Research Integrity: Cell-Induced Stress
By David Cyranoski,
Nature News
| 07. 03. 2014
Untitled Document
It seemed almost too good to be true — and it was. Two papers1, 2 that offered a major breakthrough in stem-cell biology were retracted on 2 July, mired in a controversy that has damaged the reputation of several Japanese researchers.
For scientists worldwide it has triggered painful memories of a decade-old scandal. In February 2004, South Korean researcher Woo Suk Hwang announced that he had generated stem-cell lines from cloned human embryos3, creating a potential source of versatile, therapeutic cells that would be genetically matched to any patient. A frenzy of excitement followed this and a subsequent publication4, but that didn’t compare with the media firestorm when the results were revealed to be fabricated. The two main cloning papers were retracted5, and the careers of some dozen scientists were devastated.
In the soul-searching that followed, ‘research integrity’ became a hot topic, scientists re-evaluated the responsibilities of authorship, and institutions vowed to improve the way that they police their staff. Nature and other journals also made promises, saying that they would...
Related Articles
By Ian Sample, The Guardian | 03.08.2024
Scientists are a step closer to making IVF eggs from patients’ skin cells after adapting the procedure that created Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, more than two decades ago.
The work raises the prospect of older women being...
By Gerry Smith, Bloomberg | 03.12.2024
When Celenise Mahmood first learned about two new gene therapies that could cure sickle cell disease, she felt a wave of relief.
Her 9-year-old son, Navid, has the inherited blood disorder. By age 5, he’d had over 30 life-saving blood...
By Liz Baker, Debbie Elliott, and Susanna Capelouto, NPR | 03.06.2024
The Alabama State Legislature passed a bill Wednesday night granting civil and criminal immunity for in vitro fertilization service providers and receivers.
Republican Governor Kay Ivey signed the bill into law within an hour of it passing the Alabama...
By Daniel Gilbert, The Washington Post | 03.07.2024
Vitaly Kushnir’s fertility clinic offers to screen an embryo to predict a baby’s sex, but the service can lead to ethically murky territory, like when a couple wanted it so their first child could be a boy.
But the couple...