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Key Researcher Agrees To Retract Disputed Stem Cell Papers
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."
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.
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.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!