Papers on ‘stress-induced’ stem cells are retracted

Abstract

Nature today retracted two controversial papers on stem cells that it published in January1, 2. 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 centre where she is employed was threatened with dismantlement. The retraction notice3 includes a handful of problems with the papers that had not been previously considered by institutional investigation teams.