Hisashi Moriguchi 2.0: more papers, more claims, and a new mysterious co-author

Remember Hisashi Moriguchi?

He’s the fellow who claimed to have transplanted cells made from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into human patients, to have worked at Harvard, and so forth.

It all turned out not to be true. He even admitted it.

Now Moriguchi is back in the news. He has several more papers published in 2013 that seem dubious.

Hat tip to Alexey first noticed this and Tweeted about it some weeks ago (see above).

Now Nature writer David Cyranoski has penned a critical piece on the resurfacing of Moriguchi.

One of the more mysterious aspects of Moriguchi 2.0 is that on his new papers he has a mysterious co-author: one Joren Madson.

Nature has not been able to confirm that Madson exists. Neither have I.

Without some kind of validation of Joren Madson’s existence some have started to speculate that he is a made up person.

These is no Joren Madson on Pubmed or anywhere on Google even that I could see.

There is a Joren Madsen (note with an “e” not an “o”) in Boston who is Director of the Transplant Center at Mass General and who has written on organ transplantation. Could this real Joren have been the inspiration for a new character, Joren Madson?

Or perhaps Joren Madson is real and just as yet unidentified.

Joren, if you are a real person and are out there, please let us know!

There are also two companies listed in the papers, both with the same name: Reprogramming, Inc in Boston and in Chiba, Japan. It’s hard to find anything on them.

I have emailed Moriguchi and engaged him on Twitter asking for more information. Let’s see if he responds.