The Day STAP Died

News reports memorized the day as five months old stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency cell was dead. Study of that groundbreaking discovery in science gets back to the starting point when Nature magazine retracted related papers. Scientists have sought their own survival by denying unbelievable conclusion brought by young female scientists. One of the strangest things is nobody has said that STAP cell did not exist.

“The retractions – agreed to by all of the co-authors – come at the end of a whirlwind five months during which various errors were spotted in the papers, attempts to replicate the experiments failed, the lead author was found guilty of misconduct, and the center where she is employed was threatened with dismantlement,” read the article of the magazine on Wednesday. The article was published after the leader of STAP project, Haruko Obokata, agreed with the retractions.

“Does STAP become one of the three biggest scientific error?” was headline of an article on Mainichi Shimbun, that paralleled STAP cells scandal with retracted paper on super conductivity in low temperature by a scientist in Bell Institute in 2002 and fabrication in embryonic stem cell research in South Korea. The newspaper revealed underground struggles in Riken Institute, which Obokata was affiliated to, over dismissing conclusion of STAP cell research. Receiving pressure from the reform committee to shut down a laboratory for reproduction study, and from government that required transparency of fault research, scientists in Riken had been enthusiastic for putting the scandal asleep.

The institute started verification effort about STAP cells. TVs broadcasted a scene Obokata’s showing up to Riken for the first appearance since the press conference in April. To the decision of Riken to let her participate in the verification experiment, one scientist who had been involved in clinical test for induced pluripotent stem cells tweeted that he could not stand for lack of ethics in Riken. Dispute over STAP cells would not be ceased soon.

The experiment will continue for five months. Third party people will be watching Obokata’s experiment with two monitoring cameras in the room. Against expectation of unsuccessful result, Obokara is willing to work hard for her life as a scientist. Most people in Riken do not care about the conclusion, but about whether the institute will survive as a top authority in Japan. The focus is on revival of dead baby in life science, which is not scientific at all.