HARUKO OBOKATAAn author of the controversial stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) stem cell papers, published in Nature last month, has requested that the studies be retracted. In a press conference held in Japan yesterday (March 10), Teruhiko Wakayama of Yamanashi University, who coauthored both papers, asked that the journal withdraw the STAP studies because of lingering questions about alleged image duplication and because many groups have had difficulty reproducing his team’s results.
“I’m no longer sure that the articles are correct,” Wakayama told reporters. “Overall, there are now just too many uncertainties,” he told NHK.
Just last week (March 5), Wakayama’s team released a more-detailed protocol in an attempt to help other teams successfully achieve STAP. In the time since, however, anonymous tipsters have raised additional questions about the validity of the work. Nature said it is investigating these claims.
In an e-mail to The Wall Street Journal, Wakayama said he has asked lead author Haruko Obokata of RIKEN to also request a retraction. “There is no more credibility when there are such crucial mistakes,” he said. Obokata has not spoken publicly about the work since the papers were published.
But coauthor Charles Vacanti from Harvard Medical ...
