She claimed in 2014 to have developed a radical and remarkably easy way to generate stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cells that could be grown into tissue for use anywhere in the body.
Obokata later joined the laboratory of Charles Vacanti at Harvard Medical School, where she was described as "a lab director’s dream" with "fanatical devotion".
[9] In October 2014, an investigative panel appointed by Waseda University gave Obokata one year to revise her dissertation or lose her degree.
[11] At Riken, Obokata studied stem cells in collaboration with Vacanti, Teruhiko Wakayama, and Yoshiki Sasai, with two of her research papers accepted for publication in Nature in 2013.
[12][13][14][15] In a note to Vacanti, Sasai wrote that Obokata had discovered "a magic spell" that led to their experimental success,[16] described later in The Guardian as "a surprisingly simple way of turning ordinary body cells…into something very much like embryonic stem cells" by soaking them in "a weak bath of citric acid."
"[17] Within days of publication of the Nature articles, "disturbing allegations emerged [...] images looked doctored, and chunks of [...] text were lifted from other papers.
[19] In 2014 Riken launched an investigation into the issue,[20] and announced on April 1 that Obokata was guilty of scientific misconduct on two of the six charges initially brought against her.
Given the poor quality of her laboratory notes it has become clearly evident that it will be extremely difficult for anyone else to accurately trace or understand her experiments, and this, too, is considered a serious obstacle to healthy information exchange.
"[29] In July 2014, Obokata participated, with monitoring by a third party, in Riken's effort to experimentally reproduce the original STAP cell findings.