Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, a South Korean animal-cloning expert and veterinary scientist, was a national hero in South Korea. In 2004, he and his collaborators published in Science a paper on the establishment of the first human embryonic stem cell with the somatic cell nuclear transfer method (Hwang et al. 2004). Hwang's method, which had been used to create the world-first cloned mammal Dolly, consisted of denucleating a human egg and inserting in its place a nucleus from an ordinary somatic cell. The nucleus and the egg were fused into one by means of electricity, creating a cloned embryo, from which a stem cell line was developed. For this experiment, he announced that he had used 242 human eggs. The next year, in 2005, in a paper also published in Science, Hwang allegedly claimed that he had established 11 patient-specific stem cells with 185 human eggs (Hwang et al. 2005). As these stem-cells were patient-specific, there was no concern about immune reaction. Also, compared with his 2004 paper, the success rate rose enormously. For this marvelous achievement, he used a method dubbed the “squeezing method,” which he loved to call the “Korean metallic-chopstick method.” However, in November 2005, his achievements began to be considered suspicious and spurious. Eventually, it turned out that his 2005 paper, as well as his 2004 paper, was fraudulent. These papers not only involved a serious violation of medical ethics in collecting human eggs but also fabrications and falsifications of scientific data. In early 2006, Hwang's allegedly world-first human embryonic stem cells turned out to be non-existent. This fraud “shook the world of science.”
