A grain of truth behind the stem cell fraud of Woo Suk Hwang

The world of stem cell research was set reeling two years ago when its most successful practitioner, the Korean scientist Woo Suk Hwang, was found to have fabricated much of his work. His claim to have derived the first embryonic stem cells from the adult cells of a patient was discredited after parts of his research were found to have been faked.

A team of Boston scientists has now re-examined stocks of Hwang's purported embryonic stem cells and arrived at a surprising conclusion: Hwang did achieve a scientific first, though it was quite different from the one he claimed.

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