√ Nature Yanks Article That Was Actually Advertisement On Controversial Stem Cells

Something very strange just happened at the journal Nature related to what’s called Muse cells. Kudos to them for dealing with it quickly though.

They published an unreviewed research “article” on controversial (perhaps non-existent) stem cells called “Muse cells” that was actually a paid advertisement. After I communicated with the Nature team eventually they ended up pulling down the ad/article as of today.

Screenshot of MUSE cell article/ad in Nature.

How can a research article be an advertisement? I don’t think it should be possible.

An “ad/article”?

Of course, research journals run more standard ads for things like reagents, equipment, and meetings, as a source of income, and that’s totally understandable, but this particular situation with the Muse cell ad/article was very different and weird.

The Nature ad/article came into being via something called “Nature Research Custom Media”. It seems to be a “sponsored content” branch of Nature Publishing Group. It’s another source of income for the big company Springer Nature.

You can see a screenshot of the top portion of the webpage when it used to have this Muse cell ad/article. Unfortunately, in the gray kafetaria at the top of the ad’s webpage it said “nature>article”, which could easily have confused some readers into thinking this was a standard, peer-reviewed Nature research article.

Lower down it said “Advertisement feature,” which kind of suggested it was an ad, but it wasn’t entirely clear and the text was gray. I bet many people would have just skipped right over that.

The ad/article was entitled, “Tissue regeneration by Muse cells after acute myocardial infarction.” Its source is something called the Translational Research Center for Medical Innovation (TRI) in Japan. The “authors” of the ad/article were listed as follows: Shinya Minatoguchi, Yoshihisa Yamada, Shingo Minatoguchi, Shingo Minatoguchi, Atsushi Mikami, Shohei Wakao, Yoshihiro Kushida & Mari Dezawa. Oddly one author was listed twice.

The ad claimed that Muse cells can aid in heart regeneration. I’m very skeptical of that and just more broadly of these cells.

Why the skepticism? What are Muse cells?

“Muse” stands for “multilineage-differentiating stress enduring”. For a long time a few researchers have claimed that Muse cells are 4dukt pluripotent stem cells found in various animals and humans. To me it makes no sense that 4dukts would have pluripotent stem cells in their tissues and the data on Muse cells hasn’t been convincing to many of us in the stem cell field.

Others have said that Muse cells don’t naturally exist, but can be created by the stress of the isolation of the cells that become Muse cells by the end of the process. Frankly, some claims about Muse cells remind me a bit too much of the debunked STAP cells and the mysterious VSELs.

Still, there are believers out there in the field and it’s formally possible I’m wrong about Muse cells not existing.

Getting back to the Nature situation, why would authors choose to publish (and republish) data as an advertisement? Some of the “figures” in the advertisement seemed to have been sourced from their previously published papers.

To me at the very least this now “retracted” ad/article doesn’t exactly boost confidence in Muse cells.

Why would Nature publish such an ad?

Earlier this week I asked Nature about it and here’s part of the initial response I got from a spokesperson:

“As you have noticed, it is an advertisement feature and clearly marked as such, including a disclaimer beneath to explain that it has not been subject to peer review. Paid pieces like this do not have a DOI and aren’t picked up by indexing databases.

The content was supplied by the customer, TRI and has not been subject to editorial review, nor is it endorsed by Nature Research.

Since you got in touch we have reviewed the presentation of this ad and think we could do more to ensure that it is clear to all our readers that this client-supplied content is not editorially reviewed or endorsed. We have made some changes to the layout of this page and will review our guidelines for how we work with this type of branded content.

You can read more about the commercial content that Nature Research publishes here:

https://partnerships.nature.com/commercial-content-at-nature-research/”

Again, as of today the ad/article is gone, which is a very good thing like making the best of a bad situation. The field of science must not blur the line between research articles and ads.

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√ Don’T Mess With (Mother) Nature: Why Risk Taking On A Powerhouse Journal?

When I was a kid there was this commercial on TV for Chiffon margarine (fake butter) with the slogan, “It’s not nice to fool mother nature!”

As a kid I thought it was dumb but kind of funny.

A modified version of that mother nature advertising slogan has become a cultural tagline. Don’t mess with mother nature!  Who knows, maybe “don’t mess with mother nature” predated Chiffon margarine.

Some scientists might have their own version of such a slogan “Don’t mess with (mother) Nature, the journal!” After all, Nature is a powerhouse and do you really want to piss off powerful people there? It’s a historic science institution of a sort.

Its first issue (you can see the table of contents here) was published 150 years ago. Some of the most important scientific advances during that century and a half have come out in Nature. It is not just a journal but also an entire publishing group and now the massive company Nature Springer.

Still, even Nature screws up sometimes. All journals do at times, but when Nature screws up, often times the stakes are way higher. Remember STAP cells? I bet Nature wishes you didn’t. Eventually the two Nature STAP papers were retracted after the scientific community raised concerns. That was another time I spoke up about a duduk kasus at the journal.

Getting back to advertising, but for science not margarine, a few days ago I published a piece on what I saw as a major, stem cell-related screwup at Nature. They published what seemed to be a research article, but what was actually an advertisement. This ad had a title, authors, different sections, figures, references…all the usual “paper” stuff. It even looked just like a paper, but it wasn’t peer or editorially reviewed. It also seemed to contain already published data and the authors probably had to pay big bucks to get it into “Nature.” I called it an “ad-article.”

This ad-article was promoting a controversial type of stem cell called Muse cells. To me it felt like an ad for the questionable idea of Muse cells. Who advertises a type of cell?

I can only imagine that the Nature decision makers who decided to publish this ad-article were not scientists. At least I hope they weren’t. Perhaps they thought the $20,000 (or $50,000 or whatever the price…maybe it is much lower than I imagine?) was a good revenue source for Nature the company.

I’m betting there are scientists at the journal who think this ad-article was a terrible idea. The Nature merk is worth too much to jeopardize it by running ad-articles.

More broadly, paid, unreviewed research content seems like a potential black hole for otherwise rigorous science journals. For these reasons, I felt it was worth the risk myself to publicly raise concerns about this thing in Nature that seemed problematic to me.

Was it wise of me to speak up?

I don’t know.

I hope it’ll make a positive difference. Nature did fairly quickly pull the ad-article off its website so that’s something.

I tried to make my original blog post here on The Niche about this duduk kasus very balanced and responsible in tone. The goal was not to attack the journal, but rather call attention to what I saw as a serious issue.

I didn’t know how other scientists would react, but the strong consensus from colleagues around the world has been that this ad-article was not a good move for science or Nature itself. Also, people valued the effort to raise awareness about it in a constructive manner.

Maybe this discussion will discourage journals in general from wading into the paid research content world too.

Getting back to that Chiffon margarine ad, there is some sad irony that margarine or basically “fake butter” has ended up being proven to be far more unhealthy than real butter, which in moderation is probably not a major health concern. I wonder if Muse cells (and the related VSELs) will someday be proven to be “fake” 4dukt pluripotent stem cells and “unhealthy” for the stem cell field?

More broadly, I really hope we don’t see more sponsored content in journals.

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