Word: hwang
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After sequestering himself in a hospital psychiatric ward earlier this week, embattled South Korean cloning pioneer Woo Suk Hwang finally held a press conference on Friday. Before a packed room at Seoul National University, Hwang defiantly denied multiple allegations that he had fabricated the results of his history-making stem cell study published earlier this year in the journal, Science. During his lengthy statement, he blamed his compromised results on the possibility that his stem cell lines were switched at some point. He didn't elaborate on how or why the switch occurred...
...less than an hour later after Hwang's statement, his primary critic and former colleague, Dr. Roh SuNg-Il, held his own press conference. He accused Hwang of lying and told reporters: "A liar does not remember his previous lies...
...While Hwang defends his credibility, he admitted to making "a lot of mistakes" and being "negligent in maintaining the stem cells." He also asked Science to withdraw his paper because of these lapses may have compromised his data. Editors at Science confirmed that they have received requests from both Hwang and a co-author, Dr. Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, to withdraw the paper. The journal requires all 25 co-authors to agree to a retraction, and Hwang said the remaining requests were forthcoming...
...Despite the retraction, Hwang insists he will provide proof of his work in 10 days. Hwang maintains that he did create the groundbreaking stem cell lines from patients, and that he even provided them at the time to six researchers who can vouch for their authenticity. "What I can say for sure is that we did create patient-specific stem cells and we have source technologies to repeat them from scratch," he said, referring to the stem cells he cultured for the first time from 11 patients with diseases...
...Hwang did not specifically address the most serious charge which aired on the Korean network MBC-TV on Thursday night. In an interview, one of his junior researchers claimed that Hwang had asked him to turn two or three stem cell lines into 11 by photographing them repeatedly for submission to Science...