Molecular Biology | BioSciBlog

Human embryonic stem cells A: Cell colonies that are not yet differentiated. B: Nerve cell.Image via Wikipedia

A new website,aptly named Scientific Red Cards,has been set up to take inventory of scientific publications for which research misconduct has been assessed.The database is based on user contributions,with the focus being on fraudulent articles and not scientists.

According to a note in Nature, one in three scientists confesses to having misbehaved in the past three years.Few will forget the case of Woo Suk Hwang,a South Korean stem cell researcher, who in 2006 was found to have falsely claimed to have cloned eleven patient- specific embryos in a scientific paper .The storm that followed set back the field of therapeutic cloning and eroded public trust in science.However, in a twist if fate, it was later found that Hwang and his team had managed to produce stem cells-just not through cloning-but instead through a process called parthenogenesis.Scientists have long hoped to use parthenogenesis to produce stem cells.

‘In parthenogenesis, an unfertilized egg is stimulated to start dividing as if it had been joined by sperm. It develops for a while under the control of its own DNA. Some species, such as sharks, can reproduce that way. ‘However human eggs can’t develop long enough to make a baby.

In cloning,an egg’s DNA is removed and replaced with genetic material from a person. It is then stimulated, as in parthenogenesis, but it develops under the control of the donor’s DNA rather than its own DNA.

In the discredited 2004 paper, Hwang and his co-authors addressed the possibility of parthenogenesis. They wrote that they couldn’t completely rule it out, but they presented evidence to support their claim of cloning.So what happened? Were they fooled or did they deliberately lie?The answer is that we don’t know and may never know…

References

http://www.scientificredcards.org/content/about

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/hwang/index.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20090129/

Further Reading

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10589085/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-Suk#

http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55879/

http://sciyo.com/