尽管论文的Contributions中已明确写明论文由小保方与另一位课题组成员Y.S.共同写作，但我不清楚它是否得到昔日美国导师Vacanti的“斧正”，还是真的由本人“操刀”完成。假如论文写作完全是由她一个人独立完成的“杰作”，我还真佩服她的英文表达能力。话说我们自己培养的硕博士乃至博士后，各位导师们请扪心自问：有多少学生写研究论文时连中文的“讨论”部分都不会写？又有多少学生在写毕业论文时总是把“讨论”部分留给导师“填空”？你的学生在学期间独立撰写、投稿、修改，并最终发表过哪怕一篇paper in English吗？在这一点上，我很理解小保方在论文的Materials and Mathods部分拷贝了别人的方法描述，因为日本人跟中国人一样英文表达“不地道”。可悲的是，这种完全不涉及Creativity的文字拷贝也被认定为misconduct！老实说，我本人对此认定历来持有异议，尽管我写文章从来不喜欢重复别人的只言片语。
After steadfastly defending her work against accusations of falsified data and an official misconduct ruling, the lead author on two controversial stem cell papers published this year in Nature has reportedly agreed to retract one of them. Earlier today, Japanese media began reporting that stem cell researcher Haruko Obokata of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, is willing to retract a paper concluding that so-called STAP stem cells can form a wide variety of tissues, but does not intend to retract the paper describing how to make those stem cells.
Along with colleagues in the United States and Japan, Obokata described online on 29 January in Nature a new method for reprogramming mature cells into stem cells. The technique, called stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP), appeared amazingly simple—exposing mature cells to an acid bath or physical pressure could seemingly switch them into stem cells. But it drew almost immediate accusations of image manipulation and plagiarism. In April, an investigating committee at RIKEN ruled that the issues with the papers constituted research misconduct, but did not call for their retraction. Obokata’s lawyer now tells the Japanese press that she will retract a secondary paper describing what STAP cells can develop into, but not the methods article, in which the committee had identified image manipulation and data apparently reused from Obokata’s graduate thesis.
Obokata has argued that the problems with the papers were the result of inexperience, not deliberate wrongdoing, and that STAP cells really do exist. After the ruling, she issued a statement saying that she intended to appeal the judgment.
The Japan Times reports that at least two of Obokata’s 10 co-authors on the letter have also agreed to the rejection, including Teruhiko Wakayama of the University of Yamanashi, the paper’s last author. Wakayama has been consistently critical of the work, telling the Japanese press he had “lost faith” in the paper, and calling for its retraction. However, Charles Vacanti of Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston, last author on the main article and Obokata’s former adviser, has continued to defend the research. A BWH representative toldScienceInsider that Vacanti had no comment on Obokata’s announcement.
Willingness to retract one paper but not the other is a sign of the lingering disagreement among the co-authors, says stem cell researcher Paul Knoepfler of the University of California, Davis. He argued in a blog post earlier this week that Nature should editorially retract both. “It would be naive to think that only the letter [the second paper] can be retracted and that the [methods] article will remain with the STAP cell narrative overall having any legitimacy,” he toldScienceInsider in an e-mail. “I believe the ultimate fates [of the two papers] are tightly tied together.”
Reports in Japan suggest Haruko Obokata, of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, has agreed to retract one of two controversial papers in which she claimed to have created a new type of stem cell, known as stimulus-triggered activation of pluripotency (STAP) cells. The development means that the path may now be clear for the full retraction of one of the biggest science papers of the year.
The studies, published in Nature in January, promised a surprisingly straightforward path to creating pluripotent stem cells, which can turn into any cell in the body, by stressing bodily cells with acid or physical pressure. Such an easy process for creating pluripotent stem cells would be a huge boon for biomedical research and potentially useful for clinical transplants. (Note: Nature’s news and comment team is editorially independent of its research editorial team.)
But Obokata’s papers quickly came under fire after various manipulated and duplicated images were found in them. After an investigation into the allegations, RIKEN found Obokata guilty of misconduct on 1 April. Earlier this month, it rejected her appeal of the judgment, and asked her to retract both papers. In the meantime, at least a dozen other research groups reported that they were unable to replicate her findings.
Several of Obokata’s co-authors have stated their desire to retract the papers. But Obokata has adamantly stood by her research, insisting that the STAP phenomenon is real and defying RIKEN’s request to retract.
Today, however, all of Japan’s major newspapers reported that Obokata had finally agreed to retract the second of the two papers. The Asahi Shimbun quotes Obokata’s lawyer as saying Obokata contacted Yoshiki Sasai, a co-author and colleague at the Center for Developmental Biology who has expressed his willingness to retract, and said, “I will not oppose the retraction.“ The Mainichi Shimbun quotes lawyer Hideo Miki as calling it a “passive agreement“.
Ironically, the paper that Obokata has agreed to retract was not the one found by RIKEN to contain manipulation. Obokata still stands by that paper, which establishes the basic technology for creating STAP cells.
In the paper that Obokata has agreed to retract, she and her team claimed that STAP cells cannot only form pluripotent stem cells but can also form placental cell lines – something other forms of pluripotent stem cells, like induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells, cannot do.
“To Obokata, the paper that made clear the existence of STAP is the important one. The other [which she has agreed to retract] is nothing more than an extension,” says Miki.
Customarily, all authors of a paper must agree to a request for its retraction, although retractions without the assent of all authors are possible. A source at RIKEN told Nature‘s news team that a retraction request was sent on 26 May, and that all the co-authors either stated that they agreed to it or did not oppose it. The other senior co-author who has steadfastly refused to retract the papers, Charles Vacanti of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, would not comment on the reports of a retraction request. “There is no updated statement from Dr Vacanti,” a media relations officer wrote in an e-mail.
A spokesperson for Nature could not verify the status of the request. “Nature does not comment on corrections or retractions that may or may not be under consideration, nor does it comment on correspondence with authors, which is confidential,” she said. “We are currently conducting our own evaluation and we hope that we are close to reaching a conclusion and taking action. We take all issues related to any Nature paper very seriously and look into them in detail. We cannot comment further at this time.”
Knoepfler Lab Blog
Editorial: Past Time for Nature to Retract STAP Cell Papers & Open Up On Review Problems
Two stem cell papers riddled with errors, with figures that resulted from potential misconduct, with plagiarism, and with other serious problems remain uncorrected and unretracted in the prestigious journal Nature.
It is well past time for the journal to editorially retract them.
It was about four months ago thatNature published the two astonishing STAP papers reporting the supposed creation of super-powerful stem cells (known variously as STAP cells or STAP stem cells) via simple methods such as weak acid treatment.
Since their publication, it’s been all down hill for these papers.
As soon as they came out I posted a review raising key questions about them related to puzzling issues.
Within a week I was the first scientist to publicly raised serious doubts about the papers. I gave the top 5 reasons to doubt the papers.
Within a few more weeks there were signs that the STAP papers were seriously compromised and one senior author, Teru Wakayama, himself called for their retraction.
To this day, nobody has gotten the STAP method to work and perhaps even more importantly, it is clear that both papers are irredeemable due to many serious and unfixable problems.
And yet they still remain uncorrected and unretracted in Nature.
Why?
Could the journal be holding out some hope that someone somewhere will get the STAP method to work? If so, the journal leadership should realize that it’s too late for that to save the papers.
Is the journal going through some slow process of investigation that it wants to finish before retracting the papers? I don’t know, but time is ticking away and there is no apparent reason for further delay.
Are they just hoping that as months go by fewer people will care about STAP?
Whatever the reason, it is well past time for Nature to editorially retract these tainted papers. There is nothing more to be learned that could save the papers and every day that passes with them still in the Nature portfolio is a shame.
Making matters worse, there is no apparent sign that Nature is taking the STAP problem to heart as it pertains to its own role in the debacle and the flaws in its own manuscript review process. For example, Nature recently published an editorial harshly criticizing Japan for its science related scandals and in that piece Nature mentioned the STAP scandal as an example, but it did not mention a role for Nature itself in the STAP mess that might need discussion and action. And of course the STAP papers included America’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, not just Japan.
It’s time for Nature to get real on STAP.
Retract the STAP papers and publicly discuss what went wrong.
The journal of course cannot and should not be directly blamed for any potential author misconduct, but clearly Nature has some major responsibility for the train wreck that is STAP.
You can only get so much mileage out of blaming others outside the journal as much as that blame may be appropriate.
Time for action and openness by Nature. That’s the only way for the journal to move on in a positive way.
