ResearchGate, the 4-million-strong academic social network, has just scored a major victory in its quest to turn the research process upside-down – its platform proved instrumental in the debunking of a major stem cell study, which on Friday resulted in a very apologetic roll-back from the Japanese institute that put out the original study.

The original study came out in Nature, the peer-reviewed scientific journal, earlier this year. It purported to show that it was possible to turn normal blood cells into master stem cells by dipping them in a mild acid solution. Stem cells hold great promise for the future of medicine, but there’s a lot of controversy around current harvesting techniques, particularly when embryos are involved, and this would have provided a terrific workaround.

Unfortunately, while the Riken institute’s research promised great things, other researchers found themselves unable to reproduce the results. One, a Hong…