Scientific Writing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Scientific Writing - Essay Example Obakata and many of her co-authors are part of the research teams of the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan. Other Riken researches, however, tried to replicate Obakata’s study and did not find supporting evidence. As a result, it launched an investigation that proved that the research has serious data flaws. Obakata has retracted these two papers from Nature because of allegations of changing data and plagiarism. An investigating committee has found her guilty of fabricating and falsifying data, and she now faces potential dismissal from Riken and losing her doctorate degree. The investigating committee discovered that Obakata may be involved in falsifying and fabricating data. The committee noted that when they studied the DNA images of Obakata’s work, one DNA was spliced from two DNAs. The head of the committee, Shunsuke Ishii, stated: â€Å"The manipulation was used to improve the appearance of the results† (Sample, 2014). Obokata insisted that she only wanted to improve the clarity of the image and not to change the data itself (Sample, 2014). Changing DNA images suggests falsifying data results. In addition, Obakata fabricated data when data inconsistencies are found in her work. She told her co-researcher Teruhiko Wakayama that the green fluorescent protein (GFP) that they used to tag changes in expression of experimental gene is on the 15th chromosome (Cyranoski, 2014). Wakayama tested the mice and found the STAP cells through the GFP in the 18th chromosome (Cyranoski, 2014). Furthermore, the committee noted that Obakata reused data from her dissertation, which also means that she falsified her research by including data that were not part of her original research (Japan Times, 2014). Fabricating and falsifying data are serious accusations, though Obakata stressed that she did not change or add anything to her data (Cyranoski, 2014). Apart from data falsification and