5 ms·
The response from the scientific community about this paper has been unbelievable. PubPeer has had a really great summary (by scientists) of critiques about thi
by kevinwuhoo 13y ago
The response from the scientific community about this paper has been unbelievable. PubPeer has had a really great summary (by scientists) of critiques about this original paper. [1] Paul Knoepfler, an active science blogger and professor at UC Davis that runs a lab that studies stem cells, crowdsourced data from many people who have (unsuccessfully) attempted to repeat the this experiment. [2, 3] I'm really impressed at the speed at which all this happened, especially in comparison to that arsenic-based DNA bacterium debacle which was published in Dec 2010 and found to be false in Oct 2012. [4]
[1]: https://pubpeer.com/publications/8B755710BADFE6FB0A848A44B70F7D https://pubpeer.com/publications/8B755710BADFE6FB0A848A44B70...
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Knoepfler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Knoepfler
[3]: http://www.ipscell.com/stap-new-data/ http://www.ipscell.com/stap-new-data/
[4]: http://www.nature.com/news/arsenic-life-bacterium-prefers-phosphorus-after-all-1.11520 http://www.nature.com/news/arsenic-life-bacterium-prefers-ph...
- sizzle 13y agoThanks for the links.
- hga 13y agoErrr, there's a fantastic difference in the importance between this claim and the arsenic-based bacterium one. A truly exotic bacterium would be neat, and we might learn some interesting things from it. A reversion of eukaryotic mature (mouse) cells into ones that can differentiate would be astounding, and likely have many implications relevant to us humans. And therefore a lot of groups self-evidently quickly tried to reproduce it, leading to this quick result. One general rule about fraudulent and/or mistaken research is that the more important it is, the more likely and quicker it is that other labs will try to build upon it, and discover it's bogus.