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This week’s news includes further retractions from a troubled German lab, accusations of fraud at a major funder of global health initiatives, the publication of new guidelines on how to collaborate in stem cell research, a harrowing tale of bravery from a California pharmaceutical plant, the discovery of adult kidney stem cells, and a new study on the uniquely human knack for throwing stuff long distances.

German researcher retracts sixth paper

Another paper written by scientists at Research Centre Borstel in Germany has been retracted from the scientific literature. As the blog Retraction Watch reported last week, immunologist Silvia Bulfone-Paus pulled a 2002 paper on proteins with tumor fighting properties from the Scandinavian Journal of Immunology. This is the sixth paper Bulfone-Paus has retracted in the wake of a scandal at Borstel in which two postdocs under her supervision were alleged to have fudged protein blot images in a series of experiments.

Global Fund accused of fraud

The Associated Press last week reported that millions of dollars in aid from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a major funder of global health initiatives, have been mishandled due to corruption and fraud within national organizations receiving the money. The inspector general of the Global Fund—commonly touted as a viable alternative to the cumbersome bureaucracy of United Nations aid programs—announced last week that $34 million have been misappropriated in 33 of the 145 countries that received grants from the charity.

The problems appear to be at the level of the health ministries that receive the grants, with donated prescription drugs ending up on the black market, forged documents and invoices siphoning off funds, and improper bookkeeping misrepresenting expenditures. Some high-profile national donors, such as Sweden, are reconsidering their generosity in the wake of the revelations. “The Global Fund is committed to the highest standards of transparency and accountability and has acted upon each instance of misuse of its resources by taking strong and swift action, by suspending grants, freezing cash disbursements and by demanding a return of misused funds,” wrote the Global Fund’s executive director Michel Kazatchkine in a statement.

Stem cell researchers must share data, samples

Scientists working with stem cells should establish central repositories containing information on patents and global hubs linking stem cell registries while setting up international stem cell banks and developing wider collaborative networks, according to a set of guidelines released last week from a stem cell ethics and policy think tank in Washington, DC. The Hinxton Group crafted the recommendations to “stimulate a broader dialogue among communities, scientists, patients, ethicists, regulators, and others about how proprietary practices and policies in stem cell research can best serve the global public interest.” You can read their full statement here. Hat tip to the ScienceInsider.

Pharma employee dies helping coworkers

Baxter Healthcare employee, Henry Astilla, died on January 21 saving the lives of two of his coworkers at the company’s Atwater Village, California, plant. Astilla, 33, found two plant workers who had been cleaning a blood plasma tank unconscious from ethanol fumes within the confined space. Astilla called 911 then rushed in to drag his colleagues out. Paramedics arriving on the scene found him without a pulse and he later died in the hospital. According to the San Jose Mercury News , the two men that Astilla saved survived, thought their names have not been released.

Kidney stem cells found

Researchers at Harvard and the University of Pittsburgh have for the first time identified kidney stem cells capable of growing new nephrons in adult organisms. The team, led by Harvard’s Alan Davidson (now a the University of Auckland in New Zealand), found adult stem cells in the kidneys of adult zebrafish, overturning the belief that kidney stem cells generate nephrons in embryos then disappear during fetal development or shortly after birth. The paper was published in last week’s issue of Nature.

Homo sapiens, champion throwers

It’s no accident that a chimpanzee has yet to make it as an outfielder in Major League Baseball. New research has identified essential aspects of human cognition that allow our species to throw objects a long way — to nail that guy sliding into home base, for example. The key is a perceptive bias called the size-weight illusion, where someone holding two objects of equal weight will perceive the larger object as being much lighter, according to the paper, which appeared in Evolution and Human Behavior earlier this month.

Correction (June 28): The original version of this article incorrectly stated that the postdocs under Silvia Bulfone-Paus’s supervision were found guilty of fraud. In fact, there has been made no formal admission of guilt or acceptance of responsibility from any one of the three scientists involved in the incident or any of the co-authors with respect to their exact role in the manipulation and/or duplication of data. The post has been corrected, and we regret the error.

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