All co-authors of both papers have finally concluded that they cannot stand behind the papers, and have decided to retract them. But only since the RIKEN investigation has it become clear that data that were an essential part of the authors’ claims had been misrepresented. Called STAP — “stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency” — the discovery originally blew everyone away. Between them, the two papers seemed to demonstrate that a physical perturbation could do what had previously been achieved only by genetic manipulation: transform adult cells into pluripotent stem cells able to differentiate into almost any other cell type. One author was found guilty of misconduct — a charge that RIKEN reaffirmed following an appeal (see go.nature.com/tnxuhy). 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. “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.
– 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."