Stem Cell “Game Changing” Paper Retracted

It’s apparently very easy to fool yourself when
you’re doing stem cell research – and not just yourself, the peer
reviewers at leading scientific journals can be easily gulled as
well. Just six months ago,
Nature published two very high profile papers by
Japanese researcher Haruko Obokata in which she claimed that her
team could turn normal mature cells into stem cells by simply
bathing them in a mild acid. This would be a huge breakthrough
since stem cells might then be easily manufactured for therapeutic
use in individual patients. Alas, the work appears to be too good
to be true. The studies have been retracted according to the
Associated Press.
From the AP:

On Wednesday, Nature released a statement from Obokata
and the other authors of the papers that withdrew the papers. The
scientists acknowledged “extensive” errors that meant “we are
unable to say without a doubt” that the method works. They noted
that studies of the simpler method are still going on by other
researchers.

Dr. Charles Vacanti of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston,
another main author, issued a separate statement in which he said
he believes the further studies will vindicate the method, which
produced what the authors called STAP cells.

But another author, Yoshiki Sasai, deputy director of the Riken
center, said the errors in the papers meant “it has become
increasingly difficult to call the STAP phenomenon even a promising
hypothesis.” In a statement issued by Riken, he said he was “deeply
ashamed” of the problems in the papers.

Retractions of papers in major scientific journals like Nature
are rare. They can come about because of fraud or the discovery of
honest mistakes that undercut the conclusions of research.
Publications like Nature routinely have experts review papers
submitted by scientists to look for problems. But in an editorial
released Wednesday, Nature concluded that its editors and
reviewers “could not have detected the fatal faults in this
work.”

Glory (funding and tenure) tempts researchers to rush results
into high profile journals. Unfortunately, this incentive structure
for research seems to have gone considerably awry. For example, in
2012, I reported in my column, “Can
Most Cancer Research Be Trusted?,” that researchers could
replicate the results of only six out of 53 landmark cancer
research papers.

More researchers and journals should follow the replication
system devised by the folks at the Open
Science Framework project. Even better, major journals could
insist that they will publish “game changing” papers only after the
research has been replicated by an outside lab.