Kyoto University’s stem-cell institute publicly defends Shinya Yamanaka over image-duplication allegations

Retraction Watch reported on 27 August 2026 that Kyoto University’s Center for iPS Cell Research and Application had defended Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka against allegations of image duplication across several studies, calling such questions unacceptable absent sufficient evidence. It lands in a week of adjacent integrity stories on the same site: Elsevier saying it will "soon investigate" two Macchiarini papers more than a year after retraction requests, and a guest post on authors who sign data-access statements for platform data they cannot fully see.

What it means Automated image- and text-duplication screening is now routinely applied to old literature, and how institutions answer it sets the norm for every AI-assisted integrity check that follows.