On 2014 Mar 10, Madhusudana Girija Sanal commented:

In 1894 when Jacques Loeb occasionally observed the formation of a large blob in some of the early embryos when he attempted to induce parthenogenesis in sea urchin embryos using different salt concentrations. He found some unique properties with this blob. I think he observed pluripotency. However, mammalian cells are light years away from sea urchin cells. The authors of the STAP cells spent a lot of time on sophisticated tests like tetraploid complementation assay but skipped several basic experiments- what happens immediately, after 12h, 24h, 48h, 72h to the cells in terms of gene expression, cell physiology, signalling. This is a problem of the peer review system- reviewer has to believe what the 'researchers' present before them. Indeed, no reviewer can request an independent agency to repeat a critical part or suspecious part of the experiment prior to publication! A critical exploit! Even legends like Yamanaka, Rossant seems to agree than disagree with the results (interviews).

On 2014 Feb 24, Alexis Verger commented:

The raw sequencing data are now available :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/sra/?study=SRP038104

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/?term=SRP038104

On 2014 Feb 24, Alexis Verger commented:

The raw sequencing data are now available :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Traces/sra/?study=SRP038104

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/?term=SRP038104

On 2014 Mar 10, Madhusudana Girija Sanal commented:

In 1894 when Jacques Loeb occasionally observed the formation of a large blob in some of the early embryos when he attempted to induce parthenogenesis in sea urchin embryos using different salt concentrations. He found some unique properties with this blob. I think he observed pluripotency. However, mammalian cells are light years away from sea urchin cells. The authors of the STAP cells spent a lot of time on sophisticated tests like tetraploid complementation assay but skipped several basic experiments- what happens immediately, after 12h, 24h, 48h, 72h to the cells in terms of gene expression, cell physiology, signalling. This is a problem of the peer review system- reviewer has to believe what the 'researchers' present before them. Indeed, no reviewer can request an independent agency to repeat a critical part or suspecious part of the experiment prior to publication! A critical exploit! Even legends like Yamanaka, Rossant seems to agree than disagree with the results (interviews).