But the announcement made this week by Woo Suk Hwang, of Seoul National University in South Korea, and his colleagues, is serious.
At a news conference in Seoul, Woo Suk Hwang said he will step down as leader of the South Korean cloning team, and he apologized for his actions.
In 2004, Woo Suk Hwang, a veterinary scientist at Seoul National University, claimed to have succeeded in achieving the feat, but later admitted to faking the data.
In the recent scandal over the work of South Korean scientist Woo Suk Hwang, it emerged that he had used eggs from junior members of his team, raising concerns over coercion.
The research was conducted by Woo Suk Hwang , a professor at Seoul National University, and Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, and the results are published in the current issue of Science.
Dolly the sheep -- the first cloned animal -- was created over 10 years ago, and the only previous claim of human embryo cloning by South Korean scientist Woo Suk Hwang in 2004, was discredited.
For a while, it appeared that South Korea was making a go of it when it came to stem cells and cloning, but then it turned out that one of its leading researchers, Hwang Woo Suk, had faked results.
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The Seoul Central District Court sentenced Hwang Woo-suk, 56, to a two-year prison term, suspended for three years, the Yonhap news agency reported.
Nothing notable has occurred in embryonic stem cell research other than the scientific fraud committed by the infamous South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk.
Reports of Hwang Woo-suk's studies attracted worldwide attention and enthusiasm from researchers and patients, but in 2006 he acknowledged faking his findings after questions of impropriety emerged.
Disgraced South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk today apologized for publishing two fraudulent papers on embryonic stem research, but he repeated earlier claims that he had been deceived by junior scientists.
"Therapeutic cloning has tremendous, tremendous healing potential, but we have to open so many doors before human trials, " lead researcher Hwang Woo-suk of Seoul National University said in a telephone interview.
RNL-Bio began its cloning work in cooperation with Seoul National University in Korea, where Hwang Woo-suk, the controversial professor later found guilty of scientific fraud, produced the first cloned dog, Snuppy.
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