Liberal Arts Services

Case Study: South Korea’s stem cell research controversy

In late 2005, allegations emerged that a South Korean stem cell biologist, Hwang Woo Suk, had fabricated data for two purportedly groundbreaking articles published in the prestigious scientific journal Science in 2004 and 2005. By January 2006, Hwang admitted wrong-doing and apologized publicly. In addition to faking the cloning of stem cells, which are special cells that can develop into any kind of host tissue or organ, Hwang had committed several other potential ethical violations, including using eggs from junior researchers, paying women for their egg donations, failing to inform egg donors of serious health risks, and building political and financial connections with government figures by using political donations and including a presidential advisor as a co-author. Some stem cell researchers fear the backlash for a scientific field that is already embroiled in ethical debate, particularly in the US where strict regulations have been placed on the federal funding of stem cell research. However, international scandals of this sort can bring greater awareness within the scientific community of the various pressures that may lead to lapses in scientific integrity as well as the available institutional tools to prevent them.

Source: This image is a work of a National Science Foundation employee, taken or made during the course of the person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain. Some of the responsibility for this debacle has been placed in the hands of the scientific journal that published Hwang’s papers after a peer-review process. In order for a scientific paper to be published in a prominent journal, experts with similar research interests must rigorously review and approve the research methods and results described in the paper. However, the integrity of the paper is based largely on trust, as the results are never formally replicated. In fact it is usually whistleblowers on the research team, and rarely peer reviewers, that identify ethical misconduct. Nevertheless, policies can be enforced by journals to discourage ethical breaches. For example, the Journal of the American Medical Association requires authors to give a detailed description of their specific research contributions as well as requiring one author to claim sole responsibility for the paper’s integrity.

Well before the paper was submitted to the journal, however, there were institutional and cultural factors at play. The Korean government had concentrated its stem cell research funding of at least $65 million for Hwang’s laboratory rather than distributing funding among different researchers in order to foster a research community. The consequence was a lack of cross-checking between researchers as well as immense pressure for Hwang to produce results. The issuance of his own commemorative stamp in February 2005 was a testament to both his ‘hero’ status in South Korea as well as the burden to live up to this image.

Like many kinds of scientific research, Hwang’s work crossed international borders—in terms of both its impact in the international scientific community and the involvement of a well-known US stem cell researcher—bringing to the fore new issues in international regulation. In addition to differences that may exist in how policies are enforced across cultural settings, it is not always clear which particular country’s policies should be followed in cases of international collaboration. Complicated issues also result when certain components of a research project, such as the harvesting of embryos, are provided by laboratories in one country, according to its respective ethics guidelines, but used in a project based in another country that may have a different set of rules.

There are many unpredictable aspects to scientific research that pushes new theoretical boundaries and crosses international lines. Such unpredictability need not always be feared, however, given new ways of regulating research through advancements in information technology allowing new modes of communication. After all, it was on a Korean blog that discussions of the integrity of Hwang’s research first surfaced and gained international attention.