SNU Academics Seek Verification of Hwang Research MBC Union Unrepentant Over Hwang Expose Hwang Team Pre-Empts SNU Bid to Verify Research Cloning Pioneer Visits Lab From Hospital Top Geneticists Call on Hwang to Help Confirm Findings Hwang Defends Stem Cell Research U.S. Scientist Withdraws Name From Hwang Paper SNU Sets Up Panel to Check Hwang Research Stem Cells Don’t Exist: Hwang Associate What Went Wrong in the Hwang Affair? Researcher Says Hwang Stem Cell Research Accurate Hwang Grilled as SNU Inquiry Gets Under Way Fresh Mixup Casts Doubt on Cloning Pioneer’s Research Widening SNU Probe Seals Off Hwang’s Lab Hwang Achievements Succumb to Domino Effect SNU Panel 'Close' to Finding if Hwang's Stem Cells Exist Schatten Requested US$200,000 for 'Effort' MBC Producer, Hospital Chief Grilled in Hwang Probe

Douglas Melton, a director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, said Thursday that he was "truly saddened" to hear of the report from South Korea, "which, if true, is tragic", according to AP. "If the accusations of fraud are documented, I think every one of his papers has to be called into question, from the time he was a student," said Dr. Gerald Fischbach, the executive vice president of the Columbia University Medical Center in New York. But cloning expert Peter Mombaerts of New York’s Rockefeller University disagreed. "We have to give him the benefit of the doubt right now,” Mombaerts was quoted as saying.

The U.K. science magazine Nature, which first reported on ethical lapses in Hwang’s research, also said the charge called all of the team’s past achievements into question. It quoted Alan Colman, a member of the team that cloned Dolly the sheep in 1997, as saying if the fraud charge turned out to be true, the hopes of many patients would have been shattered, and funding for similar research in the field would be severely compromised. He said the incident could taint the field forever.

The Scientific American magazine announced it is dropping Hwang from a list of 50 top scientists of the year. The list was published in its special December edition.

The New York Times offered an idiosyncratic take on the scandal, saying while the “new disclosures are being presented as a blow to Korean science, they can also be seen as a triumph for a cadre of well-trained young Koreans for whom it became almost a pastime to turn up one flaw after another in [Hwang’s] work.”

The U.K. Financial Times said, “The fracas has plunged Korea into a deep national depression.” The LA Times reported on a Korea plunged into shock, quoting a colleague of Hwang’s at Seoul National University as saying, “We can declare today a day of national infamy.”

The French magazine Science and Future said that the World Stem Cell Hub formerly run by Hwang was coming to an end, while the German weekly paper Die Zeit in an article titled “Waking from a Dream” said, “The academic world faces a crisis of fabrication, schemes and immorality.”

Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun put the story on its front page, headlining it, “Korean People Shocked by Betrayal From Their Hero.” The Mainichi Shimbun quoted an expert as saying, “Once stem cells are produced they are generally frozen, so it doesn’t make sense that there are no stem cells now.”

(englishnews@chosun.com )