Scientist faked it all but cloned dog SEOUL, JANUARY 10: A team led by a once heralded and now disgraced South Korean scientist faked two landmark papers on embryonic stem cells but did produce the world’s first cloned dog, an investigation panel said on Tuesday.
The panel at Seoul National University told reporters data was fabricated in papers produced by the team led by scientist Hwang Woo-suk. It described the case as scandalous.
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Medical researchers say the episode — which has shocked and shamed many South Koreans who had dubbed Hwang a hero — is one of the biggest cases of scientific fraud in recent history.
The two papers finally debunked on Tuesday were a 2004 report on producing the first cloned human embryos for research and a 2005 paper on producing the first embryonic tailored stem cells. Both papers were published in the US Periodical Science.
‘‘Hwang’s team did not have the data for the stem cell lines in the 2004 paper, but fabricated it,’’ said Chung Myung-hee, the head of the panel.
‘‘We concluded that Professor Hwang’s team did not have patient-specific stem cell lines and did not have any scientific basis that the team made them,’’ the panel said.
The panel said DNA analysis proved a 2005 claim made by the team of producing the world’s first cloned dog, an Afghan hound named Snuppy, which is short for Seoul National University puppy.
In a finding likely to be seized on by Hwang supporters, the panel said the team had created a few human blastocysts, or early embryos, and that implied that ‘‘the team was in possession of a technique of creating cloned human blastocyst.’’
The Indian Express
