Journal Published Flawed Stem Cell Papers Despite Serious Misgivings About Work

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.

Comments

Not that unusual

[CajunArson]

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

[geekoid]

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:This is how science works

[AthanasiusKircher]

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 research, not on checking up on other people's results (which is generally not considered notable unless previous results were wrong, hard to get grant money for, and hard to publish).

We have a systemic bias against replicating research in the way a lot of modern science operates. It would be better if what you said was true more often. But paper retractions are exceedingly rare, even if much (if not most) published research has serious flaws.

There are some relatively recent serious efforts to fix this, though. But it's a misrepresentation to say that checking research is part of the "normal scientific process" -- it only tends to happen in high-profile articles or ones that make extraordinary claims. For most run-of-the-mill research, it's definitely not as common as it probably should be.

peer review is a low bar

[phantomfive]

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.

Re:peer review is a low bar

[LateArthurDent]

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

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.

So, you're saying that...

[Jawnn]

...the peer review process for publication actually works? You just have to use it? Who knew?

Re:Not so schocking

[ColdWetDog]

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) or hundreds of years (the nonsense spouted by Pliny and Aristotle). 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.

Re:Publish or perish

[halivar]

I think you accidentally a verb there.