U.S. Stem Cell Researcher Rebuked

Panel Says Schatten Sought Gains but Did Not Falsify Data

Investigators at the University of Pittsburgh have concluded that Pitt faculty member and stem cell researcher Gerald P. Schatten committed "research misbehavior" by seeking personal, professional and financial gains from research being conducted by since-disgraced scientific colleagues in South Korea.

In a bluntly worded nine-page summary of its findings, released yesterday, a university panel concluded that Schatten "likely did not intentionally falsify or fabricate experimental data" -- the kind of misconduct that his colleagues in Korea were recently found to have committed.

The Pitt investigators also found no evidence that Schatten was aware of the fraud his co-workers in Korea were undertaking. And they expressed appreciation for Schatten's prompt reporting of his suspicions to various authorities as he became aware that the work he had contributed to was untrustworthy.

But in uncompromising language, the panel said Schatten "shirked" his responsibilities as a senior author on two seminal research papers he published with the Koreans; exhibited a "lack of oversight and critical judgment"; sought out the "media spotlight" when the research appeared to be going well and then made a "concerted and deliberate effort . . . to distance himself" when it became clear that trouble was afoot; and was "disingenuous" with the university investigators who interviewed him.

The report also revealed that Schatten "was not averse" to accepting generous personal payments from his prime Korean collaborator, the now-discredited Hwang Woo Suk of Seoul National University. Schatten accepted honoraria totaling $40,000 over a 15-month period, the report found, including a cash payment of $10,000 discreetly handed to him at a news conference last year.

When the scientific house of cards began to collapse last fall, Schatten was in the process of obtaining $200,000 from the Koreans to support his laboratory studies -- an amount, the report said, that Schatten had hoped would become an annual subsidy.

While these failings "would not strictly constitute research misconduct as narrowly defined by University of Pittsburgh policies" -- a definition that requires proof of falsification, fabrication or plagiarism -- "it would be an example of research misbehavior," the report concluded.

The panel recommended that the university administration "implement whatever corrective or disciplinary actions are commensurate with this finding." That puts Pitt's medical school dean, Arthur Levine, in the awkward position of deciding on the punishment for a faculty member he personally recruited in 2001 amid great fanfare -- and great expense, as he showered Schatten with millions of dollars in research resources.

The report encourages Pitt to revise its guidelines for ethical practices in research to leave no doubt that the kinds of activities Schatten undertook are unacceptable.

The findings constitute a major landmark in one of the more high-profile scientific fraud cases in history. In January, a Korean panel concluded that Hwang and perhaps others on his team had faked virtually all the data in a pair of papers published in the journal Science in 2004 and 2005. Those papers, which garnered intense public attention, purported to show for the first time that it was possible to produce with reasonable efficiency stem cells from cloned human embryos that were custom-designed to help patients who might benefit from them.

Hwang -- who at his peak was given the title of South Korea's "Supreme Scientist," was honored with the issuance of a postage stamp showing a patient stepping out of his wheelchair and enjoyed other perks, including a pass for unlimited first-class flights on Korean Airlines for 10 years -- was fired from Seoul National University this week. He faces criminal charges that include fraudulent use of government funds.

While Schatten did not participate directly in the faked research, serving instead as an adviser, translator and public relations mediator for his Korean co-workers, he accepted much of the fame and career benefits without taking the responsibility expected of a senior collaborator, the report found.

"He took the title of senior author but really didn't know what was going on with the data," said John Gearhart, a stem cell researcher at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.

Gearhart was one of several experts who yesterday questioned Pitt's novel term of art, "scientific misbehavior."

"I don't know what that means," agreed Donald Kennedy, editor in chief of the journal Science, which recently retracted the two papers central to the fraud.

"I think they were really wiggling to find something short of actual misconduct," Gearhart said.

Schatten has received federal funding for stem cell work. But because no federal money was involved in the fraudulent research, the federal Office of Research Integrity is not conducting a separate investigation into Schatten's dealings, Pitt spokeswoman Michele Baum said in an e-mail yesterday.