Scientists counter Wilmut criticisms

Scientists say that UK scientist Ian Wilmut, the first author of the paper describing the cloned sheep Dolly, did not overly exaggerate his role in the research. Recently, Wilmut said he did not deserve half the credit for the project that brought him worldwide fame in the 1990s, triggering a rash of stories in the British press detailing the behind-the-scenes squabbling in the Roslin Institute laboratory in Edinburgh where Wilmut worked at the time."I have no reason to think Wilmut did anything wrong," Richard Henderson, of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge in the UK, told The Scientist via Email. Henderson added that many senior authors spend most of their time coordinating the research and writing the papers, but the work is "often done mostly by others."Wilmut made his comments last week before an employment tribunal, in a case not directly related to the Dolly...