Posts Tagged ‘stem cell research’

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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More stem cell fakery as a quick way to publication and fame?

March 11, 2014

Dr Haruko Obokata shot to fame with her stem cell papers photo BBC

Another young researcher, Dr Haruko Obokata has apparently made sensational claims about her stem cell research, shot to fame as lead author in two papers published in Nature and is now in the dock for dodgy images and irreproducible results (perhaps faked).

WSJ: Her co-author, Teruhiko Wakayama of Yamanashi University in Japan, called Monday for the retraction of the findings, published in late January in a pair of papers in the journal Nature.

The papers drew international attention because they held out a safer, easier and more ethical technique for creating master stem cells. These cells, which can be turned into all other body tissues, promise one day to transform the treatment of various ailments, from heart disease to Alzheimer’s. 

But shortly after the papers appeared, Japan’s Riken Center for Developmental Biology, where the work took place, began to investigate alleged irregularities in images used in the papers. Separately, many labs said they couldn’t replicate the results.

A spokesman for Riken said Tuesday that the institution was considering a retraction and that the article’s authors were discussing what to do.

Dr. Wakayama said he has asked the lead author, Haruko Obokata, to retract the studies. “There is no more credibility when there are such crucial mistakes,” he said in an email to The Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Wakayama said he learned Sunday that an image used in Dr. Obokata’s 2011 doctoral thesis had also been used in the Nature papers. “It’s unlikely that it was a careless mistake since it’s from a different experiment from a different time,” he said.

Like several other researchers, Dr. Wakayama said he hasn’t yet been able to reproduce the results. “There is no value in it if the technique cannot be replicated,” he said. 

But another co-author of the papers, Charles Vacanti, a tissue engineer at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, defended the work. “Some mistakes were made, but they don’t affect the conclusions,” he said in an interview Monday. “Based on the information I have, I see no reason why these papers should be retracted.”

Dr. Vacanti—whose early work some 15 years ago spurred the novel experiments—said he was surprised to hear that one of his co-authors asked for the retraction.

Dr. Vacanti said he had spoken to Dr. Obokata on Monday and that she also stood by the research. “It would be very sad to have such an important paper retracted as a result of peer pressure, when indeed the data and conclusions are honest and valid,” said Dr. Vacanti. …..

The papers created a stir because they reported a process by which mouse cells could be returned to an embryonic-like state simply by dipping them in a mild acid solution, creating what they called STAP cells, for stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency. ….

There seems to be a hint of some “academic rivalry” here as well.

Retraction Watch has more:

Nature told the WSJ that it was still investigating the matter. As Nature‘s news section reported last month, lead author

…biologist Haruko Obokata, who is based at the institution…shot to fame as the lead author of two papers1, 2 published in Nature last month that demonstrated a way to reprogram mature mouse cells into an embryonic state by simply applying stress, such as exposure to acid conditions or physical pressure on cell membranes.

But the studies, published online on January 29, soon came under fire. Paul Knoepfler has had a number of detailed posts on the matter, as hasPubPeer.

Stem cell research seems to have more than its fair share of dodgy papers – presumably because sensational results are easier to come by and very much easier to get published.

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Results falsified but only “inadvertently” by researchers at Queensland University of Technology

July 31, 2013

There are strange goings-on down under at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).

The story has all the necessary ingredients for a genuine scandal. Falsified results in a grant application and a paper, the paper retracted, grant money awarded on the basis of the alleged results, a University with commercial interests in the alleged results of the alleged research, a whistleblower’s name illegally revealed by the Vice Chancellor of the University, and the Crime and Misconduct Commission accused of colluding with the University.

The University has found that the falsification of results was inadvertent and not fraud and nothing to worry about.

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UPDATE: Now the QUT “investigation” which came to the “finding” that the falsification was “inadvertent” and not fraud is itself being questioned by the federal agency that gave the scientists a $275,000 grant for stem cell work.

31st July: The National Health and Medical Research Council is not satisfied with some of QUT’s investigative procedures and wants a review by the Australian Research Integrity Committee. The move is unusual, with the ARIC set up in 2011 to ensure research allegations of misconduct are investigated properly taking on just a handful of cases.

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It is compelling reading and lives up to the convoluted tradition of Australian politics. But I have some difficulty in telling the “good guys” from the “bad guys” – if there are any “good guys” in this saga at all!

29th July: QUT reputation at risk after grant application and research mistakes

RESEARCHERS at one of Queensland’s top universities have admitted to incorrectly filling out a lucrative grant application in a mistake that could cost the university hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The “inadvertent” mistake by Queensland University of Technology scientists has put the university’s reputation at risk, the Vice-Chancellor says. The National Health and Medical Research Council is examining the circumstances under which it awarded QUT a $275,000 grant for research, and QUT boss Peter Coaldrake said the university faced having to pay it back. 

Whistleblowers have exposed errors in the reporting of embryonic stem cell research, prompting an internal probe into alleged misconduct and the retraction of a key research paper. The lead researcher has admitted to The Courier-Mail that an “inadvertent mistake” occurred in the writing of the grant application and an associated scientific paper published in 2010.

The NHMRC awarded the money to fund research into stem cell cultivation at QUT’s prestigious Institute for Health and Biomedical Innovation. The scientists were working on developing a “world-first” product to safely grow human cells in the lab without the use of risky animal proteins.

However, university insiders accused the researchers of exaggerating some results. “It was alleged that some data in the grant application had been falsified,” Prof Coaldrake said.

The scientists were subsequently cleared by a QUT inquiry. QUT later told the NHMRC there was no misconduct in the grant application. The journal involved has since retracted the article, a highly unusual step. …

30th July: QUT researchers cleared of fraud

AN “inadvertent” mistake in filling out a grant application by researchers at Queensland University of Technology saw the university awarded $275,000 for stem cell research and which has subsequently lead to an internal probe into research misconduct and the retraction of a research paper, the Courier Mail reported yesterday.

The NHMRC awarded the grant for research into stem cell cultivation at QUT’s Institute for Health and Biomedical Innovation. The scientists were working on developing a “world-first” product to safely grow human cells in the lab without the use of risky animal proteins, the Courier Mail said.

But the researchers were accused of falsifying some results, even though the scientists were subsequently cleared by an internal inquiry of any wrongdoing.

The whistleblowers who drew attention to irregularities in the research say QUT has a conflict of interest because it is a shareholder in a company called Tissue Therapies which was set up with the express purpose of developing and commercialising products based on the research.

30th July: Premier Peter Beattie gave QUT researchers in grant controversy an extra $225,000 for related work

QUT scientists at the centre of a controversy over a $275,000 federal grant for a now discredited journal paper also received $225,000 from then premier Peter Beattie for related work, as part of a 2007 funding package worth more than $1 million.

But while QUT has informed the Crime and Misconduct Commission and the National Health and Medical Research Council about errors in the application for the federal grant and the retraction of a key research paper, the university has not told the State Government.

31st July: QUT vice-chancellor Peter Coaldrake reports himself to CMC for disclosing whistleblower’s identity

QUT Vice-Chancellor Peter Coaldrake has reported himself to the Crime and Misconduct Commission after disclosing the identity of a protected whistleblower.

Prof Coaldrake named the person in an interview with The Courier-Mail in which he discussed the allegations by the whistleblower of research misconduct by QUT scientists. Prof Coaldrake later turned himself in to the CMC.

QUT later confirmed the employee’s status as a whistleblower protected by the Public Interest Disclosure Act. This law makes it an offence for public officials to disclose the person’s identity without their consent, except for the purposes of official investigations. The offence carries a fine of up to $9000. …… In the same interview Professor Coaldrake declined to name four academics from other universities involved in investigating research misconduct allegations involving a retracted scientific paper. He said this was because he wasn’t sure if the academics’ identities were known by the stem cell researchers being investigated. … QUT has declined to explain why Prof Coaldrake volunteered the name of the whistleblower.

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