Deception by Researchers Relatively Rare

"You do not need to do something highly sophisticated," said University of Maryland professor Adil E. Shamoo, editor in chief of the journal Accountability in Research. "Don't write something in a lab notebook. Take a cell culture and call it something else. Take the eggs you say you didn't take. If stem cells was not such a high-profile area, this would have gone undetected for years."

Hwang's crimes were similarly ordinary, say the Korean investigators who looked into his case.

Using DNA fingerprinting techniques, they discovered that the 11 stem cell colonies, or lines, that Hwang said he had derived from 11 patients were really just two lines, divided into multiple batches. Digital photographs of the two were manipulated to make it seem as though there were 11.

Additional tests showed that the cells came not from cloned embryos but from conventional embryos, made by standard fertilization of eggs by sperm.

To test the veracity of Hwang's earlier claim that he was the first to grow stem cells from a cloned human embryo, investigators took 23 samples of cells he said came from an embryo cloned from a woman.

The DNA patterns of all 23 should have matched the woman's. Instead, 12 had one DNA pattern, 11 had a different pattern, and neither matched the woman's.

Tests showed that the 11 had been derived from a conventional embryo taken from a nearby fertility clinic. DNA patterns of the other 12 indicated they came from another woman who had donated eggs. But no clone had been created. Instead, in an uncommon biological quirk, one of the woman's eggs had spontaneously produced daughter cells through a process known as parthenogenesis.

To complete the fraud, Hwang's team falsified DNA tracings to suggest that the stem cell DNA patterns were identical to those of the donor's. They simply submitted two identical DNA tracings from the donor, altered one just enough to make it look like a fresh tracing, and said one was hers and one was from the stem cells.

The episode has been a huge embarrassment, agree scientists, journal editors and others. But anyone who thinks it has stymied the controversy-hardened field of stem cell research need look no further than the pages of a recent issue of a free newspaper in Washington to know that is not true. "Which comes first . . . the egg or the cure?" asked an ad seeking women to donate eggs for stem cell research.

It was placed by Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Mass., a company that for years has been working to make stem cells from cloned human embryos. Melton's team at Harvard and at least one other in California are also close to entering the race.

Success is uncertain, but one thing is sure: Editors who screen eventual submissions will look for every trick in the book. They will publish the best of them -- and then, knowing the limits of their trade, they will hold their breath.