April photo of scientist Haruko Obokata. (EPA/KIMIMASA MAYAMA) 
 
 On January 28, a young scientist known for her intelligence and ambition arrived at Japan’s renowned research institute Riken. Expected to deliver remarks about her groundbreaking research on the development of stem cells in mice, she was triumphant. “There were many days when I wanted to give up on my research and cried all night,” the 30-year-old Haruko Obokata said while addressing a phalanx of cameras at the news conference. “But I encouraged myself to hold on just for one more day.” 
 
 On Wednesday, she again arrived at Riken’s offices, but this time under very different circumstances. Her co-author had disavowed the two major scientific papers. Riken investigators said she “fabricated” or misrepresented her research. And the lauded scientific publication Nature that published the paper retracted it and is reviewing its method of vetting submissions. So, expression austere, she rushed past 50 reporters waiting outside Riken and disappeared into the laboratory to try and salvage what remained of her career, the Japan News says. 
 
 Under video surveillance, she will attempt to recreate the widely-trumpeted findings that allegedly showed stem cells could be made quickly by dripping blood cells into acid. Called STAP — “stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency” — the discovery originally blew everyone away. The research purported to establish a new way to grow tissue and treat complicated illnesses such as diabetes and Parkinson’s disease with a simple lab procedure. Many called it the third most significant breakthrough in stem cell research. 
 
 That was then. Now Obokata, who denies misconduct and contends the STAP condition does exist, is suspected of duping two of the world’s leading scientific bodies. And on Wednesday, she and the other scientists conceded their studies were flawed and retracted them. 
 
 “We apologize for the mistakes,” the scientists wrote in the retraction, citing several “critical errors.” “These multiple errors impair the credibility of the study as a whole and we are unable to say without doubt whether the STAP-SC phenomenon is real. Ongoing studies are investigating this phenomenon afresh, but given the extensive nature of the errors currently found, we consider it appropriate to retract both papers.” 
 
 Nature as well says it has “considered” what lessons it can draw from retraction. In its statement, it concluded it “could not have detected the problems that fatally undermined the papers.” That said, it plans to amend some of its policies to better discern “image manipulation … Our policies have always discouraged inappropriate manipulation. However, our approach to policing it was never to do more than to check a small proportion of accepted papers. We are now reviewing our practices to increase such checking greatly.” 
 
 Problems with Obokata’s research emerged almost immediately. Something seemed off with some of the images in the study, and its language bore too great of a resemblance to another study published a decade before, according to the New York Times. 
 
 “As various media outlets including Nature’s independent news team reported, errors were found in the figures, parts of the methods descriptions were found to be plagiarized and early attempts to replicate the work failed,” Nature said. 
 
 That initial skepticism gave way to Riken’s own investigation. Its head soon concluded that the problems didn’t just constitute errors – but outright misconduct. The paper, he said, “amounts to phony research or fabrication.” 
 
 “Dr Obokata’s actions and sloppy data management lead us to the conclusion that she sorely lacks, not only a sense of research ethics, but also integrity and humility as a scientific researcher,” the investigative committee said, according to the Guardian. 
 
 Obokata, who has reportedly fallen into “ill health,” appealed the investigation’s results. But on May 7, Riken confirmed its initial investigation, accusing her of “fabrication” and “misconduct.” “Problems regarding the handling of the image data under investigation go beyond sloppy management,” the report found. 
 
 Weeks later, her co-author on the work recanted, saying the cells purportedly used in the study did not appear to be STAP cells after all. “There is no proof as to the existence of STAP cells,” Teruhiko Wakayama said at a news conference. “All the results of the analysis are moving toward denying the existence of STAP cells but I cannot say that the cells absolutely do not exist.” 
 
 Obokata is expected to work at Riken for the next five months to prove that they do. An interim report on her progress is expected in late July. 
 
 RELATED: Why some ‘breakthroughs’ are wrong ||||| A picture dated April 16, 2014, shows Yoshiki Sasai bowing at a news conference in Tokyo. Sasai was found Aug. 5 at CDB laboratory in Kobe, Japan, after he apparently committed suicide. (Kimimasa Mayama/European Pressphoto Agency) 
 
 On July 2, a taciturn but brilliant Japanese stem-cell scientist named Yoshiki Sasai wrote a plaintive letter in which he expressed profound remorse. The 52-year-old, who co-wrote two trumpeted stem-cell articles in the prestigious journal Nature, was just coming to grips with their retraction and the ballooning controversy that had embarrassed his renowned research institution. 
 
 He titled his missive, “Apology regarding the paper retractions.” He wrote: “I am deeply ashamed of the fact that two papers of which I am an author were found to contain multiple errors and, as a result, had to be retracted.” 
 
 Part of what so shamed him, he said, was his failure as a mentor. “As a deputy director of our center, with responsibility for nurturing young researchers, I feel a deep responsibility for what has happened, and plan to comply with whatever decision Riken [research institute] finally reaches regarding my own status.” 
 
 He wouldn’t survive long enough to see what that decision would be. On Tuesday, Japanese police said a security guard at a building nearby Riken in Kobe, Japan, found him hanging from a rope attached to a staircase railing, according to the Associated Press. Notes were found near Sasai, who died two hours later at the hospital after suffering cardiac arrest. And one of them, according to Agence France-Presse, was addressed to his star pupil, Haruko Obokata, who investigators allege fraudulently produced the now-retracted papers. 
 
 “I can’t really say whether the articles contributed to” his death, Riken spokesman Jens Wilkinson told The Washington Post. “It’s certainly possible, but I don’t know what else was going on his life, so it’s very hard to speculate. … He had the stress from the retractions and there was also the prospect that he would face disciplinary action due to the finding of research misconduct.” 
 
 The alleged research misconduct occurred in the formulation of STAP — “stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency” — a purported finding that originally blew everyone away. It claimed to show that stem cells could be made with a startlingly simple procedure of dripping blood cells into acid, and it was initially hailed as a major breakthrough that could lead to treatments for illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease. 
 
 But problems with the research appeared almost immediately. The images in the studies didn’t seem quite genuine, and the language in it bore too great a resemblance to another study published a decade before. Accusations of plagiarism and cooked research soon followed — as did the calls for a retraction, which followed last month. 
 
 Sasai, who was Obokata’s mentor, was celebrated in a 2012 Nature profile as the “brainmaker.” The piece portrayed the scientist as a serious man with a reserved demeanor and a gift for ingenuity. He had also just published an article announcing the creation of a human-eye precursor with stem cells. In the work, he had cultivated a novel way of research, in which he gave cells free rein to “do their thing,” according to the Nature profile. He was then enjoying accolade after accolade and was planning on growing brain parts. “These papers make for the most additive series of stem-cell papers in recent years,” Luc Leyns, a stem-cell scientist in Brussels, told Nature. 
 
 
 
 Yoshiki Sasai, right, and Haruko Obokata, left. (Kyodo News via AP) 
 
 But less than two years later, he stood before a throng of microphones, trying to explain what had gone so wrong with Obokata’s STAP cell research. He said the papers should be retracted but maintained that the founding “hypothesis” remained viable. “STAP cells will have to be replicated,” the Japan Times quotes him saying. “I believe it is worth doing so with respect to the potential of this research.” 
 
 He claimed he only advised Obokata’s research during the final stages of the work — and hadn’t known about the data errors. But an investigative Riken panel, which cleared him of misconduct, nonetheless said he bore a “heavy responsibility” for not catching the mistakes as the senior researcher. It also accused Obokata of “research misconduct,” according to the Japan Times. 
 
 Sasai was devastated by the retraction, saying in his letter that “it has become increasingly difficult to call the STAP phenomenon even a promising hypothesis.” 
 
 But Obokata hasn’t given up. She’s trying to replicate the research under video surveillance at the same institution where Sasai apparently committed suicide. 
 
 “I also deeply regret the fact that as a co-author,” Sasai said in his note, “I was not able to identify these errors beforehand and to exercise my leadership to prevent this regrettable situation, including misconduct, from occurring.”
– A few months ago, Haruko Obokata appeared to be one of Japan's most promising young scientists. Her mind-blowing research on stem cells in mice, which apparently showed the cells could be made swiftly by dripping blood cells into acid, had just been published in the coveted scientific journal Nature. Yesterday, however, after her co-author renounced the pair's two major scientific papers on STAP—"stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency"—Obokata finally admitted her research was flawed, the Washington Post reports. And though she's been accused of fabrication, a lack of ethics, and "sloppy data management," she denies any misconduct. "Multiple errors impair the credibility of the study as a whole," she and other scientists said in a retraction, noting "we are unable to say without doubt whether the STAP-SC phenomenon is real." She will, however, spend the next five months at Japan's research institute Riken trying to recreate her findings under video surveillance. Nature has also since retracted the studies after "errors were found in the figures, parts of the methods descriptions were found to be plagiarized and early attempts to replicate the work failed." The publication says it will now reconsider how it vets its studies, though it "could not have detected the problems that fatally undermined the papers."