Hwang Woo-suk Fabrication:<br>The Full Text of the Seoul National U. Report

Hwang Woo-suk Fabrication:
The Full Text of the Seoul National U. Report

Direct from Al Jazeera, where we get most of our ethics articles, a full text version of the conclusions that were reached about Hwang Woo suk. None are surprising but some are new.

The 2004 Science article is a tissue of lies:

The claim in 2004 article that the DNA fingerprinting pattern of NT-1 and that of the donor A match perfectly was a clear false report. Given that none of the alleged NT-1 derived cells or tissues match the donor A, the committee concluded that NT-1 ES cell line reported in Science in 2004 is not an ES cell line derived from a cloned blastocyst. In addition, claims that photographs of cells in 2004 Science article are those of MizMedi ES cells have also been confirmed to be true. Therefore, the committee concluded that results described in 2004 Science article including DNA fingerprinting analyses and photographs of cells have also been fabricated.

The dog is really a clone.

Egg donation ethics? Try this on:

Professor Hwang accompanied the student [who donating eggs, about which Hwang earlier claimed he had no idea] to the hospital himself. In May of 2003, Professor Hwang's research team circulated a form asking consent for voluntary egg donation and collected signature from female technicians. This is based on information provided by eight current and former lab members.

The committee takes it upon itself to proclaim that thanks to Hwang, "when it comes to animal cloning, with the added consideration for the successful cloning of a dog, Korea seems to be internationally competitive."

And there is the simple, clear statement by the committee as to the total nature of the fabrication, i.e., almost everything was utterly made up:

According to the records of Professor Hwang's research team regarding the stage of cell line establishment, the scientific bases for claiming any success are wholly lacking. The establishment of ES cell lines must meet the criteria of being able to differentiate through embryoid body formation or to form teratoma, for example. However, Professor Hwang's team regarded the initial formation of cell colony as the successful establishment of ES cell line, and no record of further confirmatory experiments could be found.

Taken together, Professor Hwang's research team possesses neither the patient-specific ES cell line described in 2005 publication nor the NT-1 ES cell line, the forerunner cloned cell line described in 2004 publication. The data in 2004 publication are also fabricated as can be seen by the non-match between the donor A and NT-1. Such act is none other than deceiving the scientific community and the public at large. Even the scenario based on switching cell lines cannot explain the parthenogenetically derived cell line and cannot undo the fabrication of DNA fingerprinting data.

And with that, hopefully, the Hwang matter will cease to be a font of unending insanity and become a cautionary tale about frontier science and its regulation.

posted Jan 10, 2006 | link | jump to the comments (15)

comments

I suspect there are conspiracy theories among the whole series of scandals.
From the previous lessons learned from South Korea government, this times they are too flat-out. Now Hwang Woo-Suk bears all the accusation, and the investigation committee accomplishes a good damage control and manifests the conscionable of the government. I expect next groundbreaking research paper. From Korean? very likely.

- by Stone on Jan 10, 2006 at 8:59 AM | link

Well, it is refreshing to see a leader being held responsible for wrongdoing for a change -- unlike the US prisoner abuse scandals.
I predict that part of the effort to avoid such abuses of research will involve entering Hwang into the research ethics lexicon, and perhaps popular speech. "He got Hwanged" could refer to being caught for research ethics abuses. "She's Hwanging it" could refer to the phenomenon of massaging data to fit interesting (and potentially fundable) conclusions. "He Hwanged himself" could mean the person painted him or herself into a corner with a string of publications containing falsified data. I wonder if any of this will tranlated into Korean.

- by Stuart Rennie on Jan 10, 2006 at 11:23 AM | link

Actually as Stone says here and McGee and Caplan have asserted elsewhere in the blog, can we trust the Korean Government putting all the blame on the "field commander" Hwang? Follow the money and the power behind the the Great Stem Cell Hub Leader.

- by robert b on Jan 10, 2006 at 2:21 PM | link

The official version of the summary can also be obtained from the university here.

- by Radagast on Jan 10, 2006 at 2:42 PM | link

Robert: no doubt the whole story goes beyond Hwang, to those who bankrolled him when things were looking just too good to question. I was just saying that at least the blame isn't just raining down on his assistants.

- by Stuart Rennie on Jan 10, 2006 at 3:19 PM | link

I can't seem to get to an English version at http://www.snu.ac.kr:. (see Radagast)
How come only Arabs can seem to translate Korean?

- by robert b on Jan 10, 2006 at 3:46 PM | link

Yes, Hwang should be blamed for what he done, and he already got blamed for more than what he should have.
Well, for some people, it's enough to know that Hwang's paper was fake and may think it's funny make cheap jokes out of it, but on the other hand, for some people it is important to reveal the real truth and not allowing people who holds the ultimate responsibility for the scandal to be get away with it.
It appears to me that what's happening on the Hwang's scandal is one who stole punishing the one who got stolen.
For thoes people who want to know the real truth, please wait and see how Hwang strikes back.
You ain't seen nothing yet.

- by corollarium on Jan 10, 2006 at 11:43 PM | link

Hwang today claims that he was the victim of whole conspiracy.

- by Stone on Jan 12, 2006 at 5:22 AM | link

And blames his junior researchers for sabotaging his research. Interesting. Is this how Hwang strikes back? I guess we will have to wait and see.

- by Stuart Rennie on Jan 12, 2006 at 1:03 PM | link

Who is blaming who?
What Hwang said, among many other things, was that point all the blames on him. He also said that he is willing to take full responsibility as the 1st author.
At the same time, he want to find out by whom, why, and how all these 'fabrication' and 'swiching of stem-cells' and etc had happened. Is that too much to ask? I think that's the right question what people and media should be asking as now Hwang takes his responsiblity as the 1st author.
I don't think lots of people especially who are critical of Hwang have any knowledge in Hwang's controversial work.
Put it simply, patient specific stem-cells involves two main techniques.
One is producing embryonic stem-cells, which was Hwang's role and then culture and induce them to patient specific stem-cells, which was MizMedi's role.
Now we all know that Hwang has the technology in producing embryonic stem-cells, but wheather MizMedi has their technology is not certain. It appears that MizMedi is too busy trying to 'kill' Hwang and they sure have the whole media to watch their back.
Ones who checked the DNA tests on the stem-cells and confirmed that it was the real patient specific stem-cells were researchers from MizMedi.
Hwang's fault here was that, as he admited, he did not have the lie detection device to run tests on every single researchers on the project every time when they reported results to him.
Hwang is already badly fu*ked up and I don't care wheather he makes his come back or not. But I do want to see him revealing - since nobodies are willing - how his papers went wrong and why his once believed to be the patient specific stem-cells are now found out to be the stem-cells from MizMedi.
I guess it's probably enough for outside of Korea to know that a Korean scientific paper was a fake and for them, it doesn't really matter how or who is involved because whoever that is, it would be still Korean anyway, right?
But, if you want to make a criticism on something, please make it based on the facts.

- by corollarium on Jan 12, 2006 at 11:15 PM | link

Corollarium: all your argument shows is that there was a division of labor in the research team that Hwang led. It does not by itself show that Hwang was deceived by others in the research team. That may turn out to be the case, maybe not. Hopefully we will see. By suggesting that Hwang was deceived by his collaborators, it is you that is running ahead of the available evidence. I think it is safe to say that Hwang's statements over the last weeks -- going the full range from flat denial to admission of wrongdoing -- make him an unreliable witness in his own defence. So hopefully third parties -- independent, impartial -- will be able to tease the truths from the non-truths of the affair. From the looks of it, it may take years.
"I guess it's probably enough for outside of Korea to know that a Korean scientific paper was a fake and for them, it doesn't really matter how or who is involved because whoever that is, it would be still Korean anyway, right?"
No, wrong. This is basically saying that anyone who does not take your point of view -- itself marked by speculation -- is a racist. If those who say they are committed to finding out the truth about this affair resort to this insulting level of argument, Hwang is in way more trouble than I thought.

- by Stuart Rennie on Jan 13, 2006 at 3:12 AM | link

I believe this science research mixed up with covetous human nature. Following is just my conjecture.
1. Mizmedi done some basic stem cell researches but not succeeded yet, Didnt even exist claimed by the head of Mizmedi hospital.
2. Hwang saw the great fortune in this field, so he revised and combined Mizmedis previous papers, fabricated some results, and published it.
3. Hwang gained huge profit and fame from domestic and world.
4. To release the pressure from the side-effect of all these fame, Hwang astringently pushed his researchers to accomplish more breakthrough.
5. Hwangs researchers started to feed him fake results, and Hwang seems didnt care about the truth before he released it to Science.
6. Some M people was fed up and was envious of Hwangs glory
7. The resentment began to simmer over.

- by Stone on Jan 13, 2006 at 7:10 AM | link

Stuart: I just wanted to say that I did not mean to bring up any sort of racism.
Although I agree with some of your points, I think you might understand that I'm running not too far ahead of the available evidence if you find out more truth about MizMedi.

- by corollarium on Jan 13, 2006 at 9:11 AM | link

Corollarium: fair enough, no harm done. Where can more reliable information about MizMedi be found?

- by Stuart Rennie on Jan 13, 2006 at 11:10 AM | link

Stuart: I actually searched the web for some english translated information about MizMedi but couldn't find much.
It is very true that for some reason all the mainstream media in Korea are extremly biased against Hwang, therefore their english versions of articles won't be helpful to see the real side of MizMedi. Unfortunately some media that seems taking a neutral stand and writing the both sides of the story based on the facts does not have english versions.
Well, if you have particular information that you want regarding the Hwang's scandal I'm happy to help you find it.

- by corollarium on Jan 14, 2006 at 12:45 AM | link