More stem cell fraud uncovered

The Office of Research Integrity has penalized another stem cell researcher for misconduct - specifically, falsifying images in an unpublished manuscript. The scientist, Jong-hyuk Park, was working as postdoc under the supervision of Gerald Schatten at the University of Pittsburgh at the time of the incident, and was a former colleague of South Korea's Woo-suk Hwang, who has admitted to falsifying his work on human embryonic stem cells.

Last week, Park was found guilty of deliberately falsifying photographic images in an unpublished manuscript circulated to his laboratory colleagues, and attempting to destroy the evidence of his misconduct. He has been barred from applying or receiving federal grants, contracts, or loans for three years.

According to the Federal Register, Park "intentionally and knowingly" falsified different versions of two figures in a paper he was preparing for submission to Nature, entitled "Rhesus Embryonic Stem Cells Established by Nuclear Transfer: Tetraploid ESCs Differ from Fertilized Ones." Park "repeatedly misrepresented" the accuracy of one of the figures to a University of Pittsburgh investigative panel, and deleted prior versions of the figures from his laboratory server to eliminate the record of revisions.

Park could not be reached for comment, and Schatten did not return an interview request.

"The system worked," University of Pittsburgh spokeswoman Lisa Rossi told The Scientist, asserting that the investigation into the allegations of fraud went smoothly, and the manuscript was never submitted for publication.

She noted that the scientists that worked with Park on this project are currently trying to replicate his data. "They just basically threw out everything that Park had anything to do with," Rossi said.

Prior to coming to Pittsburgh, Park was a member of Hwang's team in South Korea and co-authored, along with Hwang and Schatten, the now-infamous (and retracted) research that claimed to have derived stem cell lines from human embryos.

Park left the University of Pittsburgh to return to Korea in February of 2006. Last year, the university investigated Schatten for his role in the retracted stem cell papers, and concluded that he was not involved in the falsification of data, but failed to meet his responsibilities as co-author for one article. Schatten was one of the people who first raised questions about Park's work, and the university has no plans to look into his role in the latest incident, Rossi said. "The [current] investigation concerned Park, and only Park," she asserted.

Alison McCook
amccook@the-scientist.com

Links within this article:

Office of Research Integrity
http://ori.dhhs.gov

A.McCook, "Research's scarlet list," The Scientist, April 25, 2005.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/15418

Gerald Schatten
http://www.pdc.magee.edu/faculty/schatten.html

I.Oransky, "All human cloning work fraudulent," The Scientist, January 10, 2006
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/22933

ORI, Park Jong-hyuk
http://silk.nih.gov/public/CBZ1BJE.@WWW.ORIDTLS.HTML#PARK,%20JONG%20HYUK

Federal Register
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/index.html

ML Phillips, "Stem cell teamwork stops after split," The Scientist, November 18, 2005
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22836

A.McCook, "Hwang faked results, says panel," The Scientist, December 23, 2005.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22870