Japanese Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka accused of image manipulation in ten papers over the past twenty years

Japanese Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka stands accused of image manipulation in ten papers over the past twenty years. Yamanaka received the Nobel Prize in 2012 for reprogramming mature cells into induced pluripotent stem cells, and heads the corresponding centre at Kyoto University, CiRA.

We shall not go into the research itself; the most interesting thing is the motive behind the accusation: the accusing company had opened a short position in the shares of the companies that fund CiRA's research. So the charge of scientific fraud is being used to drive down share prices. Nor is this the first such case for the accuser, which goes by the telling name of Gotham: it has already tried out the scheme on the Spanish company Grifols, accusing it of concealing debts and knocking a third off its share price. Kyoto University responded on the substance, saying that isolated cases of erroneous images must not be presented as a systemic pattern of misconduct without sufficient grounds. Moreover, some of the claims had been examined before, when one paper was corrected and the claims against a second were found to be unfounded.

In essence, a question that ought to be the business of reviewers and scientific institutions is being appropriated by a commercial outfit with the greatest possible interest in a scandal, so the talk is not of scientific integrity but of capitalists who successfully manipulate the instruments of expertise.