I’ve gotten a couple of emails about an editorial Nature recently ran urging scientists in the iPS field not to rush. It starts by relating an anonymous attack against Shinya Yamanaka for a minor problem. That’s supposed to get folks’ attention, but it is absolutely not the point of the article, which is to urge caution to everyone who is in and rushing into a very hot, very young field that is also politically charged.

The article is not questioning Shinya Yamanaka as a scientist. (It’s common for mistakes to slip through, and there are mechanisms to correct that.) The editorial is about what happens (confusion) and can sometimes happen (fraud) in hot, new fields, and this is going to be even worse for stem cell scientists because the field is politically charged as well. Shinya Yamanaka has already dealt with the accusations in a way that seems to have satisfied Science, and so delving any more into them would actually elevate the accusations of an anonymous emailer, giving the accusations more attention than they deserve.

The idea for the editorial started after PrimeGen decided to publish its findings on viral-free reprogramming by press release. Here was an accomplishment that the whole community was waiting for, but no one could assess it, and so Nature felt that we needed to say something about how people need to be more patient in a hot field. And then a few days later, the anonymous email got sent to many journalists and journal editors, and it seemed a call for caution was even more necessary.

So again, the editorial is urging caution in a hot, politically charged field. It is not about one of the field’s best-loved and most-respected scientists.

I’ll blog again as I get more feedback and hear more thoughts, but I wanted to get this up quickly. In the meantime, I want to say that much thought went into this editorial. You might be interested in how I think some decisions are made. (I don’t have first-hand knowledge of much of this, but I think I can guess.) Also, I should emphasize that stuff I’ve written above is just me; I haven’t yet weighed in on the collective wisdom of NPG.

***The phrase “a scientist known for his thorough, careful work” plus the clear statement that the mistakes were small and effectively dealt with is intended to move the editorial away from one person and into the field in general.

***The sentence “Nonetheless, the fast-moving fields of science are showing some unpleasant tendencies” is supposed to let readers know that stem-cell scientists aren’t an unusual breed, but that scientists in hot fields have to be especially careful.

***The paragraph break and the word “recently” before the quotes from Alan Trounson are supposed to notify readers that this conversation was unrelated to the particular incident. In fact, it occurred well before the mass-emailing attack against Yamanaka.