Stem Cell Fraud Worries U.S. Scientists

"Probably the strongest research oversight system in the world is at the National Institutes of Health, but they are pretty much on the sidelines" because of restrictions imposed by President Bush in 2001, said Sean Tipton, president-elect of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, which supports stem cell research. "If you don't allow the best American scientists to do the best -- and best overseen -- research, you force it overseas and into the private sector, and this is the result."

The research journal Science, which published this year's headline-making paper by Hwang as well as a similarly historic stem cell study by Hwang in 2004, said yesterday that it is continuing in its effort to get a full explanation from all the newer paper's authors -- a crucial step toward officially retracting the paper.

The journal said it is also checking the 2004 paper for possible fraud. And the journal Nature said it is doing the same for an August 2005 report in which Hwang claimed to have cloned an adult dog, a major first -- if true.

It may not stop there. A scientist who has served as a reviewer for research reports submitted to lesser-known journals said in an interview yesterday he has found evidence suggestive of fraud in at least one other paper submitted by scientists at Seoul National University -- a paper on which Hwang was not an author.

"It's clear to me that some of these shenanigans extend beyond Woo Suk," the reviewer said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because reviewers are supposed to remain anonymous.

Scientists, ethicists and others said that it can be almost impossible to detect a well-crafted scientific deception -- at least at first -- but added that greater safeguards are worth considering in the aftermath of the Korean scandal.

Several scientists have noted, for example, that the Hwang laboratory was a highly compartmentalized one, resembling a factory assembly line more than the hive of communication typical of an American lab. When each scientist is aware of and responsible for just a small part of the project, several said, it is easier for someone to fake or misuse a result without anyone else on the team knowing about it.

Scientists and journal publishers are also reassessing the wisdom of allowing a researcher to append his or her name to a report as a "senior author" without having been an integral participant in the research.

That was the case with Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, who was the sole American on the 2005 report. Schatten did not contribute to the science but was listed as senior author and shared in the ensuing fame for serving as an "adviser" to the Koreans. He recently tried to extricate himself from the disaster by asking Science to take his name off the paper.

Science declined, saying that senior authors have a responsibility to know what is going on, and the university has launched an investigation of its own.