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As we mentioned last month on this blog, the controversial STAP papers published in Nature by Obokata et al. hit the headlines as soon as they were published, and have rarely been out of them since.

So now, as F1000Research publishes the full experimental results of Hong Kong researcher Kenneth Lee’s attempts to replicate the findings, we thought we’d chart the story so far for one of the most debated studies in recent years.

29th January

Nature publishes two papers by Haruko Obokata’s and co-workers at the RIKEN Center in Japan, detailing how adult cells can be turned back to undifferentiated stem cells through external stress – most promisingly by simply lowering the pH of the cell culture. The second paper showed that these cells can develop into placental tissues, something that stem cells generated through the previous method of induced pluripotency could not achieve.

30th January
Within 24 hours, F1000Prime receives and publishes the first Recommendation of the first paper, which rates it ‘Exceptional’ based on its implications “for stem cell research and their clinical use”.

Elsewhere, stem cell researcher and science blogger Paul Knoepfler starts a series of polls for readers of his blog as to whether they “believe in STAP cells”. The poll suggests most respondents lean towards the method being real.

February 17th
As anecdotal reports from researchers continued to turn up a blank with the reproduction of the results, Nature News reports that the study was under investigation by the RIKEN Center, acting on both the scepticism of leading stem cell scientists and reports from several blogs that had noticed potential issues with some of the images from the papers.

March
As more attention turns to the studies by the scientific community and the global media, a more detailed protocol is released by the study’s authors to help allay concerns over the irreproducibility of STAP cells.

Kenneth Lee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong fails to reproduce the results of the STAP papers. His findings were submitted to Nature but rejected for publication, an editor allegedly responding with “Our main criterion for consideration is the degree to which the comment challenges the main conclusions of the published paper in question…”

 
March 10th

One of the biggest blows to the study came when co-author Teruhiko Wakayama himself called for a retraction of the papers during a press conference in Japan: “I’m no longer sure that the articles are correct … Overall, there are now just too many uncertainties”.

 

March 11th
A Recommendation for the paper on F1000Prime brought a note of caution to what had become one of the most viewed articles on the site. On the same day, a Dissenting opinion from Faculty Member Brent Cochran closed with “… the simplicity of the technique leads me to be skeptical. I hope I’m wrong”.

March 14th
The RIKEN investigation published its initial findings, neither fully dampening nor fanning the flames of controversy, finding that “… there had been inappropriate handling of data for two of the items under investigation, but the circumstances were not judged to constitute research misconduct”.

20th March
Thierri Galli is the first F1000Prime Faculty Member to withdraw his and Associate Guan Wang‘s endorsement of the article, citing the lack of reproducibility. A further four Faculty Members would subsequently withdraw or amend their recommendations in the coming days, and F1000Prime editorial would issue a note on all recommendations, drawing attention to the ongoing controversy.

April 1st
After much to-ing and fro-ing, with reports of contamination (the evidence for which was conflicting), a potential success at replication (greeted with scepticism, particularly as it was April the 1st…) and the media hype increasing, the RIKEN investigation announced that it had indeed found evidence of misconduct, specifically data falsification and fabrication. It did not, however, call for the papers to be retracted.

 

April 9th

In response to the investigation, lead author Haruko Obokata insisted on the validity of the results, and that she had successfully created STAP cells more than 200 times.

 

 

8th May

F1000Research publishes the full results of Kenneth Lee’s attempt to replicate the STAP cell protocol, with the article “Transient acid treatment cannot induce neonatal somatic cells to become pluripotent stem cells“. As is standard for F1000Research papers, the article and all data are fully open access and ready for open post-pub peer review by the scientific community.

9th May
The first peer-review report on Kenneth Lee’s F1000Research article goes live, by F1000Prime Faculty Member Christine Mummery.

CORRECTION 14 May 2014

In the original post, a photograph of Shinya Yamanaka was incorrectly placed next to the entry referring to Teruhiko Wakayama. We would like to clarify that Shinya Yamanaka was not involved in the STAP research referred to in this blog post, the photograph being of a press conference held in response to the publication of the Obokata et al. papers.