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In the latest chapter of a messy scientific divorce, biologist Gerald Schatten has asked his former collaborator, Woo Suk Hwang, to retract a celebrated stem-cell paper published under both their names.
A statement issued on 13 December by the University of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, reveals that Schatten has asked to remove his name from a paper that he co-authored with Hwang, of Seoul National University in South Korea, and others.
The paper, published by Science in May, was seen as a major achievement for the field of stem-cell research, because it was the first to show that stem-cell lines could be made from the cells of individual patients1. Many hoped the work would help scientists to study the origins of disease and investigate treatments tailored to individuals (see 'Korean team lauded for stem-cell advance').
In November, Schatten alleged that some of the actions of Hwang's team were ethically questionable, such as using eggs from paid donors and junior researchers. Hwang later conceded that eggs from such sources had been used during work on a 2004 publication (see 'Clone star admits lies over eggs') .
Now Schatten says he has further concerns: not about the ethics of the research, but about the validity of the results.
Substantial doubts
In a letter he sent to Science and to his fellow authors on 12 December, Schatten, who is director of the Pittsburgh Development Center, writes: "My careful re-evaluations of published figures and tables, along with new problematic information, now casts substantial doubts about the paper's accuracy."
The letter states that over the weekend, Schatten received allegations from someone involved with the experiments that led him to make his decision.
"I request retraction of my co-authorship on Hwang et al. (2005) and have recommended to first author Dr. Woo-Suk Hwang and all other co-authors that the report should now be retracted."
Carbon copies
Schatten's letter does not explain which elements of the 2005 paper he is concerned about.
Some observers, including an anonymous poster to an Internet message board hosted by the Biological Research Information Center, question a DNA fingerprint analysis used to verify the results of the experiments in the 2005 paper. They say the DNA fingerprints from some of the cell lines match the patients' cells too perfectly, and could therefore be duplicates, rather than separate experiments: whether that be accidental or intentional.
Hwang has already told Science that they made an "unintentional error" in providing some duplicate pictures.
On 13 December, Science published a letter on its website from scientists who are calling on Hwang to resolve the matter by cooperating with independent investigators to confirm the results of the DNA tests2. The letter is signed by eight scientists, including Ian Wilmut of the University of Edinburgh, UK, who submitted DNA from Dolly, the cloned sheep, to be independently tested.
"As we confirmed the validity of our work by cooperating with an independent study, we encourage Hwang's laboratory to cooperate with us to perform an independent test of his cell lines," Wilmut's letter states.
Pulling out
Science says that it has no mechanism for retracting one author's name from a published paper. "No single author, having declared at the time of submission his full and complete confidence in the contents of the paper, can retract his name unilaterally, after publication, and while inquiries are still underway by the Korean authors," the journal says in an editorial statement issued on 13 December.
Science editor Donald Kennedy says there is no reason to believe the data in the 2005 paper are fraudulent. "We continue to take this issue seriously," Kennedy adds in the statement, "and we are following developments both in South Korea and at the University of Pittsburgh."
Both the University of Pittsburgh and Seoul National University have said they will investigate the work.
References
1) Hwang , et al. Science, 308. 1777 - 1783 (2005).
2) Wilmut I., et al. ScienceExpress, published online doi:10.1126/science.1123832 (13 December 2005).
source: http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/051212-5.html 14dec2005
Washington - A US stem cell expert who lent his name and credibility to South Korean cloning pioneers asked that his name be removed from their landmark scientific paper on Tuesday and questioned whether the work had been falsified.
Dr Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh asked the journal Science to take his name off a human cloning study published by Woo Suk Hwang and colleagues at Seoul National University in May of 2005.
Hwang and colleagues made history in 2004 when they reported they had cloned the first human embryo - not to make a baby, but to derive embryonic stem cells for scientific and medical research.
In May of 2005 they reported they had cloned cells from people with diseases, to make batches of cells useful for studying those diseases. And in August they cloned the first dog, Snuppy.
The accomplishments put Hwang and South Korea at the forefront of cloning and stem cell research at a time when US politics and a debate over the ethics of cloning humans are limiting efforts.
"My careful re-evaluations of published figures and tables, along with new problematic information, now casts substantial doubts about the paper's accuracy," Schatten said in a letter to Science, also released to Reuters.
"Over the weekend, I received allegations from someone involved with the experiments that certain elements of the report may be fabricated."
He gave no further details.
Science said it was declining to remove Schatten's name from the paper. "There is no method for retracting authorship," Science said in a statement.
"As of this writing, Science is not aware of any scientists claiming that the data are fraudulent."
But Dr Robert Lanza of Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology, who is also trying to clone human embryos, said he had doubts. "Why are the Koreans refusing to have their samples retested? This doesn't smell right," Lanza said in an email to Reuters.
Lanza signed a letter to Science along with other cloning researchers, including the scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep in 1997, calling on Hwang to submit his work for scientific confirmation.
"Accusations made in the press about the validity of the experiments published in South Korea are, in our opinion, best resolved within the scientific community," the scientists, including Dolly cloners Ian Wilmut of Edinburgh University and Keith Campbell of Nottingham University, wrote.
They noted that the first reports about Dolly, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, were also questioned.
"As we (Wilmut & Campbell) confirmed the validity of our work by cooperating with an independent study, we encourage Hwang's laboratory to cooperate with us to perform an independent test of his cell lines to determine their nuclear and mitochondrial genotype in comparison with the donors of the original cells," the researchers wrote.
Seoul National University official Roe Jung-hye said on Monday that experts from the university would lead an investigation and conduct DNA tests on Hwang's tailored stem cell lines.
The storm about Hwang's work started when Schatten discovered that, contrary to published statements, two women who donated egg cells for the cloning experiment had been paid. He alerted Science and Nature, which published two studies by Hwang, and stepped down from the board of a proposed World Stem Cell hub.
Controversy built further when South Korean media questioned the veracity of Hwang's work.
Then Hwang pointed out errors in his paper in Science, concerning duplications in tables and figures but not in data. But media again splashed the news, and Hwang ended up publicly in the hospital, looking haggard and exhausted.
source: http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=qw1134536583542B252# 14dec2005
The American co-author of a breakthrough cloning paper now under fraud investigation has asked to have his name removed from the 2005 report.
The imbroglio involves two papers, published by the journal Science in 2004 and 2005, which were the first to demonstrate the extraction of stem cells from cloned human embryos.
The scientific coup, by researchers at Korea's Seoul National University, began to unravel earlier this year.
In a letter sent to Science yesterday, University of Pittsburgh researcher Gerald P. Schatten asked that his name be removed from the paper. "My careful re-evaluations of published figures and tables, along with new problematic information, now casts substantial doubts about the paper's accuracy," Dr. Schatten's letter stated. In his letter, Dr. Schatten indicated a person involved with the experiments told him part of the result "may be fabricated."
Dr. Schatten was a co-author with the Korean laboratory of Hwang Woo Suk on the 2005 report, which detailed the creation of 11 cloned human cell lines. Some scientists trained by Dr. Hwang work for Dr. Schatten, including one who revealed some of the alleged problems to a Korean TV station in October.
Dr. Schatten had distanced himself from his collaborators after learning that Dr. Hwang had lied about the source of human eggs used in earlier experiments.
Science called Dr. Schatten's latest claims "unsubstantiated." The journal also said it could not withdraw Dr. Schatten's name unless all the authors of the paper agreed.
Late yesterday, no one answered the phone in Dr. Hwang's laboratory.
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