Unilever)

1905 – Colman’s (Unilever)

Rules of The Mustard Club

Rules of The Mustard Club

 

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Cold records simultaneously in both hemispheres are inconsistent with global warming.

August 6, 2014

Cold records simultaneously in both hemispheres (Death Valley and Adelaide) don’t prove anything of course. They don’t prove that global cooling is underway but are not inconsistent with that hypothesis.

But they certainly are inconsistent with global warming.

Washington Post:

Death Valley, Calif., which is known for being the world’s hottest location, maxed out at a relatively chilly 89 degrees on Sunday. This temperature – nearly 30 degrees below average – was its coolest high temperature on record for the date by a whopping 15 degrees. The previous record of 104 was set in 1945.

This was only the eighth time that a high in the 80s has occurred in Death Valley in July or August, and there hasn’t been a high less than 90 since 1984. Weather records in Death Valley go back to 1911.

Locations that were hotter than Death Valley yesterday include Spokane Wash. (93), Missoula, Mont. (91),  Casper, Wy. (92), and Boise, Idaho (99).

The average June high in Death Valley is 110 degrees, July is 117 degrees, and August is 115. This makes Sunday’s high temperature a ridiculous 26 degrees below normal.

Death Valley set the world’s record hottest temperature of 134 degrees on July 10, 1913.

ABC News:

Adelaide has woken to its coldest start to an August day in 126 years and it was colder across other parts of South Australia.

The weather bureau said it was the coldest August morning since 1888. It was also the coldest day Adelaide has experienced in any month in six years.

Senior forecaster Mark Anolak said the low temperature has been brought on by cold air from the Antarctic moving over Adelaide. “Under a ridge of high pressure that we are experiencing at the moment, clear skies have led to very cold temperatures over the last couple of days,” he said. “Murray Bridge has had its coldest ever start to the day in August at -2.7 degrees this morning.”

Most of regional South Australia woke to cold and frosty conditions.

The weather bureau said it got down to -5.6C in Renmark, just above freezing in Lameroo and -3.9C in Loxton.

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Swedish forest fire largest in recent times but a tiny fraction of pre-industrial times

August 6, 2014

Västmanland, Sweden

Increasing humidity and some rain has limited the spread of the largest forest fire which has been ongoing for 7 days in the northern part of Västmanland in Sweden. One person has been found dead  and some 4,000 homes were evacuated a few days ago. Some of those evacuated can now begin to return.

The fire followed 2 weeks of quite warm weather over the entire country with temperatures around 30ºC (high, but not unknown at this times of year and no records were broken).

What became quite clear was that the equipment available to the emergency services was sadly lacking. Three successive governments have taken the easy opportunity of cutting emergency services and there were just no helicopters or planes available in the country for containing the fire. One was requested from Italy yesterday but could not be sent. Another from France is only arriving today. Needless to say they will probably arrive after the point at which they could have done the most good. If it continues to rain today, they will be irrelevant.

Before 1850, fires consumed 250 times larger areas of forest in Sweden than today. It has been the “industrial harvesting” of forests which has drastically reduced the incidence of forest fires. And it has been the complacency brought about by the low incidence of forest fires which has led to a reduced preparedness to fight the fires when they do occur.

The climate alarmists (and there are many of them in Sweden) have not been slow to blame the fire on global warming. A little depressing to hear people so ready to switch off all their rational faculties and parroting what sounds like a climate catechism.!!

But a few sane voices can also be heard.

Swedish Radio:

Two hundred years ago forest fires raged much more freely in Swedish forests. It was when humans began to harvest the forest that fires reduced.

“Swedish forests burned much more in historical times”  says Bengt-Gunnar Jonsson, professor of plant ecology at Mid- University. “Just a few hundred years ago one percent of Swedish forests burned each year. 250 thousand hectares every year. Today only about a thousand acres are lost to forest fires every year“.

Bengt-Gunnar Jonsson sees three separate  eras of fires in the Swedish forests. From prehistoric times to the seventeenth century there were only a few but very large fires. From the seventeenth century until the mid-nineteenth century, when the population increased and people started residing there, the number of fires increased but they were smaller. In the mid-nineteenth century industrial forestry started and the number of forest fires declined sharply. There was a dramatic shift to a landscape where people – rather than fire – harvested the trees.

“Even the very first people in Sweden might have affected how much it burned in the woods”, according to Bengt-Gunnar Jonsson. “Although we have observed fires for several thousand years, we cannot really explain effects of climate and lightning. Many argue that even the ancient fires had a human footprint. It could be that humans have influenced fire history since the ice retreated”.

Västmanland forest fire 2014 - Jocke Berglund -TT

Västmanland forest fire 2014 – Jocke Berglund -TT

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Natural Phenomena, Sweden, Weather | 1 Comment »

Obokata’s mentor commits suicide

August 5, 2014

This is tragic and very sad and the “waste of it all” is appalling.

Yoshiki Sasai has committed suicide. He was Deputy Director of the Riken Labs and a co-author of the stem cell papers by Haruko Obokata which were later retracted because of her data fabrication. He was himself cleared of all wrong doing but he had gone out on a limb in her support when the accusations began to fly.

Retraction Watch has this statement from Nature:

This is a true tragedy for science and an immense loss to the research community.  Yoshiki Sasai was an exceptional scientist and he has left an extraordinary legacy of pioneering work across many fields within stem cell and developmental biology, including organogenesis and neurogenesis.  Our thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues at this time.

Sasai’s own integrity was not in question but the Riken investigation criticised him for inadequate supervision.

Once Obokata’s data fabrications were established, he must have had a great struggle in determining the correct course of action to follow. I have just a very weak understanding of the shame and responsibility he must have felt as her sensei. But clearly it was sufficient to make him feel that suicide was the honourable course.

Asahi: 

A mentor of a young scientist whose falsified research findings sparked a scandal that engulfed Japan’s scientific community died in an apparent suicide Aug. 5, Hyogo prefectural police said.

Yoshiki Sasai, 52, deputy director of the Riken Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) in Kobe, hanged himself in a facility related to the Institute of Biomedical Research and Innovation, also in Kobe, police said. He was pronounced dead at 11:03 a.m. at a nearby hospital.

Police sources said a suicide note was found near Sasai’s body. ……… 

Sasai was a co-author of articles on a phenomenon called the “stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency” (STAP), which initially appeared in the British scientific journal Nature in January.

However, the articles were later retracted due to extensive errors in the research.

A Riken investigative committee concluded that Haruko Obokata, 30, the main author of the articles, had fabricated and doctored illustrations in her research papers. The Riken committee also criticized Sasai for inadequately supervising Obokata.

Sasai appeared with Obokata at the January news conference to announce the findings about the STAP cells, saying he was proud of her wonderful discovery. …

However, after the Nature articles were retracted, he issued a statement saying: “I am deeply ashamed. It is now difficult to speak without doubt about the integrity of STAP cells.”

Sasai had a brilliant start to his research career. After graduating from the medical faculty of Kyoto University in 1986, he served as a visiting researcher at UCLA and became a Kyoto University professor when he was 36.

In 2000, he joined the Riken Center for Developmental Biology and became deputy director in April 2013.

His own research centered on the mechanism for creating nerve cells using embryonic stem cells, and he had articles published in such journals as Nature and Cell. He also received numerous awards for medical research.

 

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