A probe into possible "research misconduct" by the authors of two potentially revolutionary papers on pluripotent stem cells turned up two instances of deliberate falsification, a committee set up for the task by the government-backed Riken institute said Tuesday.
"We judged there were two cases of research misconduct by (Haruko) Obokata," Riken senior scientist Shunsuke Ishii, chair of the six-member panel, told reporters in Tokyo.
Obokata, a Riken researcher, was the lead author of the two now-doubtful papers on a new method of stem cell generation published in the British science journal Nature in January.