Japan fails to settle university dispute
From The Embassy of Good Science
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Japan fails to settle university dispute
What is this about?
Investigations highlight need for a national, independent body to oversee research ethics. It has been a rough year for materials scientist Akihisa Inoue, the president of Tohoku University in Japan. Last March, an earthquake crippled his campus (see Nature 483,141–143; 2012). Since then, he has had to retract a series of papers because they contained text that had appeared in his previous publications, and has faced continuing calls for his resignation from the university, which he has rejected. His critics, mostly professors at his university, claim that some of his work cannot be replicated, and that there are irregularities in the data in some of his papers (see Nature 470, 446–447; 2011).
