In the past post in this blog, I have congratulated a researcher and her team of Riken in Japan for their achivement in an embrybiological study. It was a finding of multipotent stem cell derived from matured lymphocyte with simple acidification process but no genetic manipulation like in the case of iPS. It seemed to have been an epoch making achievement. There have been, however, a number of questions published regarding their method and data. The criticisms were for the main theme that their "stem cell" had been reprogrammed from matured cell as well as had differentiated into three embryonal layers. To my regret, so far, these criticism seems to hit the mark. The researchers are withdrawing the paper from, a renowned science journal, Nature.
It is a real regrettable news to me in dual senses. Firstly, an idea of stimulus dependent reprogramming of a cell could not be proved. There seem to be a few preliminary data showing its possibility from the other labs. I hope such an exciting aspect of research in embryology and regenerative medicine will be cintinuously carried out by the other groups.
The second point is a serious question how this1st author of rhe relevant papers, a young scientist, has been educated. It was beyond our imagination that a researcher could make such mistakes or rather falsification of the data. It was what a scientist should never do. The news says she had done the same thing in her doctoral paper submitted to the graduate school of Waseda University. What has the teacher taught as for the attitude to do research? Isn't it rare in research of these subjects? I know there have been severe competitions in this field of science. It might be related with possible industrialization of regenerative medicine. Nevertheless, the researchers should have kept the ethics in scientific research.
I am sorry but I should withdraw the post cited above. But, as a token of this regrettable event, the post itself will be preserved in this blog.
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