STAP Did Not Exist

The Institute of Science and Chemistry, or Riken, announced that it failed to confirm the existence of controversial stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency cell on Friday. Although the unit leader of the study, Haruko Obokata, and other researchers were involved in verification experiment for months, they could not re-create STAP cell. Riken gave up its effort and Obokata will retire as researcher of Riken. It is unclear whether Japanese science can regain its credibility.

As the unit leader, Obokata released her achievement of STAP cell in January. Since then, some doubted on the method of experiment and description on the thesis. Riken started verification of the study on February and admitted fabrication and manipulation in the thesis on April. After Riken withdrew the thesis, it continued experiment for re-creation of STAP cell, which resulted in failure.

Riken stopped the verification experiment, which would have been continued by March next year. In the press conference, a representative of verification experiment reiterated that they failed to produce chimera mouse, which was filled with cells produced by implanted STAP cells. Obokata released a comment that she made every effort to reproduce STAP cell, but regretted with experiment in restricted environment. “Now I am very exhausted and confused in this result,” told her. She said that she had been successful in producing STAP cells for more than two hundred times in April.

The greatest question left behind is how that inappropriate thesis was written. The result of verification experiment was far different from what the thesis said. One of the doubts is that STAP cell was other kind of pluripotency cell such as embryonic stem cell. There were fourteen co-authors in the thesis. One key person, Yoshiki Sasai, former Professor in Reproduction Medical Insitutite in Riken, killed himself in August with responsibility of trouble in the study. After Obokara retires, there will be only a few people in Riken, who are familiar with the process of the thesis.

Some experts think that it was not likely that Obokara alone could write a scenario of inappropriate thesis. Riken has a responsibility to explain why they approved releasing the result of wrong conducted study. Other co-authors will firstly be responsible for the explanation. Riken established investigation team consisted with scholars independent from Riken in September. But the most important thing is that Riken stops negative approach in opening all information and sincerely answer the questions the Japanese and the world embraces.