WIKIMEDIA, FRANCESCO MIRALLES GALUPAn anonymous accusation of publishing foul play from whistleblower “Clare Francis” had the Mayo Clinic’s Michael Sarr chasing down a dead end this summer. Francis had alerted Sarr, who is editor of Surgery, to a potential case of dual publication involving his journal. But after thoroughly examining the papers in question, Sarr found no evidence of misconduct, and was left feeling that Francis had wasted his time.
Increasingly, scientists who wish to point out potential flaws in the published literature are doing so under a veil of anonymity. While Sarr’s experience points out the potential downside to not knowing whether the source is reliable, sometimes the criticisms are founded—leading to rightful corrections and retractions. Virginia Barbour, chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which offers advice to journal editors on how to handle misconduct, told The Scientist that whistleblowing “is about . . . trying to make sure the scientific literature is as robust as possible,” and as such, “it shouldn’t matter who it comes from.”
According to Retraction Watch blog co-founder Ivan Oranksy, “more and more journals are realizing the importance of every kind of whistleblower, anonymous or not.”
WIKIMEDIA, A. TANAKA ET AL.Researchers from Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science have identified a single gene that seems to suppress pluripotency, and consequently, proposed in a report this week a way of producing induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) with nearly 100 percent efficiency. Jacob Hanna and his colleagues found that by disabling Mdb3—or working with cells lacking the gene—they could reprogram blood and skin cells from mice, plus human skin cells, with almost complete efficiency and in just one week.
