Japan's new Nobel winner awarded a washing machine, WOOT!

[Taro Toporific]

japan-washing-machine.jpg

Japan Nobel laureate gets washing machine as gift
2012oct120 | TOKYO (AP) --- Japan's Shinya Yamanaka may have won $1.2 million along with British researcher John Gurdon when the two were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine earlier this month, but now he is also getting a new washing machine.
Yamanaka joked that he was fixing his washing machine when Oslo called to say he had won the prize for his achievement in the induced pluripotent stem cell research, and since has not had time to finish the repairs.
On Friday, Japan's science minister, Makiko Tanaka, said she has presented Yamanaka a gift certificate ...
<snip>
... so his family can choose a new washing machine.

(Let's hope that is not a worst-in-the-world-technology, Japanese washing machine aka cold-water, lame swirling device shown on the right.)

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

(Let's hope that is not a worst-in-the-world-technology, Japanese washing machine aka cold-water, lame swirling device shown on the right.)

I remember those (which shouldn't be too hard as they were still widely in use only a few years ago <and maybe still even now>).

In my noob days here, still of the belief that Japan -- mass manufacturer of super semiconductors and crafter of countless computers -- was a technological superpower, washing machines were one of the things that made me think that perhaps my views of this land as one of superior advancement were somewhat misconstrued (picking up the soaking clothes from one side of the washer and dumping them into the other side to rinse them, and the fact that almost nobody had running hot water).

[yanpa]

(Let's hope that is not a worst-in-the-world-technology, Japanese washing machine aka cold-water, lame swirling device shown on the right.)

I remember those (which shouldn't be too hard as they were still widely in use only a few years ago <and maybe still even now>).

Still standard decorative equipment for any cheap apato building.

I'm pretty sure I saw one or two new models on sale when I was buying a washing machine a couple of years back.

[Russell]

Isn't the whole point of repairing your washing machine the saving of resources and the personal satisfaction? I repaired mine three times in the last 2 decades, and it is still up and running.

These politicians think they can solve any problem by throwing money at it.

[yanpa]

Isn't the whole point of repairing your washing machine the saving of resources and the personal satisfaction? I repaired mine three times in the last 2 decades, and it is still up and running.

Yes, but you don't have a Nobel Prize do you?

[Russell]

Isn't the whole point of repairing your washing machine the saving of resources and the personal satisfaction? I repaired mine three times in the last 2 decades, and it is still up and running.

Yes, but you don't have a Nobel Prize do you?

Good guess, but not to the point.

My post was attempting to highlight these politicians' stupidity. A washing machine is not exactly expensive, and I am sure Yamanaka could afford a new one, but it gives kind of a good feeling when succeeding in repairing it, ain't it?

[Coligny]

My post was attempting to highlight these politicians' stupidity. A washing machine is not exactly expensive, and I am sure Yamanaka could afford a new one, but it gives kind of a good feeling when succeeding in repairing it, ain't it?

Unless you want one that actually ***wash*** the laundry (hot water and all)...

Actually, no JDM washing masheen have a 60º hot water function... you have to go with AEG or Miele, brand more famous for making trains, heavy masheenery or nukular powerplant than kitchen appliance...

Why do you think I wuz sooo pissed when me Julie broke the 10 year old second hand Hitachi we haz... (fixed now btw)

[Russell]

My post was attempting to highlight these politicians' stupidity. A washing machine is not exactly expensive, and I am sure Yamanaka could afford a new one, but it gives kind of a good feeling when succeeding in repairing it, ain't it?

Unless you want one that actually ***wash*** the laundry (hot water and all)...

Actually, no JDM washing masheen have a 60º hot water function... you have to go with AEG or Miele, brand more famous for making trains, heavy masheenery or nukular powerplant than kitchen appliance...

Maybe the average J-person doesn't make his/her clothes as dirty as the average FG...
Or maybe the J-washing powder is potent to the extent that cold water suffices...

Anyway, AEG and Miele are beyond the reach of Yamanaka, if he is to use this 160,000 Yen gift to buy his next washing machine. The cheapest AEG is 208,000 Yen and the cheapest Miele is 283,500 Yen, as of today.

Why do you think I wuz sooo pissed when me Julie broke the 10 year old second hand Hitachi we haz... (fixed now btw)

I do not get this one. You were so satisfied with your Hitachi?

[Coligny]

10 years ago... Hitachi was still making hot water and drying washing masheen... i bought this one at a flyjin sale...
For 1 man yenz...

The story behind was that, before my washing masheen was a 30yo junk leftover from the maternity (toshiba i think) who was already powerless in normal times, but became totally inadequate with a toddler... so I was promised a better one... someday... but as with every "needed and usefull" purchase it was dragging (miele and AEG not being sold at you local yamada denky i could not do anything, frustration against me Julie was reaching a level were mominlaw offered to pay one that we'd bought oversea, which was adorable but ignoring that the whole issue was aboot the 220v problem)... until it was no longer needed... so when i finally got me one by myself it became mah treasure... And me bitch breaking it after being unhelpfull to the point where her behaviour could only be labelled as "enemy action" was a bi t too much.

But it was a minor issue compare to the rest at that time...

[Taro Toporific]

Here we go again...

Stem cell research paper questioned
Kyodo News | 2014mar10
...Questions have been raised about irregular images contained in the paper, written by a group led by Haruko Obotaka at the Center for Developmental Biology of the government-affiliated Riken institute, on a method it named "stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency" or STAP.

[legion]

(Let's hope that is not a worst-in-the-world-technology, Japanese washing machine aka cold-water, lame swirling device shown on the right.)

I remember those (which shouldn't be too hard as they were still widely in use only a few years ago <and maybe still even now>).

In my noob days here, still of the belief that Japan -- mass manufacturer of super semiconductors and crafter of countless computers -- was a technological superpower, washing machines were one of the things that made me think that perhaps my views of this land as one of superior advancement were somewhat misconstrued (picking up the soaking clothes from one side of the washer and dumping them into the other side to rinse them, and the fact that almost nobody had running hot water).

I had one til I got married and the wife insisted on a modern machine, which is too damn complicated for me.

[Yokohammer]

Here we go again...

Stem cell research paper questioned
Kyodo News | 2014mar10
...Questions have been raised about irregular images contained in the paper, written by a group led by Haruko Obotaka at the Center for Developmental Biology of the government-affiliated Riken institute, on a method it named "stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency" or STAP.

This is all over the news right now, and it's not looking good. Everyone is hoping that it's just an innocent mistake ... except that innocent mistakes are simply unacceptable in scientific papers submitted for publication.

~ Tapatalking ~

[Russell]

Important is whether the results stand or not.

They should first investigate this internally in depth, before bringing this shit in the media.

Let's see what happens.

[Yokohammer]

Apparently they are going to retract the paper, and my guess is that they want to do that as quickly as possible to limit the damage.

It looks as thought Ms. Obokata had reused photographs from her doctorate thesis, taken several years ago, as proof that she had created STAP cells. Those photographs were published in Nature. If this turns out to be the case the damage to the research center's reputation (and to Japan's reputation in the medical research field) will be huge. Pulling the paper as quickly as possible probably seemed like the best course of action under the circumstances.

[Russell]

Yes, it appears she used old photographs.

What I am interested in is whether the procedure she reported in the paper actually works. If it works, they could also submit correct photographs, and apologize for the mistake. But all this should be done internally before it is played out in the media. This is becoming ridiculous.

There is no reason to be in a hurry. In science the truth will always come to the surface (well, almost always...).

[Yokohammer]

Yes, it appears she used old photographs.

What I am interested in is whether the procedure she reported in the paper actually works. If it works, they could also submit correct photographs, and apologize for the mistake. But all this should be done internally before it is played out in the media. This is becoming ridiculous.

There is no reason to be in a hurry. In science the truth will always come to the surface (well, almost always...).

Yes, if the results are repeatable there's no problem at all. She and her research institute will come out smelling like roses.

Unfortunately, Obokata's co-researcher claims that he has been unable to replicate her results.

Now there could be other issues at play here. Like he's pissed off at her for some reason and trying hurt her reputation. But of course other researchers will step in and do the experiments to prove that one way or the other, so I doubt that is what is happening. Right now it looks as though Obokata's results have not been repeated in a controlled setting.

I smell cold fusion ...

[Russell]

Sometimes it takes time to reproduce results, because of technological issues (some researchers have very advanced techniques based on years of experience that cannot be reproduced easily by others).

That said, the procedure she "discovered" is claimed to be very simple, so it should not be very hard to reproduce the results.

Concerning cold fusion, matters there are more complicated then most people think. The Fleischmann–Pons claims have been discredited, but there is also Muon-catalyzed fusion, which is on much more solid scientific ground.

[Yokohammer]

This is getting even messier.

I wasn't paying close attention, but on the news this morning someone was saying that they have now learned that parts of the paper were plagiarised almost verbatim from an American researcher's paper. That would be a cardinal sin in scientific circles

Right now people are even questioning whether STAP cells do or can actually exist.

It would really suck if all of this turned out to be wishful thinking. All the false hope it created. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but based on the falsification in the paper am leaning towards thinking that the research might not have been complete. In other words, she jumped the gun, or was pressured into jumping the gun by colleagues, in order be first. It's a race between many researchers worldwide, and the first to publish wins the crown, so to speak, and all of the moolah that comes as a result.

[Russell]

I could not find it anywhere in the news yet that parts of the paper were plagiarized, but if that is true retraction is the only course.

What were they thinking?

[Russell]

OK, I found a link to the allegations of plagiarism.

It is mostly in the "Methods" section, which usually has standard language use. Some overlap is not strange, but the overlap in this case appears quite big.

Let's await the results of the investigations.

[Wibble]

Anyone who has worked in a Japanese lab will not be surprised by this. Young Japanese researchers seem to have no idea about scientific integrity.

Although the foreign press talks about a team of Japanese scientists, the senior author and joint corresponding author is a Harvard prof.(the guy that grew an ear on a mouse's back) although he doesn't seem to have been involved in actually writing the paper. So really the ultimate responsibility for this potential fraud lies with him.

OK, I found a link to the allegations of plagiarism.
It is mostly in the "Methods" section, which usually has standard language use. Some overlap is not strange, but the overlap in this case appears quite big.
Let's await the results of the investigations.

Background/introduction and methods sections are usually fairly standard within a field and there aren't many ways of describing the same fact in a clear correct way. So it's not that bad a sin. I find that non-native english writers generally aren't good at rewriting the same things in their own words, where a native english scientist just changes a few words and the style and changes and plagiarism is avoided; although in fact they are both copying. It's all too often apparent when reading a paper from a non-english group and the style gets a lot worse once you hit the results. Professional editing companies are also bad at this sort of copying as they don't understand the content ( as well as often changing the meaning of manuscripts to be dangerously wrong, unnoticed by the original author).

Important is whether the results stand or not.
They should first investigate this internally in depth, before bringing this shit in the media.
Let's see what happens.

Probably the process works. There's plenty of prior studies (going back decades) and the effect of cellular stress in these systems and other people have claimed to have got similar results. The Prof. that wants to retract it for not being able to reproduce it in his own lab, did some of the experiments in this paper himself, so something must have been working before. I don't think it's deliberate scientific fraud, just getting caught up in it and publishing more than she could safely prove. My guess is that her system isn't optimised and so get unstable data. Maybe the protocol can't ever reliably optimised as we have no idea what's going on with it. Probably, she got interesting early results that she stuck her neck out with and then didn't pay attention to all the times it didn't work. When it came to writing it up, having moved back to Japan, probably she couldn't reproduce the results well, or realised she needed a figure that she didn't have so she just used an old one that showed what she knew to be "true". These sort of cellular systems often stop working for no apparent reason, or can't be repeated in different labs, or by new staff, or when the phase of the moon is wrong or something, but people like to hold on to the "good" results. And some principal investigators don't like to hear of negative data once their mind is made up. But overall, considering how high profile the work was, she was a bit daft to push it out. I daresay there are plenty of other seminal papers out there that are equally technically flawed.

[kurogane]

Anyone who has worked in a Japanese lab will not be surprised by this. Young Japanese researchers seem to have no idea about scientific integrity..

I have seen examples where a researcher translated a section of the original text and then published it without citation or reference and claimed the fact of translation made it his own words, despite it being obvious where it came from (due to the rather arcane subject matter). The humming and nodding of the committee made it obvious any further protest would be futile. What really scared me was this was a bright and rather able researcher, not some dodgy mediocrity that might need to resort to that.

I wonder if this sort of thing is not more common in the hard sciences? In social science circles it does occur but it hardly struck me as widespread. Also, the inherent subjectivity and idiosyncracy of any proper social science research makes it much easier to spot outright plagiarism.