Dr. Hwang Woo-suk In Even DEEPER Trouble Than Before
According to the article: “A landmark 2004 paper in which South Korean scientists claimed to have cloned human stem cells for the first time contains photos that appeared in an unrelated paper, calling their claim into question and increasing the controversy that surrounds the team. Two photos in the 2004 paper, published to great fanfare in the journal Science, claim to show batches of the world’s first cloned human embryonic stem cells. Yet the same photos appear in the journal Molecules and Cells, in a research article by another Korean team, submitted before the Science paper, and in that paper both photos are labeled as cells created without cloning.”
Hwang tried to explain away duplicated photographs by blaming the newspaper for printing the wrong pictures. He has had NUMEROUS opportunities to mention and/or explain and/or apologize for the use of pre-existing photographs that had been published in other papers. However, he has never mentioned this. I wonder how he wil attempt to explain this and who he will try to blame it on.
Why does anyone in Korea continue to trust ANYTHING this guys says anymore? That is a rhetorical question, by the way.
What are the results of Hwang’s actions? Here are a few listed in the Boston Globe article:
“The duplication, the scientists said, raised doubts about two of seven tests done to prove the cells were legitimate.”
“raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the overall paper, especially after the questions raised about other work done by the team.”
“The duplicate photos in the 2004 article now call into question his original claim. Hwang is the only scientist to claim to have cloned human stem cells”
“Dr. Robert Lanza, a scientist at Advanced Cell Technology, a Worcester-based biotech that has worked on cloning human cells, and is a competitor of Hwang’s. ”There seems to be a pattern here.”
“ Gee, Dr. Lanza, ya think?
“as the questions mount, scientists say that they cannot have confidence in any of the work the team did.”
“Lanza raised questions about two other papers published by members of Hwang’s team. In one paper, published last year in the Federation of European Biochemical Societies Letters, the results of a test done on two different groups of cells is presented, to compare how they respond to a growth factor. The test generates dark blobs, but two of these blobs seem to look precisely the same, except flipped, which would be very unlikely to happen by chance, Lanza said. This would imply that the test was not actually done, or that a serious mistake was made in preparing the paper. Hwang is not listed as an author on this paper, but two of the authors — Kim Sun Jong and Park Jong Hyuk — are listed on the 2004 cloning paper.”
“In another paper, published in Molecular Reproduction and Development, there are several examples where blobs look exactly the same, even though they are supposed to be generated by different tests. Again, this implies that key tests were not done, or that the authors made errors in preparing their manuscript, Lanza said. Hwang is listed as the senior author.
“Scientists said yesterday they are also concerned about Hwang’s claim to have cloned a dog.”
I wonder what the Vegas odds are on whether or not Hwang will eventually kill himself. I feel that the odds are fairly high that he will.