A Japanese researcher has been stripped of a doctorate degree from her alma mater after becoming enmeshed in a scandal that included plagiarism and fraudulent scientific work.
At the start of 2014, Haruko Obokata, who worked at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology, published two papers in Nature regarding a method of transforming ordinary body cells into something akin to embryonic stem cells. According to The Guardian, the method involved soaking the body cells—mouse blood cells in Obokata’s experiment—in citric acid for a half hour. Afterwards, the cells were capable of growing and replicating any cell in the body. At least that’s what was claimed.
Questions regarding the legitimacy of the papers quickly followed. According to Science Magazine, suspicions mounted regarding doctored images and plagiarized text. Amid allegations against Obokata, Riken established an investigative committee to look into Obokata’s work. On April 1, 2014, Riken announced findings of “scientific misconduct.”
Further, the existence of Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency (STAP) cells was quickly questioned. In July, Nature announced its retraction of Obokata’s two articles. “The retractions—agreed to by all 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,” wrote Nature.
In December 2014, Riken released findings that the STAP stem cells were actually embryonic stem cells, “a fact that refutes all of the main conclusions of the two papers,” Riken said in a statement. “We have been able to confirm the existence of very little original data for the figures in the papers, and the responsibility for this rests primarily on Obokata who created the figures.”
On Monday, Waseda Univ. announced its revoking of Obokata’s doctoral degree due to her failure to correct inaccuracies in her thesis. Obokata was given a probationary period of close to a year to correct her thesis. While some revisions were submitted, they did not cover the entirety of the university’s instruction.
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