A committee of outside experts reviewing operations at the government-affiliated Riken research institute will call for a change in top management, including urging the resignation of a director and a deputy who advised cytologist Haruko Obokata, a Riken source said.
The committee believes it is essential to identify who to hold responsible for the publication of work that was criticized as substandard, to prevent future debacles at the country's leading research institute, the source said Tuesday.
The reform panel was set up in April in response to allegations of misconduct by Obokata, a stem-cell researcher at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe.