Res/351
Unethical Business Research
RES/351
April 18, 2012
Unethical Business Research
Research is important in any business to interpret data being collected to improve or make new discoveries. The article read was about Dr. Woo Suk Hwang who used unethical research to enhance his career in the world of science. Hwang hurt everyone who was involved in his work. Leading people to believe that his research was real he provided false hope into his new discoveries. Trying to figure out why he would want to ruin his career and how this could have been avoided is important to why he used fabricated research. Looking into the unethical decisions made by Dr. Woo Suk Hwang will help people see what could be possible consequences for using false results in research material.
Dr. Woo Suk Hwang, a professor of theriogenology and biotechnology at Seoul National University (SNU), began his work in 1999 when he told how he could clone an animal (Logan, Park, & Jeon, 2010). People began to treat Hwang like a hero after publishing two papers about stem cells in 2004 and 2005 in Science and later a paper in Nature where it was talking of how he cloned the first dog (Logan, Park, & Jeon, 2010).In late December 2005, Hwang was found to have falsified data by an internal investigation at SNU (Logan, Park, & Jeon, 2010). SNU formed a panel to investigate the charges and within about four weeks they compiled a fifty page report (Kukak, 2009). The results of SNU’s investigation released in late December 2005 which was followed by the withdrawal of Hwang’s work by Science in January 2006 and Hwang’s acknowledgement of scientific fraud in March 2006 (Logan, Park, & Jeon, 2010).
While conducting his research Hwang falsified his results by not citing accurate results and not providing the participants with information on the serious risks of egg donation. South Korean’s National Board of Bioethics indicated that not all the donors received information on the serious health
RES/351
April 18, 2012
Unethical Business Research
Research is important in any business to interpret data being collected to improve or make new discoveries. The article read was about Dr. Woo Suk Hwang who used unethical research to enhance his career in the world of science. Hwang hurt everyone who was involved in his work. Leading people to believe that his research was real he provided false hope into his new discoveries. Trying to figure out why he would want to ruin his career and how this could have been avoided is important to why he used fabricated research. Looking into the unethical decisions made by Dr. Woo Suk Hwang will help people see what could be possible consequences for using false results in research material.
Dr. Woo Suk Hwang, a professor of theriogenology and biotechnology at Seoul National University (SNU), began his work in 1999 when he told how he could clone an animal (Logan, Park, & Jeon, 2010). People began to treat Hwang like a hero after publishing two papers about stem cells in 2004 and 2005 in Science and later a paper in Nature where it was talking of how he cloned the first dog (Logan, Park, & Jeon, 2010).In late December 2005, Hwang was found to have falsified data by an internal investigation at SNU (Logan, Park, & Jeon, 2010). SNU formed a panel to investigate the charges and within about four weeks they compiled a fifty page report (Kukak, 2009). The results of SNU’s investigation released in late December 2005 which was followed by the withdrawal of Hwang’s work by Science in January 2006 and Hwang’s acknowledgement of scientific fraud in March 2006 (Logan, Park, & Jeon, 2010).
While conducting his research Hwang falsified his results by not citing accurate results and not providing the participants with information on the serious risks of egg donation. South Korean’s National Board of Bioethics indicated that not all the donors received information on the serious health
References: Kakuk, P. (2009). The legacy of the Hwang: research misconduct in biosciences. Science and Engineering Ethics, 15(4)545-562. Logan, R. A., Park, J., & Jeon, H. (2010). The Hwang Scandal and Korean News Coverage: Ethical considerations. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 25(3), 171-191. Doi: 10.1080/08900523. 2010. 498287