Row over study puts Korea's scientific community under scru...( This week's BMJ investigates a bitter ...),Health

This week's BMJ investigates a bitter row over a scientific paper that is putting Korea's scientific community under scrutiny once again.

The dispute has pitted a young Korean doctor, Jeong Hwan Kim, against Kwang Yul Cha, a fertility specialist and one of the most powerful players in the country's struggle for biotech supremacy, writes journalist Jonathan Gornall. It is also threatening to disrupt Korea's efforts to recover scientific credibility in the wake of the recent scandal over Woo-Sok Hwang's stem cell research.

Dr Kim claims a paper about premature ovarian failure that he originally published in the Korean Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in January 2004 was translated and republished in the American journal Fertility and Sterility under a different title and with different authors in December 2005.

What is indisputable is that Dr Kim's name was not present in the later version of the paper and that in his place as lead author was Dr Cha, his former employer and the head of CHA Health Systems, a "global healthcare enterprise" whose interests include the CHA Stem Cell Institute and several hospitals and clinics in Korea and the US.

But the BMJ has learnt that the editor in chief of Fertility and Sterility has been threatened with legal action by Dr Cha, and that one of Dr Cha's co-authors on the disputed paper, Dr Sook Hwan Lee, has been charged with criminal copyright infringement.

Dr Kim told the BMJ that the paper had begun life as his PhD thesis and that there were just two names on it when it was published by Korea University in May 2003. He then submitted this as a paper to the Korean Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in July 2003 with five additional names, including Sook Hwan Lee.

But his surprise turned to shock when, in December 2005, he saw a similar paper in Fertility and Sterility. He was even more shocked to see that the number of authors had reduced to six and that he was
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Contact: Emma Dickinson
edickinson@bmj.com
44-020-738-36529
BMJ-British Medical Journal
5-Apr-2007