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South Korean policy failure and the Hwang debacle

Nature Biotechnology volume 24, pages 141–143 (2006)Cite this article

Poor national mechanisms for accountability, competition, transparency and ethical oversight allowed Hwang Woo-Suk's descent into ethical, and ultimately scientific, misconduct.

Today, only a few months later, following confirmation that all of the 11 claimed cell lines were crude fakes and that Hwang committed gross ethical violations in securing egg donations, South Korea's ambitious stem cell research program is in tatters, the cloning king Hwang is dethroned and his paper retracted by the editor of Science2. South Korea's science minister and the chairman of the country's newly created Bioethics Committee have resigned after being implicated in the Hwang scandal. Never before has a case of scientific misconduct been more widely reported in the popular press. Hwang's disgrace has sent aftershocks across the world. Commentators are questioning the validity of scientific peer review and floating proposals for its reform. Journal editors are being accused of sacrificing judicious assessment of manuscripts in the quest for the next big story. The pace and competitiveness of biomedical research are portrayed as increasingly out of control, driving scientists toward questionable practices and even fraud.

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References

  1. Hwang, W.-S. et al. Science 308, 1777–1783 (2005).

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Acknowledgements

This article is based on interviews undertaken in Korea in early November 2005. H.G. is supported by a grant from the UK Economics and Social Research Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. department of political science, the University of Vienna, and at the BIOS center of the London School of Economics,

    Herbert Gottweis & Robert Triendl

  2. Translational Research, Inc., Tokyo

    Herbert Gottweis & Robert Triendl

  3. RIKEN Research Center for Allergy and Immunology (RCAI), 1-7-22, Suehiro-cho, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama-city, 230-0045, Japan

    Herbert Gottweis & Robert Triendl

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  1. Herbert Gottweis
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Gottweis, H., Triendl, R. South Korean policy failure and the Hwang debacle. Nat Biotechnol 24, 141–143 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0206-141

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0206-141

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