Rarely has such a spectacular scientific claim been debunked so rapidly. For a few brief hours last week, Hisashi Moriguchi, a project researcher at the University of Tokyo, was riding high, lauded by his nation’s press for pioneering work on induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. His feat was said to be the first successful use in humans of a technology that days earlier had won his countryman, Kyoto University’s Shinya Yamanaka, a share of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Yet a swift investigation by Nature and several stem-cell researchers found that Moriguchi’s claim to have cured six heart-failure patients with cells derived from iPS cells was untrue; that he had lied about his university affiliations; and that he had plagiarized key parts of his research papers. At a hastily convened press conference on 13 October, Moriguchi recanted. “I admit that I lied,” he told reporters, adding that his “career as a researcher is probably over”.
The sad episode could be written off as one researcher’s runaway fantasy. But it highlights the febrile nature of the iPS-cell field, particularly...
