Speed Read: Stem-Cell Scandal

With an investigative panel from Seoul National University (SNU) scheduled to deliver its final report this week on Dr. Hwang Woo Suk's already largely discredited stem-cell research, the South Korean scientist's career seems all but finished.

Why did Hwang's claims create such excitement?
In a 2004 paper, Hwang reported that his team was the first to clone human embryos and extract lines of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) from them, harvesting a single line of ESCs from experiments involving 248 human eggs. ESCs can potentially grow into any type of body tissue, and lines...