Hwang Woo-suk’s Team Will Not Publicize or Re-enact Its Stem Cell Experiments

Seoul National University (SNU) professor Hwang Woo-suk’s research team said yesterday that there were no plans to re-enact its stem cell experiments in response to the recent controversy over the authenticity of its research.

Science, a prestigious scientific journal in the U.S., said that there was no problem scientifically since the photos of “patient-specific stem cells” extracted by Hwang’s team were not duplicated.

Kang Sung-keun, a SNU professor of veterinary medicine and a member of Hwang’s team, said that day, “We made a final decision from an internal meeting not to publicize and re-enact the process toward DNA fingerprinting,” adding, “Our official position is that verification of stem cells should be done naturally through following research outcomes.”

Lee Byeong-cheon, a SNU professor of veterinary medicine, also said, “What is urgent for us is to get our research, disrupted by the recent controversy, back on track,” stressing, “We are not considering publicizing or a re-enactment of our stem cell work.”

Meanwhile, Science announced that the duplication of some photos of Hwang’s stem cells posted onto the May 19 issue of the magazine’s Internet version were “errors in editing.”

The Internet version of the New York Times also reported that day, “After reviewing the initially submitted data, the journal Science confirmed that the 11 photos of stem cells attached to the supplementary data are all different.”

On December 5, a claim that some of the microphotographs included in the supplementary data of Hwang’s team’s paper were identical was posted on a Korean biotechnology-related website.

Kang said, “The journal Science said on December 6 through an e-mail message that it was error caused by sending falsely edited files, and that there was no problem with the research outcome.”

He also said, “Science said that, although the ‘final file’ sent on May 12 was falsely edited, the May 9 file contained the correct photographs,” adding, “It was an error committed in the process of arraying hundreds of photos of 11 stem cells.”

wolfkim@donga.com