The Marmot’s Hole

UPDATE 3: Gord over at eclexys has a lot of intelligent things to say (as always) about Hwang and stem cell research.

UPDATE 2: Don’t pin this scandal on Confucianism, says the Useless Tree.

UPDATE 1: The Hwang Woo-suk Cult of Personality lives on!

ORIGINAL POST: I’m getting a little sick blogging about the Hwang Woo-suk saga, as intiguing as it may be.  But if it’s all the media over here is talking about, why should I be any different?

• The results of DNA reports are scheduled to come out next week, but there are already media reports that DNA analysis revealed that there were no patient-tailored stem cells when Hwang submitted his paper to Science.  Anyway, we’ll still have to wait to see whether Hwang managed to develop any core technologies.
• Quoting an SNU official, KBS reported that Prof. Gerald Schatten demanded several times a professorial position at SNU’s School of Medicine.  He also demanded the directorship of the World Stem Cell Hub.  KBS reported that the U.S. scientist had drawn up an organizational plan and management plan designed to leak patient-tailored stem cell technology to the United States.  SNU said it came up with its own plan that would bring foreign technology into Korea while still maintaining control of the World Stem Cell Hub, but several negotiation efforts with Schatten failed to achieve an agreement.  A government official, meanwhile, said that when SNU refused Schatten’s demands, Schatten tried–through Hwang–to get SNU Medical Center officials sacked.  The hospital is reportedly considering legal action against Schatten.
• The Munhwa Ilbo ran an analysis piece pointing to six reasons why the Hwang scandal could happen.  They were 1) lack of a thesis-verification system in Korea; 2) lack of a democratic lab room culture (namely, no one willing to raise objections to the boss; 3) to get research grants, you need to produce results in fields deemed industrially useful, so scientists can get caught up in chasing the money; 4) Hwang’s let the fame get to his head, and he grew obsessed with the hard-pressing Brits, especially after Great Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority approved research on human embryonic stem cells.  He also felt pressed due to the passage of Korea’s bio-ethics law, which would make obtaining eggs more difficult; 5) the central and regional governments gave Hwang full backing and encouragement–including broad financial support–without implementing any sort of oversight mechanisms; 6) experts remained silent despite widespread suspicions about his research.  This was mostly due to fears that thanks to all the praise being showered on Hwang, raising suspicions would have been condemned as professional jealousy.

Oh, and someone kindly sent my this blast from the past from the JoongAng Ilbo’s editorial section–read the whole thing to bring back warm and fuzzy memories.

A world-renowned bioengineering scientist who recently visited Dr. Hwang’s laboratory reportedly exclaimed, "Korea has become the prima donna of the world [in bioengineering]. Humanity will bow before Korea."
…
The more you use your hands, the smarter your head gets. If we really
want to push our exports up to $200 billion per year, we might consider
teaching how to use chopsticks, needlework and traditional cooking in
schools. If we do, we should soon find ourselves the world’s prima
donna of not only bioengineering but informational technology and
nanotechnology as well.

And speaking of chopsticks, someone posting over at DC Inside claimed that the "Chopsticks Method" (i.e., the Squeezing Method) was not developed by Hwang, but was in fact published in a Japanese university journal back in 1991.