Japanese Prince found plagiarizing in prize essay

The Japanese newspaper Ashai Shimbun published an article on February 17, 2022, about plagiarism in an essay that Prince Hisahito, the second in line to the Japanese throne, wrote for school. The essay had been submitted to a contest and was awarded the second prize. The  Telegraph in the UK details the plagiarized portions a few days later. It appeared to be picked up in many UK outlets such as Royal Central. Today, April 13, 2022, the German Süddeutsche picked up the story. 

Strangely, he was allowed to keep the prize despite the plagiarism.

Stem cell controversy in Japan

The Japanese stem cell researcher Haruko Obokata has been found guilt of misconduct in her work, according to the Guardian, the Tagesspiegel, and the Japan Times. Her work proposed a simple method of generating so-called STAP-cells in a petri dish. She published two articles in Nature on January 30, 2014 ([1], [2]).

But when researchers could not replicate the results and accusations of photo manipulation and plagiarism arose, an investigation in her lab was started. The report on the investigation determined that she was guilty of scientific misconduct, just as Chinese scientists have announced that they were able to replicate the results with a slightly different set-up. Two days later, that group announced that maybe it wasn't really a replication. Some felt that this was an April Fool's joke, the Chinese researcher insists not.

This entire issue does raise questions about how to deal with accusations of misconduct. Obokata insists that the picture manipulations had nothing to do with the results. There are many other authors listed on the Nature papers, did they convince themselves that everything was okay before publishing? Or was there a rush to cry "First!" with a revolutionary development? It remains to be seen how this story will continue.

Japanese Plagiarism and Misrepresentation Case

A Japanese correspondent has alerted me to the strange case of Serkan Anilir.  He is a German-born researcher of Turkish descent who was said to be an Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo.

He has an impressive biography - but depending on which language you are reading (English, Japanese or Turkish) it is different. He claims to be a Turkish astronaut candidate for NASA, but closer inspection will show that this is his head photoshopped onto the body of Richard Hieb.

He has had "guest professorships" all over the world, according to the list is on the Turkish Wikipedia (translated here). It appears that he gave talks at these schools, but not that he had guest professorships. He is not listed in the official researchers lists for projects he supposedly worked on.

His publication list has a number of anomalies: wrong publisher; long article in a journal that only prints short ones; an examination of a given journal issue shows no article with that name; one publication can be found with the same name and co-author, but not with his name on it.

He also claims to be an Olympic gold medalist in skiing. However, there is no record of this.

Asahi Shinbum, a respected Japanese newspaper, picked this up and reported that they checked his reference that was supposed to be from the Turkish Air Force, but they denied that it was from them.

When things got hot in the Japanese press, an investigation into his dissertation was started. Since it turned out to be more than  40% plagiarized (later reports: 59%) the University of Tokyo revoked his doctorate in March of 2010 (press release in Japanese translated by Google) - the first time in the history of the university that they have done such a thing!

In the aftermath, his talk at TEDxTaipei in Taiwan and other places were mysteriously canceled. It is a shame that they were not open about this. He is no longer listed as a professor at the University of Tokyo. And the university has announced a crackdown on plagiarism.

Nice to hear of a success story, even if it did take 10 years!