»stem cells«

First Jan Hendrik Schön, now Hwang Woo Suk. The German hero in solid state physics, and the champion in cloning—both were considered to be short-listed for the next Noble Prize, and both faked their research at large.

As evidence appeared on the missing accuracy of recent research by stem cell pioneer Hwang Woo Suk of Seoul National University, it's clear now that he has faked his results. As the news agencies report and New Scientist writes, a University's review showed that results from 9 out of 11 cell lines were manipulated, and "the panel said Friday that it had found no records of two of the other stem cell lines Dr. Hwang claims to have created," the Associated Press notes. These 11 cell lines were claimed to be cloned from 11 patients and to be used for a basic understanding and future treatment of diseases ranging from injuries of the spinal cord and diabetes to immune deficiencies.

Check also the report in Science and Nature.

Scientists are now picking up the pieces after the Hwang fraud who claimed of having successfully cloned human cells. Gretchen Vogel reports in Science (28.4.2006) about present activities in the U.S. and Europe. Ian "Dolly" Wilmut in Edinburgh and Christopher Shaw in London got approval to conduct human nuclear transfer experiments, in short cloning. In Spain, Miodrag Stojkovic leads another group. For some point, the groups have to restart from scratch. As a U.S. researcher puts it "It was necessary to spend some time unlearning some things that we thought we had learned from Hwang's research." The researchers are convinced that soon any of the groups will present results that Hwang had only fraudulently claimed. By cloning human cells and tissue they hope to earn a basic understanding of diseases like Diabetes, Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.