Search Results for: Haruko Obokata

2nd chances after big misconduct? He Jiankui, James Wilson, others

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James Wilson, Gene therapy

There have been rare instances like with scientist James Wilson where researchers were involved in what I would call major misconduct but somehow managed to bounce back. In a sense, they were given second chances in part by regulators but also by other scientists or supporters. However, after extraordinary misconduct, especially contributing to the death […]

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Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, & lessons for the stem cell field

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Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos

When I read about Elizabeth Holmes and her blood testing startup Theranos I see parallels to hucksters in the arena of stem cells and cell therapy. I’m thinking especially of the unproven stem cell clinics out there. It goes farther than that though too, including people who aren’t hucksters at all but get caught up

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History tells us to be more skeptical of He Jiankui’s CRISPR baby story

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Fake-cloning

Could He Jiankui have faked part or all of his CRISPR babies story? If so, how? Why? Or to put it another way, almost everyone seems to be assuming the story is real, but should we be more skeptical? Should we flip things around and assume the story isn’t entirely kosher until proven otherwise? I once

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Finally, Vacanti’s side of STAP cell implosion

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Obokata_Vacanti

A great new piece in The New Yorker by Dana Goodyear, The Stress Test, gives us a window into Charles Vacanti’s side of the STAP cell mess and includes recent quotes from him. It’s a long, fascinating look inside of STAP, the tangled and ultimately tragic scientific implosion that created and then brought down two Nature

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Personal Reflections on STAP Cell Mess On 1-Year Anniversary

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Obokata_Vacanti

It seems hard to believe it was a year ago that the STAP cell Nature papers came out to much fanfare on January 29, 2014. These now discredited and retracted papers reported a supposed new method to easily make reprogrammed powerful stem cells, a finding touted as a Nobel Prize-worthy discovery. Now a year later on

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Perspectives on final RIKEN report on STAP cell scandal & what comes next

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STAP-cells-FIgure

The Japanese research institute RIKEN has come full circle in a way on the STAP cell scandal. Note that the STAP papers included not only authors from RIKEN, but also from Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. With its final report released today (also a powerpoint of images were released including the one showing a

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Holding Institutions Responsible for Research Misconduct: the recent case of a death of stem cell scientist

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By Zubin Master Scientist Yoshiki Sasai, age 52, committed suicide and was found dead on August 5, 2014. Sasai was deputy director of the Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) at RIKEN in Kobe, Japan, and coauthor on two recently retracted Nature papers about a reportedly easier way to make induced pluripotent stem cells. The papers

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