Thursday, December 29, 2005

Hwang is officially dead in the water

Continuing the travesty that is the rampant falsification from Hwang Woo-Suk, it turns out as I suspected that none of the 11 stem cell lines were real.
"The findings of three labs showed the number two and number three stem cell lines that needed confirmation with regard to the 2005 paper did not match with patient tissue cells and were found to be fertilised-egg stem cells of MizMedi Hospital," Roe said.
The same panel that last week determined that Hwang had falsified photos has now determined that the two remaining stem cell lines are non-existant. It turns out that the two remaining lines weren't even produced in Hwangs lab and were from a lab in Seoul hospital. Neither of these two stem cell lines were clones from a patient.

If the entire thing could get worse, it would be with the discovery of falsification in the snuppy paper. The whole thing will become the greatest example of scientific fraud and this is even considering last century I think.

Update: I found the original Reuters article and it looks like Snuppy could be a ray of light in the whole thing.
Hwang did receive a bit of good news when a DNA lab in Seoul, which is not part of the panel's investigation, said testing they performed had indicated Snuppy was an actual clone. But that was a small ray of light on another somber day for the scientist.
I'd certainly hope so.