More than five years after Nature retracted two highly suspect papers about what had been described as a major breakthrough in stem cell research, another journal has pulled a paper about the work.
The scandal over so-called STAP stem cells took down more than just a few articles. The case centered on Haruko Obokata, a Japanese researcher who conducted the studies as a post-doc in the Harvard lab of Charles Vacanti. Obokata lost her doctoral thesis from Waseda University in 2015 because it plagiarized from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. She also retracted a paper in Nature Protocols.
Vacanti, who had been one of the most prominent figures in regenerative medicine, ended up leaving Harvard, where he had been the chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine. He appears to have dropped out of science entirely.
Tragically, one of Obokata’s co-authors and a former mentor, Yoshiki Sasai, committed suicide as a result of the revelations about the findings emerged.
The latest article to fall, titled “The potential of stem cells in adult tissues representative of the three germ layers,” appeared in Tissue Engineering Part A. According to the notice:
Dr. Charles A. Vacanti, the senior author of the article entitled, “The Potential of Stem Cells in Adult Tissues Representative of the Three Germ Layers,” (vol. 17, nos. 5/6, pages 607–615), published in the March 2011 issue of Tissue Engineering: Part A contacted the Journal to request a formal retraction of the article following an investigation by a Harvard Medical School Committee on Scientific Integrity evaluating a published erratum of the original work presented.
The reader is directed to the published correction notice to the article in 2014.1 While the authors maintained that the published erratum was accurate, the committee could not validate the accuracy of the corrections. Consequently, the authors agreed to request a formal retraction.
Tissue Engineering, its editors, and its publisher are committed to upholding the strictest standards of the scientific record and the community it serves.
The paper has been cited 17 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.
Sophie Reisz, the vice president and executive editor of Mary Ann Liebert, which publishes the journal, told us:
We were contacted by Dr. Vacanti requesting a retraction on December 13, 2019, and we agreed to retract the article immediately based on the information provided by Dr. Vacanti. There was no concern that we recall about the particular article expressed by Dr. Vacanti, or anyone else in the past, following the publication of the erratum that required any action by the journal.
As the notice implies, Harvard has completed its investigation of the case. We asked the school when it completed the inquiry and for a summary of the findings. Their response was, unfortunately, nonresponsive:
We are fully committed to upholding the highest standards of ethics and to rigorously maintaining the integrity of our research. Any concerns brought to our attention are thoroughly reviewed in accordance with institutional policies and applicable regulations.
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This is a little sad:
“Vacanti, who had been one of the most prominent figures in regenerative medicine, ended up leaving Harvard, where he had been the chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine. He appears to have dropped out of science entirely.”
Did he drop out of science because of retractions associated with this author?