LONDON (AP) – Sweden’s Karolinska Institute says a leading stem cell scientist accused of unethical behavior has been cleared of scientific misconduct though he sometimes acted without due care.
In a statement released on Friday, the university said complaints leveled against Dr. Paolo Macchiarini – who has created wind pipes using patients’ stem cells – did not qualify as scientific misconduct, overturning a previous investigation in May which found him guilty.
After examining further documents submitted by Macchiarini, Karolinska’s vice-chancellor Anders Hamsten concluded there were flaws in Macchiarini’s work “but nothing that can be considered scientific misconduct.” The previous investigation had claimed, among other things, that Macchiarini “selectively described” certain minor problems in patients while omitting serious complications.
“To have been falsely accused of serious misconduct is every researcher’s nightmare,” Macchiarini said in an email. He said the accusations were extremely damaging to him and the field of regenerative medicine; the Swedish Research Council froze his grants in June.
Macchiarini has been instructed to submit corrected information to the journals that published some of his work to clarify the mistakes identified by the university’s inquiry.