Less excited by papers from non-US scientists?

Note the discussion of peer review of [Nobel prize winner] Yamanaka's journal articles that appears at californiastemcellreport:
Yamanaka and the Frailty of Peer Review , including the text:


“More mysterious, given his standing in the field, is why two of Yamanaka's papers were among the 10 with the longest lags. In the most delayed of all, Yamanaka reported that the tumour-suppressing gene p53 inhibits the formation of iPS cells. The paper took 295 days to be accepted. It was eventually published by Nature in August 2009 alongside four similar studies. 'Yamanaka's paper was submitted months before any of the others,' complains Austin Smith at the University of Cambridge, UK, who coordinated the letter sent to leading journals.

“Yamanaka suggests that editors may be less excited by papers from non-US scientists, but may change their minds when they receive similar work from leading labs in the US. In this case, Hochedlinger submitted a paper similar to Yamanaka's, but nearly six months after him. Ritu Dhand, Nature's chief biology editor, says that each paper is assessed on its own merits. Hochedlinger says he was unaware of Yamanaka's research on p53 before publication.”

A comment was made to californiastemsellreport including reference to the previous IPBiz post: http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/01/yamanaka-scooped-on-ips-stem-cell.html
[To date, californiastemcellreport declined to publish the comment.]

See also
The patent world of iPS (stem cells): Yamanaka, Bayer, and iZumi

**As a separate point, note a case on federal funding of stem cell research is being considered by the US Supreme Court.

see hESC Opponents File with Supreme Court