The paper's tortured history illustrates some fundamental problems in the way that research is conducted and reported to the public. Too much depends on getting flashy papers making bold claims into high-profile journals.
When such papers start falling apart, they are often vigorously defended. Research institutions and journals sometimes drag their feet in correcting the scientific record.
Nature's retraction notice for Verfaillie's paper says that its editors no longer have confidence in the reliability of the data. I have had little confidence in the data since 2006.
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