Here is a perfect example of why the safety and cheating culture that is pervasive in South Korea is so hard to change:
In this Sept. 5, 2014 photo, Ryu Young-joon speaks during an interview at Kangwon National University Hospital in Cuncheon, South Korea. Ryu, the whistle-blower who exposed breakthrough cloning research as a devastating fake says South Korea is still dominated by the values that allowed science fraudster Hwang Woo-suk to become an almost untouchable national hero. (AP Photo/Joyce Lee)
The whistleblower who exposed breakthrough cloning research as a devastating fake says South Korea is still dominated by the values that allowed science fraudster Hwang Woo-suk to become an almost untouchable national hero.
In an interview with The Associated Press after almost a decade of silence, Ryu Young-joon, one of Hwang’s former researchers, said the cost of telling the truth still weighs on him but he doesn’t regret his decision to out Hwang as a false prophet.
The revelations in 2005 rocked South Korea which had celebrated Hwang’s research as a historic achievement, focused unfavorable attention on the country and diminished the reputation of its scientific establishment. The memory of the scandal is still painful today and Hwang, though convicted of embezzlement and violating bioethical laws, discredited and relegated to the scientific backwater of pet cloning, retains a loyal following among sections of the public and media.
In the nearly 10 years since Hwang’s accomplishments were found to be built on lies, Ryu feels little has changed in a society where cozy ties between government, business, the media and academics stifle criticism and foster blind nationalism. And junior researchers still face great pressure to produce the results their scientific mentors want and lack a formal channel for whistleblowing.
South Korea, said Ryu, is still obsessed with joining the ranks of advanced countries and to achieve that end, many people believe it is acceptable to sacrifice ethics, safety and other concerns.
“Mr. Hwang is not a peculiar person. He is a portrait of us. He shows the South Korean society as it is,” Ryu said. “Most people believe that if we play by the rules, we can’t catch up with the advanced economies.” [Associated Press via the Korea Economic Reader]
You can read the rest at the link, but what I find ironic about South Korean society being so caught up in catching up with advanced economies is that South Korea already is an advanced economy. The country economically has caught up and now it is time for Korean culture to change to realize this.
What is really sad about this is that Ryu instead of being thanked for exposing this fraud nearly a decade ago was demonized and lost his job. Even after learning of the fraud the then Roh Moo-hyun administration tried to cover it up. After the fraud could not be covered up, many Koreans still viewed Hwang as a national hero instead of the fraud that he was.
You can read more about Hwang’s fraud by digging back into the ROK Drop archives at the below links:
The New York Times had nice overview article about the whole stem cell controversy involving Dr. Hwang Woo-suk. A couple of things in the article did jump out at me. First of all how much did the Roh Administration know about the forgery before the MBC report?:
An indication of Dr. Hwang’s good connections to the government was the inclusion of Dr. Park Ky Young as a co-author of his 2004 report on human cloning. A botanist by training, Dr. Park may not have contributed much scientifically to the task of cloning of human cells. She is, however, the science adviser to Roh Moo Hyun, the president of South Korea.
Did Dr. Park know what was going on and maybe this is why the government was trying so vigorously to discredit the MBC report?
Here is the other thing I found interesting:
“Clearly the scientific credibility of Korean investigators has been compromised,” said Dr. John Gearhart, a stem cell expert at Johns Hopkins University and a member of Science’s board of reviewers. He referred to the fact that duplicate and misidentified photos had turned up in articles by other South Korean authors besides Dr. Hwang.
This just makes me curious about what other cases of scientific fraud has been published by Korean scientists. Is this a systematic problem in Korea or are Korean cases of scientific fraud similar to the amount of fraud cases in western countries?
Just when you thought things couldn’t get stranger in the Dr. Hwang case, now fellow cloning hoaxers and the alien loving Raelian cult has offered Dr. Hwang a job:
The U.S. biotech firm Clonaid has sprung to the rescue of the embattled cloning scientist Hwang Woo-sook with an offer to join a research partnership at its secret research facility. Clonaid was founded by the Raelian Movement, a cult-like religious group that maintains humans were created by aliens and claims to have cloned a human being. The company is represented by French scientist Dr. Brigitte Boisselier.
A press release from the company on Monday said Boisselier has written to Hwang to outline the proposal. Boisselier said she believed Hwang’s discoveries to be original and that groups opposing stem cell research such as the Catholic Church conspired to undermine Hwang by making it appear as though the scientist concocted his data. She said he had become a victim of a conservative anti-scientific faction, according to the press release.
Ah yes, blame the Catholics. That is about as original as blaming the Americans for someone elses trangressions. Why can’t the kooks just admit Hwang lied and move on?
But why it happened is still a mystery. By all accounts, the tales of Hwang’s dedication and personal discipline are all true.
(…)
Hwang insisted he had no interest in profiting from his discoveries; indeed, he turned over his patent rights to the university and the government.
That being the case, it seems unlikely that Hwang set out to perpetrate fraud. But it wouldn’t be surprising if he, or someone in his lab, believed strongly enough in the work to be willing to cut corners. If that’s true, the precipitating event could have come last January, when some of his stem-cell samples became contaminated, possibly by a fungus circulating in poorly shielded air vents.
Hwang claims it took six months to recover from the disaster. But it also might be that Hwang’s team couldn’t recover quickly enough and began taking shortcuts to fill the gap. Under pressure from the government and the university, and with a deadline looming for publication in one of the world’s most prestigious journals, the temptation to stretch the truth might have been irresistible. “I can only speculate that Dr. Hwang was driven by ambition. He may have thought he could manipulate the data to secure research funding and compensate for his actions with follow-up results,” says Ki Jung Kim, a political scientist at Seoul’s Yonsei University. In short, fudge it now, fix it later.
This explanation probably makes the most sense of why he committed a fraud that was bound to be uncovered. He gambled that he could get the real results before the forgery was discovered and he lost. Just makes you wonder if he wasn’t so hyped by the media and given so much money by the government in order to speed up scientific results; that maybe he would of spent the time necessary to conduct experiments ethically and more carefully so that he could have avoided the ethical violations that began the investigation and prevented the cells from becoming contaminated during the scientific process?
President Roh Moo-hyun addressed the emerging controversy over allegations of unethical practices by MBC on the Blue House Web site on Nov. 27, even before the network had aired the program. He made no mention of any doubts about Dr. Hwang’s research, not surprisingly because the doubts had only been communicated to a junior official the day before.
But on Dec. 5, one day after the YTN television network reported details of alleged PD Notebook threats to researchers in the course of gathering their information, Mr. Roh was quoted as saying in a meeting with his senior aides that he hoped “problems regarding verification of Dr. Hwang’s achievements could be put to rest at this point.” The science minister, Oh Myung, told reporters on Dec. 8 that those with doubts should blame Science, adding that talks of verification of Dr. Hwang’s research should no longer be brought up “for the sake of Korea’s science.”
How in the world can Korea’s science minister blame Science Magazine for Dr. Hwang’s fraud? Then he says that the allegations shouldn’t be brought up anymore? He sounds like someone more interested in a cover up than actually determining the truth.
In other stem cell news apparently about 1/2 of the Korean population wants Dr. Hwang to go back to work at Seoul National University and continue his stem cell work:
Nearly half of South Korean people still support disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk, who is accused of fabricating his research on tailor-made cells featured by the U.S. journal Science in 2005, a recent survey showed.
The survey conducted by The Korea Times on Dec. 27-28 last year found that 45.6 percent of respondents said it is desirable to give the former professor at Seoul National University (SNU) “one more chance’’ for his cloning work.
More than 70 percent of those surveyed were also skeptical about the government’s support for the World Stem Cell Hub at SNU, initiated by the cloning expert last October, without Hwang’s involvement, the poll suggested.
About 95 percent of respondents want the government itself to continue its financial support for the stem cell research rather than redirect the support to a private or scholar level.
As past experience has taught me, I don’t put to much credence in polls conducted in Korea. So take these results with a grain of salt, but it does tell us that there is still a sizable number of Koreans willing to overlook Hwang’s past trangression in hopes of future success. Hwang has actually played this whole crisis towards Korean nationalism very well and in the end he may still walk away with a job and research money some where. I don’t think SNU would take him back, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he resurfaces somewhere else to carry on his experiments when he still has a large amount of public backing.
For those familiar with South Korea you often hear about how Koreans possess superior dexterity compared to other people due to their skill with chopsticks. Koreans skills with chopsticks are what is allegedly responsible for producing top professional female golfers, world class pottery, top table tennis players, master archers, and until recently even top stem cell scientists.
John Gearhart, also a Hopkins researcher, said another impediment is that Hwang’s lab has not shared enough details of its technology to allow other labs to duplicate it. And apart from technical acumen, few labs in the world have permission to do work that would build on the Korean report, he said.
Maybe some labs have tried and failed but kept quiet about it, Civin said, because the scientists “didn’t feel like saying they weren’t as good as the South Koreans.”
Indeed, the technical expertise of Hwang’s lab has often been mentioned as a crucial ingredient in its reported success. Hwang has attributed his lab workers’ dexterity to lots of practice with steel chopsticks.
Visitors to Hwang’s lab report “they have technical competence and abilities far beyond what most American labs have, and I think that’s true,” said Thomas Cech, a Nobel Prize winner who heads the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. “People have actually watched them manipulate these cells … and say they’re really extraordinarily dexterous and skilled technically.”
So if other scientists can’t get such experiments to work, he said, they may conclude “I’m not surprised because I saw these people from Korea and they’re so much better at manipulating cells than I am.”
So how come the Japanese can’t replicate the stem cell experiments if clumsy non-chopstick using American scientists can’t replicate it? Maybe because it is a fake along with the rest of Hwang’s work. Not being skilled with chopsticks is an even lamer excuse than the appeal to Korean nationalism being used before to defend Hwang’s work.
The doctor behind the recent stem cell forgery scandal in South Korea has now officially stepped down from his position at Seoul National University after the university released it’s first report confirming the stem cell forgery:
South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk resigned from his university on Friday after the school said he fabricated stem-cell research that had raised hopes of new cures for hard-to-treat diseases.
A university panel, releasing initial findings of a probe, accused Hwang of damaging the scientific community with his deception, while South Korea’s government rued the scandal surrounding the country’s star scientist and said it may pull its funding for his research.
“I sincerely apologize to the people for creating a shock and disappointment,” Hwang told reporters as he was leaving his office at Seoul National University, considered the country’s top institution of higher learning.
“With an apologetic heart … I step down as professor,” he said.
It is really amazing how far this guy has fallen in such a short time. Just two months ago Dr. Hwang was the toast of Korea. He was hyped to demigod status by the Korean media and government for his ground breaking research. Now he is a national shame and dissapointment. This is not stopping him from trying to play the nationalism card though:
However, Hwang still maintained that he had produced the technology to create patient-matched stem cells as he claimed in a May article in the journal Science.
“I emphasize that patient-specific stem cells belong to South Korea and you are going to see this,” said Hwang, a veterinarian.
This guy and Robert Kim can both hang out and share playing to Korean nationalism one liners.
I haven’t said anything about the whole Dr. Hwang stem cell mess that has brewing the last few weeks in Korea because I figured I would wait until the whole truth comes out before commenting on it. Finally it appears the truth has come out and Dr. Hwang has in fact faked his stem cell research:
New allegations of fabricated research by Korean scientist and national icon Dr. Hwang Woo Suk broadcast in the last hour on Korean nightly news have sent shock waves through the nation.
Hwang’s research team member Dr. Roh Sung Il told Korean broadcaster MBC, “No embryonic stem cells exist†in the research that was later published in the journal Science in June, 2005.
Roh told an MBC reporter that Kim Sun Jong, one of the team researchers dispatched to the University of Pittsburgh to work with U.S. scientist and paper co-author Prof. Gerald Schatten, said in a telephone conversation recently, “Dr. Hwang and Dr. Gang Sung Keun ordered me to fake the stem cell data.â€
This is a huge blow to the morale of the entire Korean nation because so many people hyped Dr. Hwang’s research under the banner of nationalism and continued to defend him and demonize those who initially criticized his work.
When the first reports came out about him faking the data I always wondered why he didn’t let independent scientists validate his work to prove the detractors wrong. He never did and hid behind the banner of Korean nationalism by accusing foreign countries of trying to steal Korea’s stem cell technology. Now it turns out there was nothing to steal.
I can’t help but wonder why Dr. Hwang faked his research to begin with? It seems like it would be tough to maintain this lie indefinitely. Is this lie a product of the internationally low regard of Korean universities where officials were maybe eager for a ground breaking scientific achievement and may not have done enough to verify Hwang’s research? I’m sure there will be plenty of theories in the coming days and I’m sure the Marmot and Oranckay will be all over it.
What is really sad about this is that this whole situation is going to further create a negative stereotype on other stem cell scientists who are doing legitimate research in order to save and improve people’s lives.
I wonder when Koreans will learn there is plenty to be proud of in Korea and don’t need to always look for the next person who will bring glory to the Korean nation. The media built Dr. Hwang up just like they do everyone else that is some how connected to Korea and the public fell for the propaganda that Hwang was going to bring great glory finally to Korea. If this guy wasn’t so propagandized by the media and in turn the government the aftermath of this whole mess would not have been as ugly as this is turning out to be.
