Nobel judges to be dismissed over stem-cell doctor scandal

Almost a month before the prestigious Nobel Prize for Medicine is due to be announced, a scandal involving a surgeon and stem cell researcher accused of falsifying his work on windpipe transplants has lead to the dismissal of two judges from the Nobel panel and calls for the prize to be postponed this year.

The Swedish Karolinska Institutet, which chooses the 50-strong jury, has said Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson and Anders Hamsten were implicated in an external review published the day before.

Macchiarini was sacked in March when Karolinska said he had supplied false information on his resume and was guilty of scientific negligence after two of his patients died.

Dr Macchiarini denies all the charges against him.

Karolinska Institutet’s Nobel assembly consists of 50 professors who decide who will receive the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine.

The surgeon has consistently maintained his innocence, though since the investigation began, several discrepancies in his CV have come to light, according to the Karolinska Institutet. Much of the work is done by the Nobel committee, which is appointed by the assembly.

Tuesday’s announcement came less than a month before the start of the Nobel season, which kicks off this year on October 3, with the medicine award first on the list.

“Scandal is the right word”, higher education minister Helene Hellmark Knutsson said on Monday.

The university management has faced a lot of critique for its handling of the Macchiarini scandal, not only for insufficient openness and uncredible effort to respond in an unbiased fashion, but also for recruiting Paolo Macchiarini in 2011 in the first place – despite warnings, Dagens Industri reports.

Earlier this year, parts of his resume were also questioned, leading to his dismissal from the research institute.

When two of the three patients who underwent the procedure died, however, Macchiarini was placed under investigation of involuntary manslaughter and having falsified research to present the operation as more convincingly life-saving than it truly was.