Ordinary_researchers

In the original complaint, dated August 14, 2016,[3][4][5] they accused eleven papers from four laboratories of medical professors at the University of Tokyo. The accusation letter is less than 70 pages and specifically pointed out unnatural aspects in images and graphs of papers published in the world's most prestigious journals, including Nature, Cell, and The New England Journal of Medicine, between 2003 and 2015. It states, "In view of the regularity, frequency, fairness, and seriousness of the paper's impact, it should no longer be overlooked."

A second complaint filed on August 29, 2016[6] accused additional eleven papers from two laboratories, one of which is of a professor of medicine and the other is of a professor of the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Tokyo. The accusation letter, less than 40 pages long, specifically pointed out unnatural aspects in images and graphs in papers published in the world's top journals, including Nature, Science, and Cell, between 2005 and 2016.[1]

The accusations were repeatedly reported by mass media around the world, including Japan, and the full text of the accusations became public within a month by Science magazine.[1]

On August 1, 2017, the University of Tokyo announced that it had found misconduct in a total of five papers from the laboratory of the professor at the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Biology and no misconduct in all papers from laboratories of the five professors in the Department of Medicine.[7][8] The Nature paper, which allegedly identified the adiponectin receptors AdipoR1 and AdipoR2 by expression cloning using FACS,[9] was not investigated, citing the fact that a correction notice was issued 13 years ago.[10]

At the press conference, in response to the survey of the Department of Medicine that found no irregularities in any of the data, Ms. Masako Takuma said, "If it was a mistake and the data was duplicated, I would still understand. However, it is not possible to add up the data and divide by two without going to the trouble of doing so."[11]

Following the University of Tokyo's announcement, Ordinary_researchers responded to NHK and Science magazine. As for the investigation into the medical school, Ordinary_researchers pointed out that "there is little concrete information published about what kind of verification was conducted, which makes it impossible for third parties in the scientific community to verify the doubts."[7]

After an internal investigation conducted by the University of Tokyo found no misconduct involving the five professors at the University of Tokyo's School of Medicine, Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported that the investigation report was not well-received and suggested that the investigation were interfered by influential groups.[12] It also praised Ordinary_researchers' method of finding unnatural points by extracting vector data from the paper's graphs as a new method.[13]

• Post-publication peer review
• Elisabeth M Bik
• 2015 Japanese scientific misconduct allegations