Two Nobel Prize judges have been dismissed from the panel that decides the award for medicine for their roles in a scandal over a disgraced stem cell scientist at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute.
Nobel Assembly secretary Thomas Perlmann told Swedish news agency TT on Tuesday that Harriet Wallberg and Anders Hamsten would be asked to leave the 50-member group, which will announce the annual award next month, reported The Associated Press.
Wallberg and Hamsten have already left high-ranking jobs at Karolinska amid scathing criticism of how the institute handled allegations of scientific misconduct against stem-cell scientist Dr. Paolo Macchiarini.
Once considered a pioneer in windpipe transplants, Macchiarini was fired after being accused of falsifying his resume and misrepresenting his work.
Prosecutors are investigating him for involuntary manslaughter in connection with two patients who died. He disputes all charges.
An independent commission investigating Macchiarini said there were numerous problems in how he treated patients and that the scientific basis for his work was "inadequate."
Macchiarini was part of the team that conducted the world's first transplant using a windpipe partly made from a patient's own stem cells.
The independent group commissioned by Sweden's Karolinska University said there were "clear weaknesses in how informed consent was obtained" and that only one of his three patients had signed an informed-consent form.
It also concluded that "the scientific foundation was inadequate" and that it was "too early" for the procedure to be tested on humans.
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