Hwang Woo-suk Analysis by Marmot's Hole

They say that they are getting tired of blogging about Hwang Woo-suk but the ability of Marmot's Hole to read Korean and understand bench science gives them incredible reach.

In today's installment, they blog an article that quotes members of the SNU committee investigating Hwang as saying that there were no nuclear transfer derived stem cell lines.

A member of the Seoul National University administration team is interviewed in a story that Marmot links to as well - saying that Professor Gerald Schatten demanded a professorial position in the SNU School of Medicine, which doesn't seem like such an odd demand, but they make the point in the context of claiming that Schatten acted inappropriately in his negotiations to "leak" stem cell information to the U.S. The same story indicates that the SNU hospital is "considering legal action against Schatten," although what they could possibly do is beyond me.

Oh and Marmot links to a Japanese web site in which it is claimed that even Hwang's "chopsticks method" in his research was actually published in a Japanese journal in 1991. Of course it was.

And eclexys has some interesting discussion of the university/science climate in Korean science that in their estimation makes all of this more likely.