The government-affiliated Riken research institute should heed the June 12 nonbinding report released by a panel of outside experts and undertake concrete reforms. The panel said that behind the research misconduct in the purported discovery of STAP (stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency) cells are structural problems and poor governance at Riken's Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, where Haruko Obokata, the chief author of the two STAP cells papers, works. It called for disbanding the Kobe center.
The panel pointed out that Riken’s strong desire to achieve a breakthrough that would surpass the discovery of iPS (induced pluripotent stem) cells by Kyoto University professor and 2012 Nobel Prize laureate Shinya Yamanaka sowed the seeds for the research misconduct.
This ambition apparently led not only to the unusual circumstances in which Obokata was hired, but also to what the panel described as CDB deputy chief Yoshiki Sasai's excessive obsession with secrecy regarding the research project.