March 14 issue of Science mentions Tae Kook Kim

Science is moving slowly on the fraud by Tae Kook Kim. In a paper "Two Papers from Korean Lab Found to lack 'scientific truth'" (319 Science 1468), Science observed:

KAIST launched the inquiry after scientists at Kim's company, CGK Co., had difficulty coaxing the technology, called magnetisim-based interaction capture (MAGIC), to work.

One co-author, Yong-Weon Yi, contacted both Science and Nature Chemical Biology, to have his name removed from BOTH papers.

Science notes that CGK raised $2.5 million from three Korean venture capitalists in 2006 [the year the Hwang fraud was exposed].

Of the value of peer review, Katrina Kelner, Science's deputy editor for biological sciences reported: "Reviewers were very enthusiastic."

In fact, CGK told reporters of eight (8) problems with MAGIC.

Tom Maniatis of Harvard, who supervised Kim's post-doc, said: "I certainly would never have expected this." Kim was later at Harvard's Institute of Chemistry and Cell Biology.

And, yes, there is a patent angle. Science reports that Kim had become embroiled in a patent dispute between KAIST and CGK over rights to MAGIC. Kim had already been suspended by KAIST for bypassing the school's normal patent procedures.

Science did not mention whether the authors of the Science article disclosed their economic interest to Science at the time of submission.

[Information from Science, March 14, 2008]