A South Korean scientist whose work on tailored embryonic stem cells has been discredited, coerced junior female colleagues on his team to donate their own eggs for his research, a television network reported late on Tuesday.A spokesman for Seoul National University said on Wednesday its panel investigating Hwang Woo-suk for scientific fraud would not comment on the allegation until it releases its final findings next week.Hwang, who claimed in a landmark 2005 paper he had made a breakthrough in therapeutic cloning research, was dealt a devastating blow last week by the panel, which said none of his work, published in the journal Science, could be proved.Junior female researchers felt compelled to subject themselves to painful procedures to extract eggs and contribute to Hwang’s research out of fear they would otherwise be excluded from academic recognition, a member of his team told MBC TV.
