S. Korea Cloning Success Faked?

minus_273 writes "The BBC is reporting that it appears that the human cloning in Korea might have been faked." From the article: "At least nine of 11 stem cell colonies used in a landmark research paper by Dr Hwang Woo-suk were faked, said Roh Sung-il, who collaborated on the paper. Dr Hwang has agreed to ask the US journal Science to withdraw his paper on stem cell cloning, Mr Roh said ... Last month, Dr Hwang resigned from his main post as head of the World Stem Cell Hub, after it emerged that some of the eggs used in his research were donated by his staff - in contravention of international guidelines. Now it is some of the research itself which is being called into question."

Comments

How do you know?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you tell the FAKE clones apart from the REAL clones? Dont they all look alike???

Re:How do you know?

[Anonymous Coward]

The evil one has scratches on its face. That, or a goatee.

Re:How do you know?

[ChocoBean]

Goatee? But I thought Flexo was the good one =D

Re:How do you know?

[damsa]

The clone doesn't have a belly button.

More informative link

[Sockatume]

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8461

But questions over his data only surfaced last week, when Hwang told Science that the 2005 paper contains four instances in which the same photographs were mistakenly used to represent cells cloned from different patients.

In one case, one of two duplicated photographs is enlarged relative to the other.

In a second, one of two duplicated pictures is distorted by being enlarged to different extents along its horizontal and vertical axes, Science has confirmed. "This is a level of error beyond sending the wrong file," says Robert Lanza, who leads a rival cloning group at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Now questions are also being asked about DNA fingerprint plots in the paper. The plots were presented to demonstrate a match between nuclear DNA from the donors and the cells cloned from them. So they should look similar, with peaks at the same points. But a South Korean blog pointed out last week that in at least five of the matched plots, the peaks are also strikingly similar in shape and size - more so than would usually be expected if they came from different cells.

I don't beleive anything anymore

[abes]

I'm beginning to question whether Korea even really exists..

Oh the (cloned) humanity of it all..

Re:I don't beleive anything anymore

[Radres]

In Korea, only old people exist.

Irresponsible reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only on Slashdot that you see "S. Korea Cloning Success Faked" as the headline instead of, "S. Korea Cloning Success Possibly Faked".

They're going to go and redo all the experiments. All the stem-cell researchers want this, they don't want idiotic media speculation deciding the outcome.

Re:Irresponsible reporting.

[HD Webdev]

It's only on Slashdot that you see "S. Korea Cloning Success Faked" as the headline instead of, "S. Korea Cloning Success Possibly Faked".

Actually, if you RTA, you'll see that the subject line here uses the same wording as the BBC's subject line. It's extremely common for all mainstream news organizations to use imprecise headlines because those headlines often have to fit in a small area in print or on-screen for television.

Slashdot is not mainstream and can have longer subject lines so I do feel that "possibly" should have been added to it.

Looks as though ...

[paulxnuke]

when someone asks "Woo-suk" in Korea, the answer is going to be "Dr Hwang"

Isaac Asimov's dream must wait a while longer

[StefanJ]

"Oh give me a clone
  Of my own flesh and bone
  With the Y chromosome changed to X.

  And when I'm alone
  With my own little clone
  We'll think of nothing but sex."

Re:Isaac Asimov's dream must wait a while longer

[winkydink]

Makes hearing the words, "go fuck yourself" take on a whole new meaning

Donation of eggs by staff = bad?

[Gothmolly]

This will be used as a strawman for any of the arguments against them. "OMFG, they used their own eggs, that is teh bad, everyone says so!" Whether or not this "international guideline" is reasonable, of course, is moot. Whether they faked it or not will eventually become moot. The "immoral" aspects of using your own eggs will be blown totally out of proportion to its real impact on the process, its validity, and its methods.

Re:Donation of eggs by staff = bad?

[ed__]

yes, it is bad and discouraging it isn't exactly an onerous condition. the whole point is to avoid situations where pressure might be brought to bear on people who don't have a lot of power to refuse, regardless of whether there was coercion in any particular case. and you have to treat ethical lapses seriously, or else people get the idea that they don't matter if they don't do any "real" harm. the PI is responsible for making sure everyone understands the rules and plays by them.

in medical research it's of paramount importance to dot all the i's and cross all the t's and work methodically. even then there are lapses, but they are often easier to identify. plenty of really horrifying and morally repugnant things have occured in research history to warrant such hard-assed-ness.

Re:Donation of eggs by staff = bad?

[Kelson]

As I understand it, it's mainly that the subordinates donated the eggs. Even if all involved agree that he discouraged them from doing so (overtly, anyway), there's still a sense of "we need eggs -- hey, you have eggs!"

It's like rules about conflicts of interest. An individual may be perfectly able to set aside his emotional or financial stake and make city zoning decisions that affect his own property, or preside as judge over the trial of someone who used to beat him up in the elementary school playground. But when that happens, it's all too easy for someone else to claim bias, so guidelines are in place to keep people out of those situations.

Standards

[BananaPeel]

9 out of eleven results altered. Interestingly the scientific press are not interested in having the results verified they are just after blood. Of course there is a good reason for this in that it maintains standards but I would like to know if the two unaltered results are still valid and statistically of importance.

Re:Hang on

[Red Flayer]

" The cloning has not been proven 'fake' yet"

You're right. That's why TFA and TFS don't say that the the results have been proven a fake. But not proven != not true.

" I think it is only some of the 'morality' of the experiment that could be called into question so far."

No. RTFA. At the minimum, read TFS, since TFA is /.ed. There are pretty credible allegations of doctoring results, and the paper has been withdrawn.

Why 9 out of 11?

[dtfinch]

Is he not sure that the other two were faked?

Sensational but not factual yet

[austinpoet]

I am not involved with the research, but I read a report about the submission in Science and this issue of duplicated photos of the cell colonies a few weeks ago. The issue was that Science had asked for better high-res photos at the last minute and a mistake was made on what got sent to them.

They (Science) had already had the submission paper with lower res photos that were (supposedly) clearly different from each other. So while the version of the paper that was printed in Science clearly had duplicate photos representing different colonies, the original version of the paper/photos that Science had was not that way.

I think this is just more sensationalizm to further smear an already hurting scientist.

Wow...

[FlyByPC]

If it's true -- talk about having egg on your face!

Towards the End of the BBC Article...

[ndansmith]

Here is a very interesting portion of the article:

The BBC's Charles Scanlon in Seoul says the revelations have sparked a furious debate in the South Korean media.

Leading companies have pulled their advertisements from the television station that first revealed the reported problems with Dr Hwang's work.

Many commentators said it was unpatriotic to challenge someone who had given the country a lead in such a promising new area.

That is just scary. It is sad that a whistleblower, an advocate of truth, can be branded as "unpatriotic" for exposing a fraud. Once again nationalism and patriotism have overwealmed logic and common sense.

Re:Towards the End of the BBC Article...

[ed__]

thank god i live in america...*cough*

Re:Towards the End of the BBC Article...

[curb]

The BBC article barely touches upon the issue about the TV show, "PD Notebook". It involved investigative journalists who used threats and their interviewees and hidden cameras in order to try to bring down Koreans' view of Hwang as a "god". Living in Korea, this stuff is all over the news.

So while we know now that Hwang had violated research ethics, so too did the journalists violate their own ethics.

Nationalism in Korea is pretty rampant, but it has not overwhelmed logic here quite as you put it.

Google for "PD Notebook" and you'll see what I'm yammering about.

Re:A blow for science

[Red Flayer]

"Even if the paper was not faked, criticism will come from all sides, with questions ranging from the ethical standards/morality of scientists to the usefulness of the peer review process."

Why is this a bad thing?

Asking questions and challenging the status quo are the very foundations of science.

And if those ethical questions come up, why is that a problem? Or do you think ethical concerns should be swept under the rug?

Re: the peer review process, this is exactly what peer review is intended to do. Under peer review, the study results are not holding up. This is just an example of peer review working exactly as it should.

The problem, IMO, is that too many people take as truth that which hasn't been confirmed.

Re:Hang on

[DeepHurtn!]

With reference to this particular project, the moral questions have nothing to do with the morality of stem cell research itself. It has to do with the source of the material they were working with -- the head researcher's lab assistants. This is considered immoral for the same reason that teachers are not allowed to have sex with their students, even if the student is above the age of consent: someone in a subordinate position cannot make a truly free choice.

Scientific American: Hwang researcher of the year

[MasterC]

So I picked up this month's Scientific American and was reading the their "Scientific American 50" the other day and realized that they had named Hwang the "Research Leader of the Year".

If the allegations about fabricating and faking the data are true, then I'm curious what the editors at SciAm will do? Rename him to "Fraud Leader of the Year"?

Re:Foreign policy implications

[NaCh0]

With the current administration's decisions to ban research

You are not a stem cell researcher, or else you would know that stem cell research is not banned. You need to get your multibillion dollar corporation to pony up some cash instead of sucking on the Federal tit.

But hey, anything to get your troll modded up, huh?