Riken’s briefing on their investigation on questions raised over the Nature stem-cell papers is scheduled to begin shortly. It’s looking to be a packed news conference.

It’s a large conference room on the fifth floor of an office building in central Tokyo. The room has seats for around 120, but they were all taken by 1 p.m., an hour before the news conference was due to begin.

Reporters who couldn’t find seats have begun securing spots on the floor where they can crouch. There are around 30 video cameras, and dozens of photographers.

Ahead of me, to the right, is large screen connected to a laptop operated by Shunsuke Ishii, Riken’s head of the investigation committee. Next to him are nameplates for Minoru Yonekura, Ryoji Noyori, Maki Kawai and Masatoshi Takeichi.

There have been reports that Dr. Noyori and Dr. Takeichi have both individually said a retraction of the papers are necessary. We will see if Riken will clarify its position today.

Since the two stem-cell papers were published in Nature in late January, multiple allegations have emerged involving the lead author, Dr. Obokata. Here is a guide to five of the most significant allegations.

On Thursday, a researcher in Hong Kong said he had tried several times to replicate the stem-cell experiments but failed. Kenneth Lee, a professor of regenerative medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong said his lab closely followed the procedures outlined in the Nature studies but couldn’t make any stem cells.

Riken handout says the institution has conducted an investigation on the two Nature papers. The investigation is ongoing, it says, and said final report will take more time. The interim report covers six sections it has been investigating. It says:

–On two sections, there has been inappropriateness, but it doesn’t amount to research misconduct

Dr. Obokata says in a statement: I sincerely apologize for the confusion, and humbly accept the various suggestions made about the flaws in our papers. I am currently contacting other co-authors over the possibility of retracting the papers.

Dr. Ishii says part of the description of the research methods in one of the Nature papers is different from the methods actually used by the scientists. He attributes the error to a scientist working in the lab of Teruhiko Wakayama, a co-author of the papers.

Do STAP cells—the kind of cells the researchers purported to create—really exist? Dr. Takeichi says there is no scientific way to answer the question except to say that the matter must await confirmation by third-party researchers.

European Pressphoto Agency

A handout picture made available by the Riken institute on Jan. 30 showing cells said to derive from the research of Dr. Obokata and her colleagues.

Dr. Ishii says there’s no evidence yet of straight-up fabrication. Dr. Obokata says errors were unintentional mistakes, but there’s a lot more data to analyze and researchers to interview, before they reach a conclusion, he says.

Dr. Takeichi says in response to whether he has confidence in the STAP stem cell research: In order to have confidence in the research, we need to wait for an investigation from a third party, and I think this applies not only to me, but to everyone.

Dr. Takeichi says he so far hasn’t heard of any cases of the technique being successfully reproduced by outside scientists. “I’ve heard from several co-authors that they’ve achieved positive results,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate on who these people are, besides Dr. Obokata. We’ve heard from Dr. Wakayama previously that he’s successfully reproduced results on one occasion, but has failed to replicate the technique since.

Shortly after the initial questions emerged in February, Riken issued statements that any problems shouldn’t affect the research’s overall conclusion. A reporter now asks whether Riken is retracting that February position. Turning to colleagues, Dr. Kawai asks, “Is it all right if I say that was an overstatement?” Then she addresses the microphone and says that Riken’s initial affirmation was “too optimistic.”

Dr. Takeichi said that when he advised Dr. Obokata and two other co-authors to consider a retraction, they agreed. “That is my understanding,” he says. The authors are Dr. Obokata, Dr. Yoshiki Sasai and Dr. Hitoshi Niwa. We know Dr. Wakayama has already called for a retraction, so that makes at least 4 researchers agreeing to a retraction of the Nature papers.

The panel won’t comment on what Dr. Obokata is doing in Kobe. Dr. Takeichi, who heads the developmental biology center where she works, says she “suspended her research considering the current circumstances.”

Dr. Takeichi explains why he thinks the papers need to be retracted. The main reason, he says, is that Dr. Obokata used the same photograph she used in her 2011 doctoral dissertation in the Nature papers, despite the two dealing with separate studies. “It no longer stands as a research paper,” he says.

Dr. Kawai is asked about the email Dr. Obokata sent The Wall Street Journal, and whether there is a possibility the doctoral dissertation they are using in their investigation could be a rough draft. “We have received the dissertation directly from Waseda University for examination,” she says.

Dr. Ishii is asked what role co-author Charles Vacanti of Harvard Medical School had in the research reported in Nature. He responds that Dr. Vacanti’s principal contribution was providing the ideas for Dr. Obokata’s research, suggesting Dr. Vacanti didn’t have a major role in inspecting the Riken group’s experimental data.

Dr. Takeichi says Hitoshi Niwa, co-author of both Nature papers and team-leader of Riken’s Laboratory for Pluripotent Cell Studies, will conduct an experiment to see if he can reproduce the study’s results.

Here are the main points from Riken’s four-hour news conference on allegations that Dr. Haruko Obokata may have improperly used images and text from outside works in her papers on stem cells for the journal Nature.

Dr. Shunsuke Ishii, who leads the investigation, said the interim report showed there had been inappropriate use of materials short of misconduct, and that the investigating committee would continue looking into other questionable points. Dr. Obokata maintains the areas in questions were mistakes, and not intentional unethical acts.

While more investigation is needed to clarify whether the errors were fabrications, members of the committee didn’t mince words on Dr. Obokata conduct. Nobel Laureate and Riken executive director Dr. Ryoji Noyori repeatedly referred to her as “immature and sloppy.” Dr. Masatoshi Takeichi, who heads the developmental biology center where she works, opened the news conference by saying her papers “don’t take the shape of papers.”

They said Dr. Obokata was in Kobe, western Japan, and her research had been suspended. Her “psychological condition” isn’t well, Dr. Ishii said, without giving details.

Given the errors in the work, Dr. Takeichi said he had advised the retraction of the papers, but not all the more than dozen co-authors are in agreement with this.

As for whether the STAP cells created through the process Dr. Okobota outlines actually exist, the officials said determining that wasn’t the goal of the investigation, and nor are they equipped to conduct such research. The officials said they weren’t aware of any confirmed reports of outside researchers replicating the process.

Comments (2 of 2)

"Here you can see bright green cells. These are like the bright and happy Senkaku Islands, quintessentially Japanese and wonderful. Please also notice how cute they are. This is Japanese science at its greatest, Japan is back! We are a normal country!

6:47 pm March 14, 2014

ageism wrote:

"The Riken science institute is holding a news conference to address concerns about the research of a 30-year-old scientist whose work promised a revolutionary new way to create stem cells."

age is not relevant. should the WSJ also highlight the fact that the researcher was female and japanese?

old people do not like it when young people call them past their prime. young people do not like it when old people imply that they are inexperienced and careless.

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