Professor accused of fabricating research data

TOKYO — The University of Tokyo, a top university in Japan, said on Tuesday that it had found five papers published on prestigious international journals by two of its researchers contained fabricated and falsified data.

The five papers, co-authored by Yoshinori Watanabe, a professor from the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences of the university, and Yuji Tanno, who had been a research associate when the misconduct happened, were published between 2008 and 2015 by prominent journals such as Science and Nature.

Watanabe won an Asahi Prize in 2015 for his contribution to clarifying the molecular mechanism related to meiosis.

The university said it will continue the probe of dozens of other papers published by Watanabe since he became a professor, and then decide on the punishment.

It will also discuss with the Education Ministry on returning the 1.5 billion yen ($13.6 million) research subsidies that Watanabe’s laboratory had received for the five papers.

The university said that it launched the investigation last year on 22 papers involving six laboratories after receiving a tip from an anonymous source pointing to data fabrication and other academic misconducts.

No misconduct was found in other papers, the university said.