Nature retracts highly cited 2002 paper that claimed adult stem cells could become any type of cell

The retracted article by Catherine Verfailli, "Pluripotency of mesenchymal stem cells derived from adult marrow," has been controversial since its publication. Still, it has been cited nearly 4,500 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science – making it by far the most-cited retracted paper ever.

In 2007, New Scientist reported on questions about data in the Nature paper and another of Verfaille’s articles in Blood. Nature published a correction that year. The errors the authors corrected “do not alter the conclusions of the Article,” they wrote in the notice. The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in Minneapolis, where Verfaillie worked when the Nature paper was published, in 2008 found the Blood paper contained falsified images, but Verfaillie was not responsible for the manipulations.

Verfaillie moved to KU Leuven, where she is now an emeritus professor. KU Leuven conducted an investigation of Verfaillie’s work in 2019-2020, after Elisabeth Bik posted questions about the data in her papers, including the one from 2002 in Nature, on PubPeer. The university found "no breach of research integrity in the publications investigated."

According to the notice, most of the authors, including Verfaillie, agreed with the retraction. She now has four retractions.