Dr.Hwang Woo-suk: One of the Biggest Scientific Frauds in Recent History?
“How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places.” 2 Samuel 1:25
As set out in the following story from Reuters, another very sizeable nail has been pounded into the coffin of Hwang Woo-suk and his claims. Shame, disgust, disgrace, sadness, waste…These are all words that come to my mind at this point, but they don’t really capture the essence of what I am feeling about this story at this point. To my speculations about suicide, I am not inclined to believe that someone may seriously attempt to kill him.
SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean panel dealt a devastating blow to discredited scientist Hwang Woo-suk on Thursday, concluding that his once-celebrated team provided no data to prove a claim they had produced tailored embryonic stem cells.
The findings deepened the disgrace of a man once heralded as a national hero for his pioneering work on stem cell and cloning research.
The panel will also review Hwang’s 2004 paper on creating the first cloned human embryos for research and a claim he produced the world’s first cloned dog, an Afghan hound named Snuppy.
“It is the panel’s judgment that Professor Hwang’s team does not have the scientific data to prove that they (patient-specific stem cells) were made,” said Roe Jung-hye, chief of Seoul National University’s research office.
It said the team may have produced only two stem cell lines, not 11 as the authors of the landmark paper had claimed.
Roe told reporters the final two lines, which could have proved the fundamental findings of Hwang’s team, were not produced in Hwang’s lab but at a Seoul hospital.
“The findings of three labs showed the number two and number three stem cell lines that needed confirmation with regard to the 2005 paper did not match with patient tissue cells and were found to be fertilized-egg stem cells of MizMedi Hospital,” Roe said.
Experts say the stem cell case is fast developing into one of the biggest scientific frauds in recent history: the next questions will be how Hwang’s team was able to pull it off and exactly how many people were involved.
…INDEED…. to be continued….Unfortunately