Word: hwang
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Evidently, the risk-taking began in 2004, with Hwang's first major scientific paper on therapeutic cloning. In order to clone an adult, you need to put one of its cells into a human egg cell from which the nucleus has been removed. After electrical fusion and chemical activation, the egg can then start dividing, creating embryonic stem cells. (If left to mature, the embryo could eventually grow into a clone of the original adult--something no reputable scientist would let happen...
...because egg donation is a painful and potentially risky process, paying women to do it is considered a form of coercion. Indeed, the 2004 study said women had "voluntarily donated oocytes ... and no financial reimbursement in any form was paid." But last spring, two of Hwang's researchers let slip to a journalist working for Nature that they had donated their own eggs--which raised questions, since Hwang was their boss, about whether they had been coerced...
...allegations. The reporters interviewed many of the egg donors, some of whom said they had not been told they were part of a study, and confirmed that their eggs had been paid for. MBC was also hot on the trail of something even bigger: a tip that Hwang's 2005 Science paper might contain fraudulent data. To verify the allegations, MBC requested samples of the stem cells, which Hwang provided. Pursuing their lead, the journalists tracked down two of three researchers from Hwang's lab who had gone to the University of Pittsburgh to work with his American collaborator...
...group of young professors at S.N.U. upped the ante by demanding an investigation--a demand the university's president initially refused. But a week later Hwang, who had been hospitalized on and off for "stress and exhaustion," appeared publicly to announce that he was retracting the suspect Science paper. MBC's request for samples had led him to do a retest, and to his surprise, he said, they were invalid. His theory: someone had switched the samples when they were at MizMedi to be photographed (his lab didn't have the right microphotography equipment) and stored. Later he accused...
...turn, Kim has accused Hwang of asking him to forge the suspect photographs. Kim also says Hwang paid him a total of $30,000 (that Kim has returned to the university), which Hwang says was simply to cover Kim's living expenses in Pittsburgh. Korean press reports suggest that total payments to Kim and a colleague, Park Jong Hyuk, may amount to more than $50,000. These allegations are being investigated by Korean prosecutors...