Professor Ian Wilmut, the “father” of Dolly the sheep, the first animal in the world to be born through cloning, has recently acknowledged that he is not the “pioneer breaking through the research frontier on cloning worldwide”.
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Professor Wilmut and Dolly the sheep |
Professor Wilmut made this statement during a court hearing in Edinburgh, Scotland, when Dr. Prim Singh, a 45-year-old atomic biology researcher and his Asian associate, accused him of attempting to steal his ideas and ridiculed him for his racial background.
The Telegraph reported that Dr. Singh’s lawyer asked, “Are you not the author of the research on Dolly the sheep?“, to which Professor Wilmut responded, “Yes“. He further stated that in that historical research, he played a “not very significant” supervisory role. Moreover, he was not the one who developed the technology or conducted the experiments that led to the birth of Dolly the sheep.
The concept of freezing somatic cells originated from Dr. Campbell, and the crucial experiment was carried out by another scientist, Bill Ritchie, according to Professor Wilmut. He also acknowledged that his associate, Dr. Campbell, deserved “66% of the research work” on Dolly the sheep. Furthermore, he only appeared as the lead author in the report describing this historical event due to the preferential agreement of Dr. Keith Campbell.
The trial is still ongoing.
Although the matter has not reached any final conclusions, if true, this will be another devastating blow to the global scientific community following the stem cell fraud case of Professor Hwang Woo Suk, raising a concerning issue in the scientific field: fraud and the fabrication of research works.
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