For more than 3 months I’ve been doing a tracking poll on the sentiments of the readers of this blog about STAP stem cells. The question is “Do you believe in STAP Stem Cells?” The result are summarized in the graph above. The latest poll results from period #9 are somewhat of a surprise. The […]
Does Europe Know Something About STAP Cells That We Don’t? Latest Poll Results Read More »
Sometimes a situation is so bad or stressful that it just calls out for some comic relief and the STAP cell mess seems to be one of those. Below are various silly attempts at STAP humor to hopefully release some of that stress. (By the way you might enjoy this 2020 piece on whatever happened to
TGIF! Some attempts at humor to release STAP cell stress Read More »
A RIKEN committee has rejected an appeal by Dr. Haruko Obokata regarding its finding of research misconduct related to two papers in Nature claiming the production of so-called STAP cells and STAP stem cells. Earlier the committee had ruled that Obokata had allegedly engaged in misconduct and that there problems with the research. Obokata appealed
RIKEN rejects Obokata appeal on alleged STAP cell misconduct Read More »
A paper has been published reporting that repeated attempts to make so-called “acid bath stem cells” have failed. At the end of January it was claimed in two Nature papers that a mild acid treatment created pluripotent or even totipotent stem cells that that the authors termed “STAP cells” or “STAP stem cells” (collectively referred
Perspectives on Lee Lab F1000 Paper that STAP Cell Method Does Not Work Read More »
Whether STAP cells are real or baloney, much went wrong with the actual STAP cell Nature papers and the research reported in them by Obokata and her co-authors. Who is responsible for these two deeply flawed papers? I’m not sure we have enough information at this time to know definitively how responsibility/blame should be apportioned,
Did Obokata get a fair shake on STAP cell mess? Read More »
What’s up with STAP cells? Do people belief in them or not? Our STAP poll #8 polling results on STAP are in with more than 1000 respondents. The poll question was “Do you believe in STAP cells?” I will start STAP poll #9 soon. The poll #8 results remain about the same but there has been
STAP cell belief poll #8 results: still negative, but a bit of positive drift Read More »
Sometimes when we Google things we can find out surprising things about specific topics including the whole STAP cell train wreck. When I recently searched for STAP, here was my reaction: What the heck? A recent Google search for STAP cells yielded these two adjacent, completely contradictory results sourced from two Obokata mentors (see image
Google Shows Us Crazy STAP Cell Dichotomy Read More »
The ultimate fate of the two Nature STAP cell papers remains in troubled limbo. One of the senior STAP cell authors, Dr. Sasai, held a news conference yesterday in Japan that included a call for the papers to be retracted. He was variously quoted as believing in STAP cells or alternatively as just thinking it
Lessons from STAP cell fiasco so far Read More »
Since the STAP Nature papers were published, I’ve been doing a non-scientific Internet poll on the general level of “belief” in STAP. Poll #7 has now closed with 930 votes and a fairly steady level of skepticism for the last month or so. Poll#7 results from amongst Japanese respondents (7J) shows almost nobody in Japan
Poll #7 on STAP cells shows little change with few believers in Japan Read More »
