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British science paper on "sperm from stem cells" retracted!

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

On July 24, IPBiz posted on a paper from the group of Karim Nayernia, on the creation of human sperm from stem cells. Although IPBiz noted scientific peers had questioned some of the results, a commenter going under the name "Medical Information" asserted that this had been "proved."

Alison McCook at The Scientist noted on July 29 that the paper had been retracted. The manifest problem was plagiarism from a 2007 review article in Biology of Reproduction. When confronted by the journal editor, Graham Parker, Nayernia blamed a post-doc. The editor didn't bite on the excuse. Congrats to the editor for taking a firm stand against plagiarism.

Mary Spiro, Baltimore news examiner at examiner.com, has posted on July 30 that the paper has been retracted, for among other things, plagiarism. Apparently, there is a separate issue that the paper had talked about the organisms being "sperm-like" rather than sperm, although the various news agencies overlooked this distinction. Spiro talked about news media outlets who are too easy to hype claims of research findings to make the story more sexy to readers.

Joff Wild at the IAM Blog: where are you? Plagiarism and hype at your own back door?
This is a recent example of why your world view on "patent law reform" news coverage fails. Hype rules; just don't plagiarize, too!

As to "Medical Information," whoever you are, you're a fool.

Full post as published by IPBiz on July 30, 2009 (boomark / email).