Editorial: Phony cloner

Can California's $3 billion stem cell institute learn something from the misdeeds of South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk?
It can, but only if leaders of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine take the time to publicly grapple with this scandal. So far, they have acted as if Hwang is a distant aberration whose fabrications don't affect them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

As a column on the opposite page notes, Hwang was once the world's master "cloner" in creating lines of embryonic stem cells. Last Friday, he admitted faking key parts of his research and resigned from Seoul National University.

Hwang's methods first came under scrutiny when some of his colleagues accused him of buying human eggs from his underlings, a breach of ethical protocol. Now investigators are examining if Hwang broke other rules and faked other studies.

While California's institute can do only so much to combat scientific fraud - the responsibility lies largely in the hands of peer-reviewed journals - it can set standards for obtaining eggs and other biological material, and ensure those rules are enforced...