The committee designated to review ethical and scientific aspects of the landmark 2005 paper by Hwang and co-authors in Science has determined that the material was intentionally fabricated. Specifically, Reuters reports that the panel found that “key findings in their paper on producing tailored embryonic stem cells were fabricated.” The investigatory results are preliminary, awaiting confirmation from DNA testing that will also help determine the validity of the two remaining cell colonies.
But only two of Hwang’s 11 claimed stem-cell lines existed when he submitted his landmark 2005 paper to the journal Science magazine, said Roe Jung Hye, dean of research of affairs at Seoul National University said during a press briefing today. AP:
“Based on these facts, the data in the 2005 Science paper cannot be some error from a simple mistake, [and] cannot be but seen as a deliberate fabrication to make it look like 11 stem-cell lines using results from just two,” the university panel said.
Schatten remains silent as does Pitt.
Hwang has resigned as professor at the University. AP quotes him: “I sincerely apologize to the people for creating a shock and disappointment,” Hwang told reporters as he was leaving his office at Seoul National University, according to the AP. “As a symbol of apology, I step down as professor of Seoul National University.”
“There is sufficient evidence that results were deliberately manipulated, and Professor Hwang accepts this at some level,” Roe said. “We don’t think that the data in the 2005 Science study were incorrect because of simple mistakes.”
It is now clear that there was systematic manipulation and worse yet invention of data in this article. That the SNU panel was able to reach this conclusion so quickly is the precise analog of a quick verdict from a jury in a criminal trial: their comments are to the effect that evidence concerning the cell lines was enough to immediately relay their conclusion – unanimous and to the detriment not only of Hwang but of the University – that Hwang has falsified data. Specifically, Forbes writes that:
At issue are two vital photographs that Hwang used to illustrate his breakthrough claim. They appear identical to photos of stem cells that appeared in 2003 in the journal Molecules and Cells in an article describing a routine experiment.
Marmot’s hole is covering all of the Korean papers as they release additional details.
With that in mind, Hwang’s response to accusations of misconduct now seems extraordinary. He has slowly relayed one confession after another, each preceded by an all-too-lengthy period of “internal investigation” and abject denials of wrongdoing.
Bloomberg reported on December 16th that Dr. Hwang has “denied local media reports he falsified results of a stem cell study published in the Journal Science in May.” China Daily reported that same day, “However, at the televised news conference, the professor admitted some of the cloned embryonic stem cells in his research were contaminated and it was impossible to keep them alive.”
And as Rick Weiss tells it,
Roh called his own televised news conference after Hwang’s, in which he called Hwang a “liar” looking for a scapegoat. Hwang “tries to beat truth with hypocrisy and cheap tricks,” Roh was quoted as saying in the International Herald Tribune. “Dr. Hwang is a narrow-minded man who doesn’t have the courage to admit that his paper was made with fabrication.”
Hwang’s claim in the most recent conference and in subsequent testimony to the committee was as follows:
“The fact remains that our research team was successful in creating stem cells from patients’ skin cells. Still, there were mistakes made, human errors, in taking photographs and in the preservation of the stem cells.”
Is this dissembling? Yes. But his description of what he was successful in doing in the 2005 study amounts to nothing more than he reported in his 2004 article.
The more important problem is that he is blaming his peers. AP reports that “Hwang alleged [in the news conference] that five of his stem cell colonies had been replaced with those produced by Mizmedi, and called for law enforcement authorities to investigate how that happened.” Rick Weiss and Joohee Cho quote Hwang from the press conference: “I am suspecting that my [personalized] cells may have been replaced by MizMedi’s cells,” Hwang said. “I am truly concerned as to who did such a thing like this for what purpose.” Interesting. I suppose it could be true. In view of the announcement from the SNU panel that seems incredibly unlikely. In which case it would be libelous and perhaps worse.
But even if there is truth in the claim, it is the second such “tit for tat” reply from the Hwang group, offered up in the most inappropriate way possible – first they seeded the story that Schatten had pulled out of the World Stem Cell Bank just moments after he was denied ownership of some intellectual property and directorship over that Korean endeavor, and now they allege criminal wrongdoing by the hospital where the co-author on the article who blew the whistle is based and is chairman of the board – and make the claim only now, as though they would only have noticed these irregularities yesterday.
Here is a summary of the recent events in the Korea matter:
Thursday the 15th opened with a South Korean account that became this Reuters story:
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s most renowned stem cell scientist fabricated key parts of a ground-breaking paper and is seeking to have the work withdrawn, a close collaborator told South Korean media on Thursday.
The daily newspaper Hankyoreh and three South Korean television networks quoted Roh Sung-il as saying that he, stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk and another co-author of the landmark 2005 Science paper on tailor-made stem cells had notified the journal that they were withdrawing the paper.
“Professor Hwang admitted to fabrication,” Roh said in an appearance on MBC television. Roh, a specialist in fertility studies, was referring to a meeting he had with Hwang earlier in the day.
More detail and more vivid from OhmyNews
According to sources Prof. Hwang’s confession verified the fact that actually nine of the 11 stem cells referred to in the paper did not actually exist, and were actually invented by Hwang himself with the knowledge of only three others in his laboratory.
According to reports by the media here, Hwang had ordered one of the junior scientists in his lab team to have three original stem cells and DNA fingerprint samples duplicated and then doctored so as to make it look like there were in fact 11 cells that were a success in their research.
American media is nonplussed by this story, both in terms of its ethical implications and as a CSI-like problem of forensics, which is odd given that it is as animated and preposterous as the disappearance of Natalee Holoway. The nation’s best science writers have done their level best in the two weeks before the end of 2005 to bring the story into the public debate but most Americans know virtually nothing about the matter but that Hwang resigned.
The key questions in the public discussion of the Korean matter seem likely to involve a billion versions of: “Will ethical lapses in this lab damage stem cell research elsewhere?”
Answer: yes. And no amount of late-in-the-day standards creation will change that. People are going to ask whether the mechanisms whereby stem cell money is doled out have to be made much more rigorous. And yet again, the U.S. government will be zero help, since our rule for how to fund stem cell research is based on the altogether stupid idea that some tiny collection of embryonic stem cells in Wisconsin are ok in terms of ethics and money, but anything made after August 9, 2001 is evil and not to be funded.
It is a policy that makes our tax code look brilliant by comparison, and it illustrates just how dangerous the present regulatory environment really is.
That things were headed this way was obvious from the moment that the first Chronicle of Higher Education piece came out on the matter, in which Jon Moreno and I both said as much.
How we got here
Either way the outcome of the present debate comes at the end of a long trajectory. A lab assistant had already made the claim that slides were fabricated, introducing that word to the conversation. Dr. Schatten’s request to come off of the paper suggested this was likely coming. Nick Wade covered that carefully.
In several posts including this one we have reviewed the overarching issues that recur in this case. As has the great Scientific American blog. . Science posted an utterly comprehensive account of the matter from their perspective. The blogosphere is filled now with interesting characterizations of the situation. See for example The Business of America is Business description.
Our argument: U.S. Support of stem cell research is the only way to prevent this from recurring
We made this argument in the Caplan & McGee column, much to the consternation of our friend Richard Doerflinger, who is so apoplectic about our claim that US intervention through funding is necessary to prevent this kind of meltdown, that he slams our article for getting a name wrong.
But to paraphrase Doerflinger, the facts are the facts: if there was ever a case for the US to get serious about international efforts to participate in the international conversation concerning therapies that will come to the FDA, I have not seen it.
And, for what it is worth, CAMR agrees with our position on the relationship between the US funding situation and our regulatory role. Its president Daniel Perry issued this statement today:
The validity of a paper, published in the journal Science, that demonstrated the extraction of stem cells from cloned human embryos has now been called into question. We fully support an investigation into these allegations and support the scientific community in calling on the authors to cooperate with them in conducting independent tests of the cell lines.
Despite this apparent setback, the field of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning remains incredibly promising as demonstrated by some of our nations leading scientists.
This is just another reason that this field of research should be allowed to be conducted in the U.S. under the strict supervision of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and its stringent peer-review system.
The position of Science
Bloomberg reports on what Science is doing in terms of asking Hwang what in the world is going on. Previous pieces have pointed to Science‘s reply to Gerald Schatten’s request to be removed from the paper – they essentially say that in asking to be removed from the paper he may very well raise questions about what he himself should have known or did know, questions he now needs to answer alongside the rest of the authors rather than being in a category apart and above. As a Saturday Times piece puts it:
The journal said Friday that it had agreed to the request. “Science’s stated policy is that all authors must agree to any retraction,” it said in a statement, “and Dr. Hwang has assured us that he is contacting his co-authors. Science editors will honor the authors’ request and assist them in preparing a retraction.”
But Kennedy said in the Press call on Friday afternoon that Hwang had ‘days or weeks and certainly not months’ to get all 24 co-authors to agree on the retractions.
If the data is bad, should Science really honor a request from anyone before it decides based on its own investigation that this is the case, and if there is in fact malicious misrepresentation then perhaps the authors – none of them – should have that option. The key though in my mind is maliciousness. If there is fraudulent data here then the real ethics problem is that the researchers will have been proven to be engaged in a cover-up that rises to the level of international, inter-institutional conspiracy and crime – and it may well involve not only fraud and malpractice but also violations of securities rules involving intellectual property.
The effect on South Korea
Bloomberg reports that the government of Korea is thinking about pulling the money – not just the $20 million a year from Hwang’s lab but from stem cell research toward other endeavors. South Korea has put nearly $65 million into the Hwang lab since 1998.
This scandal has hit Korea like a bomb, with people in mid-December watching the news in train stations speechlessly waiting to see what could go wrong next.
Some have tired of it though. Korea Times reports that in working class bars in Seoul there is a new drink devoted to the matter:
Dubbed the “Hwang Woo-suk poktanju,” it involves creating 11 drinks and numbering them 2 to 12. Of these, all except No. 2 and 3 are made just with beer with an empty shot glass inside … a parody of Professor Hwang’s 11 stem cell lines of which all except for Nos. 2 and 3 are alleged to be faked. The empty shot glass represents the alleged “fakeness.”
“While it is fun to engage in such parody, a part of us is in shock and disappointment over the allegations that Hwang’s work may be fake,” said a 40-year-old man.
The culture of drinking “poktanju” arose out of a desire for people to get drunk quickly and open up to each other away from the reserved atmosphere prevalent in Korean workplaces.
And in the U.S., post-mortem stories on the role of Korean culture in the whole scandal; we link to one of those in our Bad Apples post.
Any way you slice it Korea is losing its first major biomedical science program.
And while it is only barely emerging, one can see now that Korea is turning – angry and betrayed – on Hwang. The first sign of that, I’d say, was the moment on the 16th when Korean newspapers started to preface descriptions of him as “a 53-year old veterinarian,” a practice that spread like wildfire through the wire stories that week. A very different description from “leading stem cell researcher,” or even Time Magazine’s description of his training in their award to him of “person who mattered 2004.”
The Government is careening:
The Ministry of Science and Technology, which has strongly supported the embattled Hwang, held an emergency meeting to discuss how to deal with the scandal…”Its shocking, [government official] Kang Tae-chin, 33, told Yonhap News Agency. “I thought that the stem cells are in researchers safekeeping. But theyre not. I cant believe that.”
UPDATE – it now looks like the Ministry as well as others will itself be subjected to investigations for its lack of oversight.
But the Korean government cannot complain about the effect of this controversy. It is shameful that it took so long to for the government shift its focus from intellectual property leaking out of the lab and on backing Hwang’s effort prior to initiating either an investigation or pushing Seoul National to do so. 
What is Happening Now
The details of the matter continue to emerge. But the general picture is getting clear. There are those who believe as does our David Magnus that “The fact that he lied about the ethical questions was serious,” but lying to the journal about the allegations “was an egregious breach.” There are those who hold that the key issues here involve the money, lack of regulation, conflicts of interest, and misconceptions held by donors, government and the people of Korea about what this research could do – misconceptions that led to giving one man too much lattitude. And there are those who believe that the evils of detroying embryos could only lead to such an outcome, a ‘greater evil’. We’ve made our argument – whatever the cause and whatever the sin there is only one way for the problem to be fixed and that is US funding of stem cell research with concomitant ethical standards the world is forced to either meet or forgo the US market for its drugs and devices.
Acknowledgements: More than two dozen calls and emails have poured in from scientists, reporters in Korea and the US to help or correct us. Thanks from all of us go to Science, who are stuck in the midst of this whole soap opera of course, for their comments about this blog in the current issue of the journal. It’s not every day a blog appears in Science and Nature in the same week, and it isn’t like we can quit our day jobs to try to live up to notices like that. And Scientific American, who are doing the lion’s share of covering this story (although they are too nice to admit it), have been kind to us about any help we might provide, “… The American Journal of Bioethics‘ Blog has done an outstanding job in covering not just the facts of this case but also what the ramifications for science might be.”
13th Update; 12:05 AM December 27; No more updates to this post; see our main page for regular and hopefully far far shorter updates; among the best Korean blogs and by far the best coverage of the situation from a Korean perspective in the English language is Marmot.