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Faculty members in conflict with president of Japanese university

Nature volume 470, pages 446–447 (2011)Cite this article

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Allegations over research results highlight the difficulties of investigating high-ranking administrators.

Tension has been high at one of Japan's top research universities. A number of faculty members at Tohoku University in Sendai have called for a fuller investigation into four papers by the university's president, materials scientist Akihisa Inoue, and have expressed dissatisfaction with the university's handling of the matter. There is no reason to conclude that there was any kind of manipulation of data by Inoue, and the accusations over his work are unproven. However, the spat underscores the challenges involved when a university investigates one of its own — especially when the individual under scrutiny is the university's president — as well highlighting the difficulty of verifying experimental results that require extreme precision.

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  1. David Cyranoski
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Cyranoski, D. Faculty members in conflict with president of Japanese university. Nature 470, 446–447 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/470446a

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