The retraction by Science,
of the 2004 paper by Hwang Woo-Suk reinforces my
belief (see also:
S Korea
cloning research was fake in this blog), that data
used to support scientific claims should by publicly available.
Science
had previously received permission from all of the authors of the 2005 paper to
retract the publication (as is customary); the journal now sees no option but to
summarily withdraw the 2004 paper as well. Science magazine
editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy has issued a statement detailing the prestigious
weekly magazine’s decision to formally retract the two papers published in 2004
and 2005 by Hwang Woo-Suk and colleagues at
Seoul
National
University
in
South Korea.
The Korean report has cast a shadow over the rigor of Science magazine’s
peer review policies. Nature
announced that it had asked geneticist Elaine Ostrander of the National
Institutes of Health to conduct a DNA fingerprinting study of fresh samples from
Snuppy. Although the analysis is not yet complete, Ostrander says her data are
entirely consistent with the claim that Snuppy is a genuine cloned canine.
(http://www.bio-itworld.com/newsitems/2006/january/01-10-06-news-retraction/view).
This is the second
retraction within a few months by Science.
Last June, the journal retracted another highly cited
1997
paper after coauthor Steven
Leadon, formerly of the
University
of
North Carolina,
was found guilty by a university committee of fabricating and falsifying data.
The research, which had been cited 227 times, reported evidence for one of the
two prevalent hypotheses explaining the molecular correlates of Cockayne
syndrome, a disorder that leads to death in early childhood. This is
not the first time that a paper
by Leadon has been withdrawn from publication. In March 2003,
Leadon himself retracted a 1998
Mutation Research/DNA Repair
paper, taking sole
responsibility for what he called a "systemic error that could have influenced,
if not accounted for," some of the findings. That month, Leadon resigned from
his position as director of radiobiology at the
University
of
North Carolina
at
Chapel Hill
after an investigating committee found that a 1998 Science
paper–also
later
retracted–had
contained results that he had fabricated and falsified. Leadon appealed the
committee's findings to the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) at the US
Department of Health and Human Services.
http://www.biomedicalgenetics.nl/Members/Hoeijmakers/hoeijmakers.html