Nobel winner Yamanaka to donate salary to institute after iPS data scandal

I give this guy credit for literally putting his money where his mouth is!

Japan needs to realize that returning your salary is not a punishment! Fraud charges need to be filled against the university for failing to spot the errors!

All evidence indicates that one person committed misconduct. In keeping with tradition, his boss, and his boss’s boss (Yamanaka) also take responsibility. This was not systematic fraud (like we see in the auto industry). Also, the donation by Yamanaka is not his punishment. It is a voluntary action to show the taxpayers and private funders of CiRA that the cost of the fake paper will be covered by him.

this is a very bad situation, but Yamanaka is trying to deal with it in the best way he can.

Good old Japan. Find a scapegoat, claim responsibility, vow never to do it again (again), volunteer a "pay cut" or to return "some" money for a short period, then repeat and reap in rewards and glory and prepare for the next tiny bi-line on page three when you admit it was all falsified and untrue.

I’m not saying that systemic fraud is impossible. It’s has happened when a scientist has gotten too powerful and everyone in the lab gets implicated in the lie. But there is not the slightest hint that Yamanaka is such a person. And, believe me, his past work has been gone through with a fine toothed comb.

He can not impose his own morals on all members of the CiRA. But, this scandal shows that the community at large polices itself. Take a look at Retraction Watch or pubpeer if you are in doubt!

Seems to me there should be some investigation as to how and why this happened

Everybody already knows how and why, If you reduce the whole career of scientist to what publications they have, then give jobs according to this but only for a limited amount of time, finally reduce funding until laboratories can only survive by spending all the resources in producing results for publications instead of "wasting" more than half in order to have all the necessary controls to make impossible for a scientist to cheat. As mentioned in discussions in other places, the system does not reward doing good science, it rewards doing good publications

In short, as long as people can only get a job by publishing Nobel prize level papers while on mini-budgets this is going to keep happening around the world.

You, by your very words, are implying that he is untouchable even though it appears there has not been an investigation for you to base this on.

Sorry but saying that there is no evidence of any wrong doing is very different from saying that any person cannot be accused ever.

Also, science is based on the premise of investigation, every single author that has published something IS under constant investigation. Go to pubpeer yourself and see what kind of comments are there for each of his papers, see the list of works that reference what he has done to see if anything has failed to replicate, that is precisely how fraud in science is found all the time. If this kind of thing is not happening you can validly say that he appears to be an honest scientist.

I love how the rich dudes always give up some of their salary for punishment. The money won't be missed because they are rich. Nobel prize money is around 1 million dollars. This guy and other excecutives can afford a fews months no pay. If he really wanted to do something, he should go on a tour to elemenatry, junior and high schools around the country. He should explain that fraud is never acceptable. He should talk about how it could discredit you for life.

gogogoJan. 26 08:30 am JST

Japan needs to realize that returning your salary is not a punishment! Fraud charges need to be filled against the university for failing to spot the errors!

Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka is nothing to do with falsified paper. He was just taking responsibility for someone falsified the research paper because he is heading Kyoto University's IPs institute