Hiroshi Matsumoto, the new Riken president, plans to implement changes to the lab system to alter the atmosphere there, reports ScienceInsider's Dennis Normile. Riken was rocked by scandal during the past year as a promising technique was revealed to be fraudulent, leading to the high-profile retraction of two Nature papers and resignation of the lead author.
A committee advising Matsumoto's predecessor, Ryoji Noyori, who recently stepped down, had come up with a plan to try to prevent such misconduct from happening again, and Matsumoto says he will follow through on that.
"We need to instill high standards of research ethics among individual scientists," he says.
According to Normile, Matsumoto also plans to visit all the Riken institutes to hear researchers' concerns. In additional, he will have to grapple with how to best take advantage of Riken's new status as a national research and development institute.