Japan has its own Theranos

Elizabeth Holmes managed to convince investors in Theranos that being young and attractive was worth more than Siemens’s drawers full of experienced German chemistry PhDs. New Yorker has an article on a vaguely similar situation in Japan:

The revolutionary behind the work was Haruko Obokata, a thirty-year-old postdoctoral researcher who was the first author on both papers. With the publications, Obokata—a stylish, self-possessed beauty, uncommonly adept at maneuvering in the mostly male world of Japanese science—was hailed as a maverick. “A brilliant new star has emerged in the science world,” an editorial in the Asahi Shimbun read. “This is a major discovery that could rewrite science textbooks.” As an outsider—young, female, and not an established stem-cell biologist—Obokata, the newspapers argued, was unhindered by conventional notions of what cells can and cannot do. Her fresh perspective, coupled with dogged work and natural genius, had conspired to create one of the great scientific breakthroughs of the twenty-first century.

… The papers created an international sensation, and in Japan Obokata became a celebrity—an icon of the country’s future preëminence in the sciences, and of the new Japanese woman. …

… Five months after publication, both STAP papers were retracted, under intense scrutiny and growing doubt about their validity.

The article notes that scientific papers should be approached with skepticism:

Reproducibility has been an essential step in the scientific process since the Enlightenment, and it is currently the subject of a great deal of angst in American science. In 2012, a former research director at the pharmaceutical company Amgen reported that he and his colleagues had attempted to reproduce the findings of fifty-three prominent papers. Only six panned out—a validation rate of eleven per cent.

But the author fails to reference the classic 2005 work “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,” by John P. A. Ioannidis (not young and attractive enough for the Wikipedia contributors to have added a photo to his page).

As with most American writing about science (contrast to British), the explanations are confusing and little attempt is made to communicate scientific concepts. Nonetheless it is an interesting article.