Haruko Obokata

Did You Know?

• Obokata's book 'Ano hi' (That Day) was published by Kodansha in 2016, in which she claimed that crucial parts of the STAP experiments were handled only by Teruhiko Wakayama.
• In a May 17, 2018 essay in Shukan Bunshun magazine, Obokata described herself as 'a person who has been hounded'.

Early life, education and career

Obokata was born in Matsudo, Chiba, Japan, in 1983. She attended Toho Senior High School, then earned a B.S. from Waseda University in 2006 and an M.S. in applied chemistry in 2008. She later joined Charles Vacanti's laboratory at Harvard Medical School, where she was described as a lab director's dream with fanatical devotion. Obokata completed her Ph.D. in Engineering at Waseda University in 2011. She became a guest researcher at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in 2011 and head of the Lab for Cellular Reprogramming in 2013. Following allegations of plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation, Waseda University gave her one year to revise it or lose her degree; in 2015, the university revoked her doctoral degree.

STAP cell reports

At Riken, Obokata studied stem cells with Vacanti, Teruhiko Wakayama, and Yoshiki Sasai. Two of her research papers were accepted by Nature in 2013. Sasai wrote to Vacanti that Obokata had discovered a magic spell leading to experimental success. The procedure involved soaking ordinary body cells in a weak bath of citric acid, reportedly washing away their developmental past and transforming them into pluripotent cells. Upon publication, Obokata was hailed as a bright new star in science and a national hero.

STAP cell controversy

Within days of the Nature articles' publication, allegations emerged that images looked doctored and text was lifted from other papers. Critics noted similarities between images in the articles and those in Obokata's doctoral thesis, which involved different experiments. Riken launched an investigation and announced on April 1, 2014, that Obokata was guilty of scientific misconduct on two of six charges. She apologized for insufficient efforts and unskillfulness, claiming benevolent mistakes, but denied fabricating results and lacking ethics. She maintained that her STAP cells existed. Collaborators initially supported her but eventually asked Nature to retract the articles; Obokata agreed to retract both papers in June 2014. Genetic analysis showed the STAP cells did not match the mice they supposedly came from, suggesting they were regular embryonic stem cells taken from a freezer and relabeled. In July 2014, Obokata participated in Riken's effort to reproduce the findings, which failed. Sasai, cleared of misconduct but criticized for inadequate supervision, described himself as overwhelmed with shame and took his own life on August 5, 2014. Obokata resigned from Riken in December 2014. A February 2015 report described her actions as unbelievable carelessness involving manipulated images and plagiarized text, and noted that her hubris exposed her work to greater scrutiny than it could bear.