Posted on 02/16/2006 4:24:25 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Schatten Deeply Implicated in Hwang Fraud: Witness
Prosecutors say circumstantial evidence suggests that the disgraced cloning scientist Hwang Woo-suk’s former collaborator Prof. Gerald Schatten was from the beginning involved in the faking of stem cell research. They said the University of Pittsburgh academic co-wrote a now discredited paper on patient-specific stem cells published last year although he knew that stem cell lines supposedly documented in the paper had become contaminated. The charge contradicts the U.S. university’s own investigation, which cleared Schatten of any deliberate distortions.
Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office quoted a witness as saying Hwang told Schatten when they met at a seminar overseas in January last year that stem cells nos. 4 to 7 supposedly produced from cloned embryos had become contaminated. They said Schatten urged Hwang to go ahead with publication regardless since the stem cells had clearly been produced. The testimony came from Prof. Kang Sung-geun of Seoul National University, who attended the seminar with Hwang.
Prosecutors have e-mailed Schatten, who late last year publicly broke with Hwang, a 130-point questionnaire, asking among other things if he was aware of the stem cell contamination at the SNU lab, if he suggested publishing the paper despite it, and why he severed ties with Hwang.
Credits should have been spread more evenly over several figures. So should the culpability now that the so-called turned out to be a fraud.
Ping!
bump
I don't understand why the embryonic stem-cell religionists are so torqued over this.
They lied/dissimulated during the California campaign for the $3Billion (actually
$6Billion) embryonic stem-cell program.
Now they are bothered to find that they've lied to themselves.
(Don't lump me with luddites; embryonic stem-cells may actually be a panacea...but
ethical questions will still be part of the brew)
Is this Schattenfraud?.......
A University investigating itself, Is that anything like self-abuse? Are they just jerking us _____
The way it turned out, it may be just a kangaroo court. I also doubt that Schatten would cooperate with S. Korean prosecutors who want to get to the bottom of this scandal.
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