CHAOS reigns in the world of stem-cell science. As accusations fly between former colleagues in the South Korean team once heralded as the superstars of cloning, scientists are questioning the authenticity of much of their work – and wondering how badly the scandal will damage what was already a controversial field.
On 16 December, Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University announced he wanted to retract a paper, published in May in Science (vol 308, p 1777), which was hailed as a key step towards “therapeutic cloning” – treating patients with tissues grown from clones of their own cells. The…
