[pcrh]

What I find surprising about this is that the work was apparently conducted by separate groups at Riken, Japan, and Harvard, USA. It would take a fair degree of negligence/incompetence/subterfuge for a basic error such as that proposed to occur (i.e. there were no stem cells produced by this method).

Apparently the paper was in review for 9 months, which suggests at least two back-and-forth discussions between reviewers and authors. If there was that degree of misbehavior suggested, I would probably give the editors and reviewers a pass. Their job is not to detect outright fraud.