The general issue highlighted in the post "Critics rip Cell
paper"
1
and many of the comments that followed is one of
"selective citation," in which papers fail to include all relevant prior art. I
believe that this example reached the current level of scrutiny because the
complainant, Peter Lawrence, is a well-known scientist and he was willing to raise a
public fuss when he felt that his work had been overlooked in a paper published in a
prominent journal.