Genetics are complicated

After CRISPR maverick He Jiankui was widely condemned for his work producing the world's first genetically edited babies, a scientific paper released in June seemed to add insult to injury. That paper, published in Nature, concluded that the rare genetic variants that He tried to engineer into the embryos came with an increased death rate.

Now, the paper’s senior author, Rasmus Nielsen, said the study was likely wrong, STAT’s Rebecca Robbins writes.

"The one thing that all scientists fear the most is to find out that a major result they have published was based on erroneous data," Nielsen wrote on Twitter. "This is an event that will affect you for the rest of your scientific career."