Cut, modify, paste…

It’s kind of a CRISPR mantra for those of us using gene editing in the lab. But it’s supposed to be happening just on DNA, right?

Now it appears that someone on a team of human embryo CRISPR researchers possibly got carried away with the cutting-modifying-pasting mindset to take it beyond DNA to also do so with passages of another researcher’s published work that they apparently slightly modified and put into their own paper without any acknowledgement.

The 2016 article in question containing plagiarized passages was published by the lab of senior author Yong Fan with first author Xiangjin Kang, and was entitled, “Introducing precise genetic modifications into human 3PN embryos by CRISPR/Cas-mediated genome editing”. I blogged about the science and bigger picture policy issues of the Kang, et al. article last year here including the technical challenges of CRISPR’ing human embryos. Now the Erratum to the Kang piece in the journal JARG indicates that text plagiarism took place. I’ve included the entire Erratum near the bottom of this blog post.

Who got plagiarized? Continue reading →