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For the past few years post-publication peer review (PPPR) has grown in influence and one particular website, PubPeer, has become the primary go-to place specifically for bluntPPPR. The kind that happens in journal clubs in labs across the world. Comments on PubPeer have led to numerous serious corrections and retractions of flawed articles. Im most familiar with its role in the STAP cell case.

Both the founders of and most of the commenters on PubPeer have remained anonymous.

That is until today.

The founders of PubPeer have publicly identified themselves in a blog post and formed a new non-profit organization, The PubPeer Foundation.

PubPeer founders include Brandon Stell, George Smith and Richard Smith. Also with the founders on the PubPeer Foundation Board of Directors will be Boris Barbour and Gabor Brasnjo.

Who are these guys?

RetractionWatch (big HT to them) has an interesting interview with PubPeer founder Stell. I highly recommend reading it. Jennifer Couzin-Frankel over at Science also has a nice piece on this development.

Stell is a neuroscientist and Co-Team Leader at the Brain Physiology Lab in Paris, the source of his picture above.

I was trying to learn more about the other two founders, George Smith and Richard Smith. From Couzin-Frankels piece it appears that the brothers want to remain relatively out of the limelight, and their very common names may very well aid them in that. Couzin-Frankel does write that Richard was a grad student who briefly worked in Stells lab and George is a web developer.

As to the Foundation, RetractionWatch has a helpful quote from Stell on looking ahead:

What role do you hope PubPeer plays moving forward? What plans do you have for the Foundation?

We hope that the PubPeer Foundation will provide us with more opportunities to develop the site in ways that will help grow the community of post-publication peer reviewers and further encourage quality science.As more of us scientists become accustomed to commenting on papers, and as that becomes more of a part of the overall scientific process, I think well be able to finally up-end the backwards reward structure that is currently in place in science. Hopefully we can get to a point where the data are much more important to a scientists career than the journal that published them.

To form the PubPeer Foundation, the leaders could not remain anonymous. It seems like a good thing that the founders of PubPeer have identified themselves. They deserve a lot of credit for having had a transformative impact on how science corrects itself. Theyve also faced tough situations such as being sued by Fazlul Sarkar, a case that is still working its way through the legal system. Sarkar wants to know the identity of some anonymous PubPeer commenters. I predict that the PubPeer Foundation will now receive substantial financial support, which in part can be used to get legal assistancefor possible future challenges.

PubPeer has grown quickly, now has a striking following with around 300,000 pageviews/month and contains 35,000 total comments.

Obokata late press conference

The Japanese public broadcasting system, NHK, has been accused by scientist Haruko Obokata of violating her human rights.

Obokata was the primary researcher involved in the STAP cell fiasco in which two ultimately retracted Nature papers contained duplicated, plagiarized, and manipulated data. She was certainly not the only researcher on those papers, but overall she has been accused of having the most central role in the STAP problems. Obokata left RIKEN late in 2014.

During the height of the STAP cell mess the Japanese media hounded Obokata and other STAP cell authors including Yoshiki Sasai, who ultimately committed suicide. From accounts in Japan, the STAP cell story was on the equivalent of the nightly news and on the front of national newspapers and tabloids almost every day for a time.

For instance, NHK was incredibly persistent with pursing Obokata and now Obokata has said that they violated her human rights in a complaint to the Japanese Broadcasting Ethics & Program Improvement Organization or BPO. Obokata asserts that NHK violated her rights in numerous ways including accusing her of stealing embryonic stem cells and she sustained injuries while being pursued by NHK. BPO will be investigating these and other assertions by Obokata against NHK.

During the STAP cell mess last year, it seems because I was covering the STAP cell claims and science here on this blog, many members of the Japanese media emailed and called me. I can understand that they were looking for information and perspectives, but it went out of control in certain cases. Some, including reporters saying they were from NHK, were very aggressive with me. They some persistently called me at work and even at home in the middle of the night.

I had decided to not talk with them because of their aggressiveness and their tendency to focus on negative, personal stories rather than the science and facts, but they wouldnt take no for an answer. Several pursued me for comment at conferences too. I dont have direct knowledge of what happened with Obokata and NHK, but my sense is that the media went way out of bounds on STAP and made it personal.

Who can forget the STAP cell scandal of last year?

Now almost a year and a half after the deeply flawed papers first were published, where do things stand?

As an international collaboration there were both American and Japanese sides to STAP.

In the US, STAP still remains eerily quiet.

In a month or so, the one-year sabbatical of STAP cell paper senior author, Professor Charles Vacanti of Brigham and Womens Hospital and Harvard Medical School, is scheduled to end.

There has been no public disclosure as to whether (or if) there was or is an institutional investigation into the possible roles of Vacanti and his trainee Koji Kojima in the fiasco that ultimately led to the retraction of two Nature papers.

In contrast, in Japan there have already been many serious repercussions for the STAP cell authors including Haruko Obokata, who was forced out of RIKEN after she couldnt reproduce STAP. See a full STAP cell timeline here.

Just recentlyit was announced that Obokata has been forced to repay the publication fees for the Nature papers. Not a big deal in it of itself, but still just another repercussion for her. The same article quoted an Obokata attorney that her physical condition is a concern.

Vacanti and Obokata

Overallthere has been and continues to be this tension between the reaction to STAP in the US and in Japan.

Well beyond Obokata, many other researchers in Japan have been negatively affected by the fallout from STAP. I dont think its an exaggeration to call it a scientific disaster. In the US, there has been pretty much no apparent fallout. Who knows, it may stay that way.

In the mean time the retracted STAP papers have become in a relatively short period extremely highly cited publications (e.g. 160 citations for one on GoogleScholar). A brief look makes clear that notall those citations are referring tothe papers as an example of what can go wrong either. Some are referring to the supposed science as if it was real, which is pretty sad.

We also never really did hear any meaningful discussion of STAP from Nature either. They pretty much sidestepped any responsibility. Hopefully they have brought online a more rigorous manuscript evaluation system like the one used by EMBO.

Brigham and Womens and Harvard face another stem cell hot potato in the controversy related to the work of cardiac stem cell researcher Piero Anversa. In that case the institution(s) did investigate and Anversa has sued them over how the investigation was handled. To my knowledge that situation remainsunresolved.

Could this other situation be a factor in how those two linked institutions viewSTAP? Again, for all we know there never was an investigation of Vacantis or Kojimas potential roles in STAP.

As more time passes, I dont think necessarily it means that the STAP issue will go away on this side of the world. Without more information on how the STAP storyevolvedhere in the US, it seems to me that the STAP issue overall cannot have full clarity and the lessons from it are incomplete. More facts and transparency on how that project developedare needed still. Will that ever happen? I dont know.

Each year towards the end of December I make predictions for the coming year as I did for 2015. In the past I usually make a top 10 prediction list, but for this year I made 20 predictions. Admittedly some of them may have been more hopes than predictions.

At mid-year today on June 30th, how am I doing? See below. Note that of course for some the jury is still out.

BTW, stay tuned for more on an upcoming update on the Japan IPSC macular degeneration trial where there seems to have been a (hopefully minor) hitch.

The annual ISSCR meeting has started in Stockholm.

This is always a great annual meeting both for the science and for connecting with people including new friends and colleagues as well as old friends.

Another element to the meeting is the insider conversations in the halls, restaurants, and bars that tell a behind the scenes story of the stem cell field.

Beloware my top 10 things to look for that might be discussed over a beer or coffee this year.Also be sure to check out the wonderfulguide to Stockholm from Heather Main and if you are there at the meeting enter our stem cell contests to win up to $100.

See original here:
STAP cells | Knoepfler Lab Stem Cell Blog