NEEW OF THE WEEK

摘要

In a bizarre twist to an already convoluted story, the chair of an investigating committee that found stem cell scientist Haruko Obokata guilty of research misconduct is himself now under investigation for alleged research misconduct. He has submitted a correction for problematic images appearing in one of his 2007 papers and resigned from the investigating committee. "Some errors occurred" in arranging images appearing in a paper published in Oncogene, writes Shunsuke Ishii, a molecular geneticist at the RIKEN Tsukuba Institute, in a correction posted on his lab's website. "I deeply apologize to everyone for the suspicions that have arisen and for the various troubles these have caused," he adds. Ishii's committee investigated a research article and a letter authored by Obokata, of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, and colleagues that reported finding a new, simple way of creating stem cells, called STAP (stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency).