Disgraced scientists makes unintended breakthrough...!

[Che Guava]

...too bad he'd already been stripped of his position and research grants...!

Shamed scientist's 'breakthrough'


A scientist who faked his research may have actually made a groundbreaking advance - without even realising it.

South Korean Woo Suk Hwang became famous after claiming to have extracted the world's first stem cells from a cloned embryo.

It emerged he had lied about his work, and the source of the cells.

But analysis in the journal Cell Stem Cell reveals he may have produced stem cells from human eggs alone - potentially even more useful.

The Hwang episode, uncovered in 2005, is one of the most notorious scientific scandals of recent times.

His work at Seoul National University earned him the status of national hero, and even led to his face appearing on a set of commemorative stamps.

Unethical eggs

Hwang said that he had created cloned human embryos by placing the nucleus from the cell to be cloned into a "hollowed out" human egg, then managed to extract stem cells from the resulting embryos.

Scientists are excited about the potential of stem cells because they are the body's "master cells", with the potential to become any cell type in the body, perhaps replacing those lost through ageing or disease.

However, it later became clear that he had used eggs from young female researchers at his laboratory to create the embryos, itself a major ethical breach - and that the resulting stem cells did not come from cloned embryos.

With his research discredited, he was dismissed from his post at the university, and charged with fraud and embezzlement.

The latest twist came from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in the US, who looked closely at his data, and found the cells were actually from a different type of embryo.

'Virgin birth'

Researchers said that the distinct "genetic fingerprint" of the stem cells means they may be the first in the world to be extracted from embryos produced by the so-called "virgin birth" method, or parthenogenesis.

This happens when eggs are stimulated into becoming embryos without ever being fertilised by sperm, and has been achieved in animals.

However, before Hwang, no one had managed to produce a human embryo using parthenogenesis which lived long enough to allow the extraction of viable stem cells.

Dr George Daley, who led the analysis, said: "Unfortunately at the time they published their work they did not know what they had done so they had mistakenly isolated these parthenogenic embryonic stem cells, and yet misrepresented them as true clones.

"In fact they had produced the world's first patient-specific embryonic stem cell, and that is very valuable.

"Scientists interested in modelling complex diseases would like to be able to move a patient's own cells into a petri dish in their embryonic form."

'More useful'

Professor Azim Surani, from the University of Cambridge, has carried out years of experiments to produce parthenogenetic stem cells from mice.

He said Hwang had probably inadvertently stimulated the human eggs to begin dividing while trying to produce cloned embryos.

Professor Surani said Hwang's unwitting step forward might actually prove more useful than efforts to clone human embryos, which he had claimed fraudulently.

"I've always promoted the idea that efforts should be made to produce embryos from human eggs - it is far less ethically challenging, and the efficiency of these cell lines is likely to be higher than those produced from cloned embryos," he said.

However, scientists do not know how significant the lack of contribution from the father's DNA will be.

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Well aint that a kick in the pants: if he had just kept his mouth shut and looked at his own faked data more closely, he could have still been a national hero...!

 

[Urederra]

Yeah, but he could have been under pressure. You have to report what you have done to the people granted you money, show results and send the papers you published. Sometimes you just can't say "wait for another couple of years, I think I have something big".

I am not defending Hwang and what he did But I blame how science is being done these days. Staying on top in science is very difficult, it is not like in Einstein's times. You have to publish, otherwise you'll lose your grants and your position. "Publish or perish" is the motto nowadays.

Anyway, it seems to be a big discovery.

 

[C~G]

Is that Good bad luck or Bad good luck, or just Bad bad luck?

I agree with Urederra. Nowadays you don't only have to show progress but results with your science and quite often also practical implications of it in order to able to continue the work.

Some people even scientific community see this kind of competition being good thing and that the free market of competiting ideas will bring more results and wíll be more efficient than trying to make the people relax on their field. I think it takes it toll with quite many of the people in science. I don't work myself on the field but I have seen that happening from quite close range.

And what comes to the publishing is that many have just pressure to publish something instead of publish something profound and since the former takes lot less time than the latter, the result is quite often publishments that aren't so much different from all the other work. Of course there are also the plagiarism etc.

No need to defend this fellow, his accidental finding is however actually quite funny though...

 

[Che Guava]

Too true: competition and the pressure to show results is making frauds like this a lot more common, and it's a real shame, as science is as much about finding unanticipated effects as it is demonstratingpreconceived theories. Maybe if Hwang hadn't been under so much pressure he could have taken the time to recheck results and notice the breakthrough that he made. I still don't have much sympathy for him (with a pre-fraud reputation like his, it should not have been a problem to find other sources of cash), but I think the present state of scientific research needs a good look at as well...

 

[Mr. Blonde]

Yeah, but he could have been under pressure. You have to report what you have done to the people granted you money, show results and send the papers you published. Sometimes you just can't say "wait for another couple of years, I think I have something big".

I am not defending Hwang and what he did But I blame how science is being done these days. Staying on top in science is very difficult, it is not like in Einstein's times. You have to publish, otherwise you'll lose your grants and your position. "Publish or perish" is the motto nowadays.

Anyway, it seems to be a big discovery.

You are spot on.
Some of my thoughts (for funding in Central Europe) as proud owner of a Dr. techn. title in Chemistry:

There must be a stock of public funding with certain parameters the research groups have to meet (output on PhDs and masters). Every PhD has to have a guaranteed financing from University, not as now where they are paid from funded projects.
I know people that were funded 1 year (professor said it was 3 when they started), then the money was finished and they were sent into unemployment - but still worked full time for their PhD (of course they want to finish). Then they were employed when the research group got the next project with a completely unrelated topic, ect.
To make it short: PhDs are seriously exploited at the moment and there is no chance to get a coherent thesis and real expertise on a topic - which a PhD should be about.

On publications: Current publication focused funding forces people to put out a large quantity of papers. Many reviewers don´t have the time to do their job in detail. Many research groups publish the exactly the same content in 2-3 different journals; publications are made with just a iota of progress compared to previous ones and on some 8 pages publication you will see 6-7 authors (sure..they all did essential work for this publication ) so everyone gets their quantities. I also realised many newer publications were missing vital data to reproduce their results. They want to protect their knowledge, of course, but that is not the sense of science.
Summary: much crap is around, even in high impact journals (>3). Of course, I also did my 3 publications during my thesis in >3 journals, but at least I did not reuse data between them like so many others.

 

[frob2900]

The publish or perish thing is absolutely awful.

I supposed it's tied to the fact that there needs to be some concrete yardstick to measure researchers "progress", and what better yardstick than the number of publications? It's a number, right? Perfect.

It sometimes makes me think of the old Soviet system, where the success of a factory was only measured by the numerical output of units they produced, and not by quality or even failure rate.

 

[Jawz II]

Woo Suk Hwang

 

[innonimatu]

You are spot on.
Some of my thoughts (for funding in Central Europe) as proud owner of a Dr. techn. title in Chemistry:

There must be a stock of public funding with certain parameters the research groups have to meet (output on PhDs and masters). Every PhD has to have a guaranteed financing from University, not as now where they are paid from funded projects.
I know people that were funded 1 year (professor said it was 3 when they started), then the money was finished and they were sent into unemployment - but still worked full time for their PhD (of course they want to finish). Then they were employed when the research group got the next project with a completely unrelated topic, ect.
To make it short: PhDs are seriously exploited at the moment and there is no chance to get a coherent thesis and real expertise on a topic - which a PhD should be about.

That's also happening in Western Europe, getting funding is hard, there's the risk of losing it halfway through a project, and researchers usually have terrible management skills, making it all worst. Personal friendships and rivalries also play a big part in a project's funding - when the funds are public they are usually controlled by former researchers more interested in maintaining their influence than in actually supporting promising work.

And what probably made it all worst over the past two decades or so is that PhD's are now a dime a dozen - lots or would-be researchers competing for limited funding. Longs hours and lousy pay, I'm glad I didn't went that route.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

That's also happening in Western Europe, getting funding is hard, there's the risk of losing it halfway through a project, and researchers usually have terrible management skills, making it all worst. Personal friendships and rivalries also play a big part in a project's funding - when the funds are public they are usually controlled by former researchers more interested in maintaining their influence than in actually supporting promising work.

And what probably made it all worst over the past two decades or so is that PhD's are now a dime a dozen - lots or would-be researchers competing for limited funding. Longs hours and lousy pay, I'm glad I didn't went that route.

The bolded part is true, but payment is really secondary because you get a qualification that earns you money afterwards. I sometimes questioned wether it was the right solution to continue. I knew I had the skills (which proved right) to pull it off, and I got a 4 years contract from university as scientific staff which meant some laboratory tutoring and administrative work parallel to my PhD work but guaranteed payment and lots f freedom concerning research. It was not so much the workload or self-motivation that nagged on me, but other things like offices that need a renovation since 20 years, non-project money being cut so it is out in July latest, poor computer equipment, instruments (essential for my work in analytical chemistry) outdated + breaking down every couple of months and in repair for just as long,ect.
I second that many of the research staff, especially at professor and assistant professor level have poor management skills, but they are hired because they have science skills and can teach. They are at the moment overload with administration because of the neccessity to negotiate and acquire external funding. A good solution would be to generate an intermediate layer at institute level that manages the administration and funding to give scientific people more breathing room.
In essence: Uni doesn´t see me again although I like the work. I have rather a job where my work feels valued (and with that I do not mean the payment alone) and the air is not thick with desparation.

 

[Bill3000]

Science should go back to the day in which the search for knowledge is of the first and foremost priority - not application of knowledge.

 

[azzaman333]

Intentionally mis-reporting your results is a stupid thing to do.

 

[GenMarshall]

Unintended Breakthroughs are nothing new.

Look at the discovery of penicillin. It was a result of dirty lab equipment just piled in a sink .