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Just like Hwang Woo Suk? Another fraudulent paper in Science!

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

After publishing his first paper in Science in July 2005, scientist Kim Tae-Kook told a local newspaper: "I want to become another Hwang Woo-Suk for Korea." Looks like Kim succeeded!

Two fraudulent papers are "A Magnetic Nanoprobe Technology for Detecting Molecular Interactions in Live Cells" published in Science in July 2005 and "Small Molecule-Based Reversible Reprogramming of Cellular Lifespan" released in Nature Chemicalbiology in July 2006.

AFP reported: The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) said Friday, March 1, 2008 that it had suspended bioscience professor Kim Tae-kook for fabricating data in two papers, which had been hailed as breakthroughs and were published in two renowned journals (...) "Professor Kim manipulated microscopic photos to fabricate study results," Lee Gyun-Min, head of KAIST's Department of Biological Sciences, told reporters Friday at KAIST in the central city of Daejeon.

The Korea Times reported:

It is the second time in three years that Science has been entangled with faulty papers written by Korean scientists. The magazine had to retract two papers written by Hwang Woo-suk in January 2006 after his stem-cell cloning research was found to have faked data.

Kim's 2006 paper suggested ideas for increasing the human lifespan by ``reprogramming'' cells ? the research earned him much publicity. South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun invited him to the Blue House and KAIST President Suh Nam-pyo praised him as one of the most likely Korean candidates to win the Nobel Prize.

It was one of Kim's students who first suspected the credibility of Kim's research, the school said.

``A postgraduate student, who was a co-author of the paper, notified the school that he tried to replicate some of the experiments in the paper several times but couldn't,'' said Lee Gyun-min, professor and the department chief of Biological Sciences. ``We summoned other authors and found that there were false data analyses in the two papers. We also have strong evidence that these were deliberately done under Kim's supervision.''

JoongAngDaily reported:

Kim Tae-Kook, a professor at the state-run Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, published the results of his research in the world-renowned journal Science in 2005 and in Nature Chemical Biology in 2006.
But it turns out his research was faked.
Kaist announced the findings of an internal investigation on Feb. 29 that concluded Kim had exaggerated the results of his experiments by manipulating the magnification of microscopic pictures.
The shock is all the greater because these fresh allegations of scientific fraud follow hard on the heels of Dr. Hwang Woo-suk and his fabricated research findings.

See also

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/05/hwang-woo-suk-and-five-associates.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/06/stem-cell-flashback-12-feb-2004.html

For a different false article in Science:

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/10/kintisch-article-in-science-challenged.html

Full post as published by IPBiz on March 02, 2008 (boomark / email).