Fraudulent stem cell reports that shook the scientific world could have been prevented by extra review procedures, according to a panel appointed by Science, the journal that published the claims.
Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science, said the journal would accept the panel’s major findings.
The South Korean researcher Dr. Hwang Woo-suk reported in Science in 2004 that he had generated embryonic stem cells from an adult human cell, the necessary first step in proposed schemes for growing replacement tissues from a patient’s own cells. In a second report, in 2005, he claimed he could perform this step routinely and efficiently, using very few human eggs.
Both reports proved to be fabrications, and the journal formally retracted the papers in January.
The fraud came to light not through any of the formal checking procedures in the scientific process, but because a whistle-blower in Dr. Hwang’s lab spoke to the South Korean television station MBC.
Like other scientific journals, Science has long taken the position that its reviewing procedures work well but cannot be expected to detect deliberate fraud, and therefore no change is necessary.
But the spectacular nature of the fraud prompted deeper than usual soul-searching on the part of leading journals.
After reviewing the paper record of how the Hwang reports were handled, a panel led by John I. Brauman, a chemist at Stanford University, yesterday recommended four changes in Science’s procedures.
A risk-assessment method should be developed to flag high-visibility papers for further review, the panel said. Also, authors should specify their individual contributions to a paper, a reform aimed at Dr. Hwang’s stratagem of allowing another researcher, Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, to be lead author of one of the reports even though Dr. Schatten had done none of the experiments.
The panel advised online publication of more of the raw data on which a scientific report is based. It also suggested that Science, Nature and other leading journals establish common standards for reviewing papers to prevent authors bent on deceit from favoring journals with laxer standards.
The panel states in its report that these measures “would have detected” Dr. Hwang’s fraud.
But in a news conference, Dr. Brauman retreated from that statement, saying only that they “might have” uncovered it.
