New Scientist- Stem Cell Research

Stem cells debacle: Obokata admits enhancing images

 

• 17 April 2014
• Magazine issue 2965. Subscribe and save

APOLOGETIC but defiant. A young researcher who shot to fame for her simple way of turning adult cells into stem cells by bathing them in acid has been found guilty of misconduct, but claims the underlying science is sound.

Haruko Obokata of the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, was investigated by her institution over six inconsistencies discovered in two papers published by Nature.

The committee decided that two of these were deliberate alterations. One was a mislabelled image taken from her PhD thesis – something Obokata says was an accident. The other was an image of a control experiment done at a different time from the test it was compared with. Obokata says the image was enhanced but not falsified.

At a press conference last week, she apologised for the question marks over the work. She said they were due to her "carelessness, sloppiness and immaturity", and that she "lacked proper knowledge regarding basic methods for writing theses on biological subjects and the way such papers should be presented".

Obokata has filed a complaint against Riken, emphasising that there was no intent to deceive. She says that the mistakes don't affect the conclusion of the paper and claims to have recreated these cells over 200 times. No external researcher has yet confirmed that they have done the same.

This article appeared in print under the headline "No intent to deceive"