Anders Hamsten announced he would be resigning as vice-chancellor from Karolinska Institutet (KI) in the early hours of Saturday, February 13.
In a press release we received at 12:16 a.m. local time in Stockholm, Hamsten issued the following statement:
Following the criticism on the so called Macchiarini affair at KI I conclude it will be hard for me to serve as Vice-Chancellor with the strength and credibility this university needs. I will therefore leave office.
The media has been abuzz in the last few weeks with developments in the ongoing story about “super surgeon” Paolo Macchiarini. We’ve been covering the allegations against him for years (and invited him to publish a guest post on our site). Below, we present a timeline of recent events, to keep you abreast of what we know so far.
Macchiarini was famous long before accusations of misconduct arose, once-heralded for creating tracheas from cadavers and patients’ own stem cells. However, the glow of his success was diminished somewhat after some Karolinska Institutet (KI) surgeons filed a complaint in 2014 — alleging, for instance, Macchiarini had downplayed the risks of the procedure and not obtained proper consent. In response, KI issued an external review by Bengt Gerdin of Uppsala University.
The secretary general of the Nobel Assembly, the body responsible for choosing the Nobel Prizes, has resigned from his post because “he may be involved” in the Karolinska Institutet investigation of trachea surgeon Paolo Macchiarini.
The Karolinska Institutet University Board announced today it was issuing a new external investigation of trachea surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, looking into questions about his recruitment and the handling of previous allegations of misconduct.
The University Board deems such an inquiry to be an important part of restoring the confidence of the public, the scientific community, staff and students in the university.
The board hopes to appoint the investigative team, which will not consider “matters of a medical-scientific nature,” next week. The goal is to conclude the investigation by the summer.
Karolinska Institutet announced today it would not extend the contract of star surgeon Paolo Macchiarini. He has been instructed to “phase out” his research from now until November 30.
Karolinska Institutet may reopen its misconduct investigation into acclaimed surgeon Paolo Macchiarini following new allegations revealed during a documentary series by Swedish Television.
We are pleased to present a guest post by Paolo Macchiarini, a surgeon best known for pioneering the creation of tracheas from cadavers and patients’ own stem cells. Macchiarini has faced some harsh criticisms over the years, including accusations of downplaying the risks of the procedure and not obtaining proper consent. We have covered the investigation, including the recent verdict by Karolinska Institutet that he acted “without due care,” but was not guilty of misconduct. He has taken issue with some aspects of our coverage, and has written a guest post to present his side of the story. We welcome such debate, and have included a short response at the end of his post.
I admire the underlying aims of Retraction Watch. That might come as a surprise to some readers of the site, given that it has a whole page devoted to me in its archives. However, I believe passionately that scientific misconduct is a serious crime. It not only undermines the very purpose of science, but has victims as well, especially in clinical specialisms. It is vital that misconduct is detected, that fraudulent work is retracted and those retractions made public. That is why I support Retraction Watch’s aims. But I am not writing in wholehearted support of the site. Continue reading Where I think Retraction Watch went wrong: A guest post from Paolo Macchiarini
Following an investigation, Karolinska Institutet has found that surgeon and visiting professor Paolo Macchiarini acted in some cases “without due care,” but that his behavior “does not qualify as scientific misconduct.”
Karolinska’s Vice Chancellor has also recommended that Macchiarini submit an unspecified number of corrections “to clarify and rectify the failings that the inquiry has brought to light.”
One of Paolo Macchiarini’s co-authors on a 2011 Lancet paper describing an allegedly groundbreaking procedure to transplant an artificial trachea seeded with stem cells is objecting to a recent investigation that concluded Macchiarini had committed misconduct.
Ola Hermanson, who studies neural stem cells at Karolinska Institutet, argued in a report dated June 29 that the investigation contained “serious flaws and formal errors.”
