It is weird to have heard you, a TH-camr that puts immense research and effort into his video, shout out RealLifeLore (in ad-read) in the last video, a TH-camr that does seemingly 0 research, puts out one error ridden video after another and often comes down to "I made it tf up buddy"
I didn't realize you posted on nebula 2 weeks early. I was wondering if you had to re-upload since I had seen it already. If it’s just a trick to make me comment and tell you how awesome your content is, well... it worked.
As a Korean, I would like to mention that public perception of Hwang has drastically changed during the last two decades. He's now seen as a criminal and a national embarrassment. His story is always mentioned in schools and universities as a prime example of what NOT to do as a scientist. It's also used as a constant reminder that with the right friends, one can get away with almost anything.
I mean there are bad things (faking the research from 2005 and coercing subordinates into donating). But donating the eggs for money should be allowed in my opinion. Yes, poor people will donate to get some money - but that's like saying "let's increase minimum wage to 20 USD, 10 million people will lose their job, but working for 10 USD is bad!" - the women that donated the eggs, donated for a reason. By banning donating for money, you are harming the science and the women (as they won't get the money they need) :) The whole ordeal coming from a bad law from politicians and conservative mindset. How unsurprising.
I'm sure someone has already pointed it out but I need to say this for my own sanity. There is no such thing as a fancy Peugeot. Peugeot doesn't make ultra luxury super cars for rich people, they mostly make small cost effective hatchbacks. Hwang Woo-suk was admonishing his employee not for driving a Lamborghini but for driving something that in Europe is considered less fancy than a VW. I imagine the real reason Hwang Woo-suk was so angry was because the car wasn't Korean.
Agree that their cars aren’t fancy but some of their cars do a good job of looking fancy from the outside and it could have been one of them. Some of them look like supercars compared to the cars korean brands were putting out back then. Regardless, huang had no business telling him what car he can drive
Sort of, it's more that he's saying "I have 13 hours of jet lag every time I travel back and forth and I'm only there a couple days, so I'm too tired to think or remember clearly."
Similar to recent history where, president trump started taking ivermectin. A medication for parasites but for covid, a viral infection. Literally, apple and oranges
That's not that surprising. I work as a scientist and from my experience, the names on publications often mean nothing. I have seen cases of people not even knowing that their name even was in a paper. Sometimes people are just worried to miss someone and they consider missing someones name not as bad at having an extra name that should be there.
"Oh hey, btw, he also laundered funds using roughly 30 or so bank accounts. But like, didn't even do it well because he used his own private account as the washing-hub." Lmao.
Park Eul Soon’s diary entry is *heartbreaking*. A young, hardworking scientist, with a heart to help humans fight disease and heal the world, coerced and manipulated, and hurt. I dearly hope she’s doing okay now. God bless her. She did her best. I hope she’s okay.
I just realized that the cards actually represent the field of each person Hearts is scientists Spades is government Diamonds is the media Clubs is everyone else And the higher cards mean more power I can’t imagine how much work went into making just that graphic
I now understand why Hwang was depicted as the “King of Hearts”. That’s exactly what he was in the Korean public eye, and he used that power to his own advantage. Love the way this is formed as a card game, and it’s one hell of a full house
@@lou626 You can find a list of them all on Wikipedia, but most cards don't have one. King of Hearts' one comes from the drawing of him. He's got his sword positioned in a fashion that makes it look like he stabbed it through his own head
I find it interesting how he argued that cloning research was completely okay when looked at through the lens of Buddhism, only to violate a frankly _obscene_ number of Buddhist principles behind closed doors.
Yup. A lot of people will showboat religion in the public eye and in areas where they are seen, but don’t follow those same principles that they preach in there personal lives.
Imo I'm willing to bet that some of the cows and pigs are actual clones given that his biotech company is massively successfull, but the complete lack of record keeping in his early days is a huge red flag
@@BobbyBroccoli I think the animals you can reasonably accept can be possible clones, after all there is a lot less ethical hoops to go through than human stem cell research. (And it has been done with a sheep, so given enough attempts it should have been done at least once with the other animals in the early research) If you had a near limitless supply of eggs for the animals even with the low succes rates it’s going to work eventually.
i'm still impressed at Hwang's ability to navigate the social landscape of the scandal. it's amazing just how much he got away with through networking and people's skills.
Social intelligence really was Hwang's most useful trait. He knew what to say, how to say it and when to say it. It's frightening just how far he got with this alone. It's really frightening.
The most surprising thing is he really did go from being a normal farm veterinarian but somehow worked it all the way to the top and even then stayed there for a while
The minute your boss tries to imply your job is a "family" you should start submitting applications elsewhere. Literally one of biggest red flags the company is irrecoverably toxic
It was so satisfying when this was addressed in the second video, because when that “family” description popped up in the first video, alarm bells were going off for me. Because, you’re right. It is a _giant_ red flag when an employee describes their company or team as being “like a family.” Run and never look back.
All I can think about whenever someone says they're like a family is that one comedy skit where Olive Garden employees were yelling at each other and customers about not taking out trash or flunking college courses. When a customer complained about how they were treated, they snapped at him like "don't talk to your mother like that!" Even as a joke, it displays the issues with "family" environments nicely.
I love how the story of this ends up working like a reverse murder mystery. We already know the villain is bad we just have to work backwards and find all the breadcrumbs.
There's a neat detective video game called "Her Story" which is where you browse through a series of recorded interviews to find out just *what* happened and why the woman in them is being questioned. Because the videos can be discovered in any order, the story unfolds differently for each player. (Spoiler-Free details below) In my own playthrough, the LAST video I revealed, which finally unlocked the final piece of the mystery, was instead among the FIRST videos in a different player's run So my own playthrough was to answer "what happened," while theirs was probably to find out "why this happened."
The fact that they masked an IVF assistance website using infertile couples to harvest eggs sent chills down my spine. That's just horrific, I cannot describe how I feel in words.
Sperm/ egg donation and IVF industries are downright predatory in most places! Just google the number of fertility Dr that have swept donor sperm with their own!
Just like many association of "donate to stop the wars, save civilian and well send medical supply to them" end up being directly send and stored by Talibans like groups Wars funded and fueled by the money of anti-war people to keep countrys away from recovering
I am a former egg donor. Watching this video made me sick to my stomach. At least in the US nowadays, donating takes a long time from the initial request to the actual procedure - several months AT LEAST. There were also SEVERAL TIMES that I was given the option to back out. I was given months to make my decision. I cannot imagine how stressful it must have been to have your employer pressuring you to make a huge decision like this, especially since this was 20 years ago and the procedure was probably more dangerous than it is today. My heart breaks for these women.
What is the honest exact reason you donated? Did you know the couple? Are fighting to increase human population? Most egg donors do it for the money. There's no difference in their situation or the one in the US except for more red tape and steps to make other people money. Don't kid yourself.
Same. I donated because I don't ever want to have kids, so I decided if I wasn't using them, I wanted to help other people have families. And my egg was successfully implanted and the recipients had a healthy baby girl! That's all I know, obviously they're very confidential about all of this, but the mom wrote me a letter to inform me. But the whole ordeal was very painful, and extremely invasive. I had to have so many injections, internal ultrasounds, I got poked, prodded, and examined constantly. Knowing these women had to go through all that against their will makes me feel physically sick.
I absolutely love these multi-hour marathons of scientific scandals. There is so much to learn, and so much juicy drama within the community that isn’t too different from stuff you’d see in the music or gaming industry.
the human-interest angle is definitely what gets a lot of people in the door here and bobby broccoli simply does a phenomenal job of using that to both tell a super engaging journalistic story as well as to educate people … but i’d say we need to maybe stay away from comparisons to gaming and music drama? i _think_ i get what you might be trying to say here: like, maybe that it’s surprising how a video covering science can be _just as interesting_ as drama from the entertainment industry. but i feel like the difference in _the actual content_ and substance between these kind of dramas is really quite important, and perhaps we shouldn’t just be focusing on how the spectacle of the form is similar from the instrumental perspective of our own personal entertainment. these science docs by bobby are usually about things that have had a surprisingly, often not widely known, societal impact. laws changed, people got killed, social norms were altered, etc. over this stuf. the music and gaming drama, by comparison, is often just kind of tabloid-level fluff-which isn’t to dismiss it completely or say that enjoying it makes someone stupid: i eat that shit up like candy, too-but, like, it’s just very much _not_ the same thing in a kind of really important way. and if we had more people making this quality level of science “drama” docs instead of the endless mountains of music and gaming content which require far less of a qualified background to do (which is in part an explanation of why there’s so much more of it), well, i’d definitely make that trade in a heartbeat.
I salute that person who posted the real photos. 'The show must go on'. They finally pushed through fear and were able to save the entire opposition and enforce it and swing everything in favour against Hwang
It is actually amazing that despite everything, this guy actually is responsible for the first cloning of a dog, which was a genuinely impressive achievement. He reached the sky, and in going for the stars, he failed spectacularly
Better yet, if you become part of the government, you can commit as much fraud, insider trading, and corruption as you want! The peasants are far too comfortable to do anything to fix it, so we can operate without any risks!
That's was Epstein's trick too - he got as many high society/important figures implicated with him as he could so it was in all their interests to keep him a free man.
And become the image of a nation, nationalism makes wonders, look at WW2 germany and japan, when a person becomes an icon more worthy than the self of the public, you can do anything you want and get away with it, because society wants you to get away with anything, because the self is no more.
It's unfortunate but this is quite common in East Asian countries. It's not uncommon in Korea and Japan when a female sexual abuse victim/survivor comes forward against a public official or other famous person, *they* end up apologizing for the scene it creates even when they were innocent and the one who should be apologized to, and far more likely to be on the receiving end of harassment and given the "you'll never work in this town again!" treatment, which hits even worse in societies that have more culture around familial and personal honor. The status of women is certainly improving over time there (despite everything she did wrong, Korea had a woman president decades before even the United States), just not all at once.
I think there are three sides of it: the donors who were misled, the allegation that some of the women on his team volunteered, and the allegation that at least one of them was coerced. Most people probably only had awareness of the first two. Unfortunately the team member did confirm that she was coerced, though.
my heart breaks for those women manipulated and pressured into donating their eggs, i can't imagine thinking you were donating an embryo to a needing couple only to find out it was used for fraudulent human cloning... that's just so horrific. and the way they were treated by the media and public makes it even worse. i hope those women have healed
Us so sad that one of the women that found out the truth about het eggs donations felt "embarrassed" like it was het fault. She acted on good intentions, had no control tif the outcomes and should feel angry at being taken ot her generosity. Shame on Hgwang, not on her
Eh. It's really sad that they weren't properly informed and the research was ultimately fraudulent, but I guess eggs just aren't sacred to me and etting emotional over a cell makes me want to go "Women ☕". We already sell ourselves out one way or another so in theory I have no qualms with poor women selling eggs, it's better than prostitution.
@@eriktrp women are born with all of their eggs. we cannot get new ones. having this procedure done can seriously affect your fertility, and many women who did this were not properly informed of the risks. any medical procedure done on somebody without informed consent is very unethical, even if you find it insignificant. the choice is not between sex work and selling your eggs, many women would not have done sex work either way.
With Ninov, element hunting has little to no real practical value now. All of the radioactive elements that were useful and discovered in the hunt are below 100, so going beyond 118 is honestly just a glorified pissing match. It's nice to have it, but not needed. With Schön, improved semiconductors would have been great and useful, but the thing is they're kind of abstract and distant to the layperson, so it doesn't feel as emotional. With Hwang, stem cell treatment was (and still is) sold as a cure-all. People suffering and dying of incurable ailments finally saw light at the end of the tunnel, only to be crushed by the fraud. Not to mention the medical abuse he inflicted on his egg "donors". Biology scandals just seem to have high stakes, at least emotionally, since the layperson understands their effect even more.
@@Ramboost007 No need to sell it as a cure all. Stem cell treatment is absolutely capable of it. And yes medicine unlike physics is very practical and has actually delivered numerous results in the past couple decades. It is also very promising. Physics especially particle physics is abstract and actually useful results are at best decades away. More like centuries or ever in most cases especially when we are talking about element hunting. The fact that the latter receives so much funding in comparison always annoyed me.
@@Ramboost007 I think it's also the matter of how it affects a nation. Korea was definitely lacking in modern folk heroes since the Korean war, someone to cling to to give the nation a foothold in the international zeitgeist. Hwang in this situation represented more than just a company, or a lab, or a field, he represented the hopes and dreams of a nation. So not only were the actual lives of people involved handled poorly, but the entire nation had to come to terms with this borderline cult figure they rested many of their hopes and dreams on being rather scummy. Like keep in mind by the mid 2000s, people basically always asked "North or South" when "Korea" was mentioned in the States because probably the most famous Korean (either) was one of the Kims of NK, for all the wrong reasons. There wasn't yet the likes of BTS, or a Faker, Bong Joon-Ho hadn't yet made Snowpiercer or Parasite, they had some decently successful baseball players like Chan-Ho Park but nobody who reached the status of "transcending the sport" like Ichiro Suzuki for Japan or Fernando Valenzuela for Mexico. People like having that iconic figure who can put them on the map.
@yishto I'm from the Philippines, so Southeast Asia, and therefore I easily forget that before PSY, South Korea didn't really have pop culture capital in the West. This is not true in Asia. We already experienced the First Hallyu Wave, where Korean TV dramas were shown on our local channels dubbed and what Westerners would call "proto-KPop" was already popular here. But then again it doesn't really matter to South Koreans as much as Western influence due to the inferiority complex all colonized nations have.
I currently live and work in South Korea as a teacher. The fact they masked the purpose of the egg donation as for IVF is particularly horrifying in light of the fact I have an extremely high (abnormally so) percentage of students who are twins, and I discovered it was because Korea has a high incidence of infertility, so IVF is very common. In very expensive schools it's not uncommon to have a set of twins in nearly every class (of only 14 students each). It is a very common and highly valued procedure, and poorer families will take on massive debt to have it done since carrying on family lines and confucian values are very important here. There's a lot of fear and sadness surrounding the declining population, fed by the many tragedies and constant oppression Korea has experienced as a nation over history, so any way to help their people and culture survive through future generations is is of paramount importance here. To take advantage of those fears and desperate hopes is truly vile, and I understand how people could choose to put on blinders to keep just a thread of hope for the future and progress.
The declining population may come from more factors than just the past tragedies... The whole working ethics are making out probably hard as well. And the rampant Sexism.
11:00 Love the story telling. As soon as you mentioned Hwang's female employee in the last video and the number of egg cells required, I had a feeling where they were coming from.
My stomach dropped when he asked that question. The fact it's easy to accept people reading off such absurdly high numbers as fact, just because it's coming from a confident/authoritative voice is unnerving.
Legit chills when he said it! And then the callback to the anon post when producer's note went back on air for part 2 👏 guy's got a sincere gift in storytelling and dramatic timing
Wow the fact he pressured and lied to those women to donate eggs is so horrific. I’d looked into egg donation in the past but decided against it because the procedure is risky and the recovery is painful and very long. You get a lot of money for eggs in the US and I still didn’t think it was worth it. I can’t imagine getting nothing or almost nothing and being lied too. That’s disgusting
I think one of the most depressing parts of the story is women who felt pressured to use the eggs, especially the women in the labs. Korea is still to this day, a very conservative in its views of women and their place in work, so imagine a young female scientist trying to make a difference and then your boss pressures you into donating eggs? Ignoring the creepy part it’s very devaluing to see how instead of being seen as an equal in your field, you are reduced to your ability to reproduce. I can’t imagine the opposite happening where they asked a male scientist to donate sperm…
Ironically but not surprising, these countries often ban single people getting access to assistive reproduction technology. A woman's value of reproduction is only valid when she is married to a man. 😓
And the procedure to harvest eggs is so much more invasive than a sperm donation. The fact that they didn’t even give the women proper post-operation care and left them in pain, bleeding and gave them no informed consent. 😢
As much as I have pride as a Korean and love for my people and my culture, a lot of the societal/cultural pitfalls that lead to this encompasses a lot of the criticisms I have. The sentiment of a paternal like attitude for the scandal rings. Listening to this story and I'm having a "I'm not mad, I'm disappointed" attitude. Not that nothing in this story angers me, but I understand that this has already happened. Disappointment comes from the fact that, the dog was a real clone and if things had gone differently, Hwang might have made a name for himself and become the pride of S Korea with integrity. I will say though, that there is a lot stubbornness in the face of hurt pride that is done in such a Korean way, that it makes me laugh.
It honestly bothers me when people who *could* achieve greatness opt to lie and cheat instead of actually doing the work. It's such a senseless waste of resources and the potential of those involved.
I am from the Netherlands. Our society is probably as far removed from Korean society as possible among western countries in terms of cultural norms and values. Still we had the story of social psychologist Diederik Stapel, which is much the same as the stories of Hwang or that organic crystal dude Broccoli made a docuseries about. The problem in all these cases of fraud is not linked to anything typical to the culture. I mean in the story of Hwang there are definitely some cultural aspects that would only exist in Korea, but this is also true for any other story. The culture is just not a key aspect. What is? Implicit trust and lack of oversight. In the case of Stapel he was always at some point in control of the research data and he would change the data to make the outcomes seem interesting (which it normally isn't as humans are scandalously stubborn and boring). No one had any serious reason to ever doubt him and when challenged about the origin of the results he would just get angry and tell people not to waste time on these sorts of questions. Where Hwang and that organic crystal dude were caught pretty quickly because their research made them instant superstars Stapel was in a different field. Stardom as a social psychologist is just not happening. As such there was not a lot of attention. Catching him took well over a decade. In one of the most egalitarian, transparent and least corrupt countries a fraudulent professor was running amok for over 10 years. His punishment? Three weeks of forced labor. Worry about Korea. It is your home. But don't worry about it because of Hwang. Hwang could happen anywhere.
@@InfernosReaper The idea that people need to achieve greatness is part of the issue. Science does not need heroes. It does not need that one genius of the century. This is what broader society is enamored with but it is far removed from reality. Real science gets done by funding a thousand institutes over decades, having a ton of scientists per capita and ensuring a proper scientific process.
Accepting the pitfalls of one's country and trying to improve instead of claiming to be the best in the world is the difference between patriotism and nationalism. The Newsroom "America is not the greatest country in the world anymore" speech is a great example of that. Anyway, S. Korea is a top country to live in Asia but there are really serious issues that need to be addressed like inequality from the Chaebol dominated economy. When the government pardons fraud criminals like Samsung's ex-chairman Lee Jae Yong citing that he'll improve the economy, it feels S. Korea took nothing away from the Dr. Hwang scandal.
Thanks for talking about the misogyny inherent in egg donation in korea - very sad that the women who donated their eggs without even knowing all the side effects were attacked for donating their eggs
One thing I would like to add here is that the Hwang affair impacted the iPS discovery. When the first iPS papers were published starting 2006 people were so disillusioned from the scandal that everyone was sceptical to the point where the iPS replication attempt was done immediately by no fewer than three independent labs. ADDENDUM: Additionally, by the author's own account, he was hesitant to publish the work precisely due to the Hwang affair until his student can replicate it separately. PS: as an Indonesian who has seen plenty of similar cases, seeing nationalist grifters face-plant spectacularly never fails to warm my cold, dead heart.
That 2006 paper by Takahashi and Yamanaka was beautiful though, very very straightforward. And their follow up 2007 paper on testing the Human cells was confirmed by other lab very fast.
I can only think of the forex trading fraud case with Indra Kenz and Doni salmanan. They both have kinda same downfall with Hwang; still getting some support although Hwang are on a different level.
It breaks my heart that the victims are blamed and hounded for something that isn't their fault and when they actively need compassion/care. Goodness. Thank you for shining a light on this.
It's been mentioned on this channel that there's a bit of an institutional incentive against uncovering fraud in science, but I think a common pattern for the really high profile fraudsters like Hendrik Schon and Hwang is a specific political/financial environment. For Schon, it was Bell Lab's kind of desperate financial straits and in this case, it's Korea staking its national identity on Hwang. If your house is on fire and someone hands you a fire hose, you're probably not going to ask them where they're getting the water from.
I mean, that is actually a decently common thing among cheaters in any field(Videogames, science, journalism, etc). Frauds are not always fakes. Some are legit people in the field that simply can't get enough of their own success, so they set up smoke and mirrors to look like the next big breakthrough when they aren't.
The thing is Hwang actually did make a breakthrough in the stem cell field amidst all of this. It's just... not what he claimed to be doing. After his work was investigated, it was discovered in 2007 that, unknowingly, he managed to induce parthenogenesis in human egg cells. In other words: the egg cells' chromosomes were 'duplicated', making it functionally similar to fertilised eggs.
@@Malleonardone do you have any links to info? Have looked for it but found nothing except that parthenogenetic events cause teratomas, except for one single case of a baby chimera whose other genetical lineage was product a parthenogenic event that was only successful because of them becoming a chimera where it used the "healthy" cells as a sort of scaffolding (also that one of the things that makes actual human parthenogenesis likely impossible is the fact that the parental genes basically compete for gene expression during the conception of the baby, competition without which apparently the process is botched and the result is teratomas)
I watched the Netflix documentary on this situation. It was muddy and confusing. Your coverage of the issue is FAR MORE thorough. Your analysis is league's ahead of the Netflix coverage. Bravo! Thank you!
For those who don't know, to get your eggs extracted you need to get hormone injections that mess with your health, mood, weight, metal health in general, then they have to invasively use instruments to go up inside you to suck out eggs which is incredibly painful as the cervix is more innervated than your butthole, so it's all round very very unpleasant and prone to fail, so often needs to be done multiple time, and to have THAT many eggs from just 16 people... there's no way all of them escaped gainint negative and permanent health consequences from all of that.
to be clear, it's confirmed at 1:04:25 that it was in fact over 2000 eggs from 121 donors. I'm still shocked that the number is that high, and that they tried to get away with it, but it's at least not AS horrific as just 16 donors
@@thedragonryder with 121 donors is an average of 18 With 16 donors (185eggs) is an average of 11 (the 2005 paper) I forgot how many donors were in the 2004 😅 You know what? I might be wrong. I just thought the actual donors /eggs ratio at the end was worse.
@@tagaway6173 oh, maybe I misread what this comment meant, I was under the impression they were talking about all of the eggs for both studies coming from just 16 people, which would have been extraordinarily horrific and probably flat out impossible
1:07:24 How you found the strength of will not to say "place all your eggs in one basket" here is beyond me. Terrific video, as always! You are in a class of your own; the visuals, the stories and the undoubtedly massive amounts of research are equal parts complex and compelling.
The irony that Hwang went through all that unethical research, only for a fully ethical way of creating stem cells to make his paper irrelivant 2 years after it was published is really funny to me
This is a horrific story, although brilliantly told. The contraversies you've covered in the past never had the same human risk element and mistreatment that Hwang is guilty of
I'm just left repulsed by Korean culture for blatantly wanting to trample women's rights AND human rights to protect a fraudster. For no reason other than jingoism.
@@WobblesandBean It's true that this was partly a product of Korea's culture and its place in the world at the time--but I really feel it could have happened anywhere. Just about any country has problems and tendencies that can and do lead to massive scandals like this going on far longer than they should.
Can't express how much I appreciate your coverage of the misogyny in play, and to specifically name it. Thank you for acknowledging this huge part of the world. (Warning for those perusing the comments, it's as much of a minefield on this topic as you'd expect.)
It is sad to see that misogyny continuing to be a massive problem particularly in South Korea and Asia... or using BB's videos as example, his Lena video have comparatively higher dislike rate...
It's fascinating to see Hwang and the institutions that stood by him gradually fess up to the truth, changing their story little by little with each new revelation
What was really interesting to me from a story telling standpoint is how (and I’m just realizing how apt this is) Hwang for a moment played his cards perfectly and put himself in a position to come out of this scandal not just unscathed, but even more popular than before. Usually in these stories once the scandal starts to play out, the moment part of the truth is uncovered by someone, the entire web of lies begins collapsing. It is fascinating in a kinda horrific way how for a couple months, several people knew the whole truth, the public knew about the egg donation scandal, and for a less socially talented person this would have meant game over, but Hwang in this position was more popular than ever and managed to repress the damning parts of the story until one random internet post
@@elbr3376 It is important to note that Hwang could fight back the first strike against him and remain intact because the first accusation made was not about his work being fraud, but ethic violation. As soon as the fraud accusation was made publicly with a smoking gun (the duplicate photos), Hwang's house of glass shattered just like it did for Hendrik Schon and Ninov. This shows how sacred data are in Science. You violate ethic? It is OK so long as you are friend with politicians. You falsify/fake data? Not even God can save you.
I commented this on the last video but wanted to say it again, I’d be very interested in a video from you on Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cell line. It is a vitally important part of medicine history but it is also steeped in some of the deepest ethics drama about patient consent, research ethics, and exploitation of vulnerable groups
Nobody was exploited. If I go to a hospital for cancer treatment, and the hospital wants to use the tumor they remove for medical research, I'd be nothing but delighted. No, they don't need to ask my consent, informed or not. They definitely don't need to pay me. After they remove the tumor, it's no different from a hair or dead skin cell that I shed.
@@dwaynepeters4520 that isn’t the point. You absolutely have to get consent to use someone’s biological materials, or at the VERY LEAST inform them of what you are doing. Additionally, the story involves a lot more complicated exploitation than just taking the cells as it involved abusing a group who didn’t have the power to stand up for themselves at the time. Also regardless of your personal opinion on the matter, it is a important and really interesting point in medical history both for medicine itself and medical ethics and it would be a really informative and interesting video
@@elbr3376 "You absolutely have to get consent to use someone’s biological materials, or at the VERY LEAST inform them of what you are doing. " That was not the standard back then. I agree that it is the bioethics standard right now, but I don't agree with the standard either from a moral or practical point of view.* For that reason, I also don't agree that any abuse occurred. Sure, a video would be interesting. I'm just worried that it would be so biased that it would leave viewers knowing less and not more. Certainly that's the case for many of the terrible pieces I've read that treat Lacks as some kind of medical hero, which she definitely wasn't (and to be clear, she did absolutely nothing wrong; she just isn't a hero). *I should add that I think requiring informed consent for using discarded biological materials makes more sense now than it did back in Lacks' day, because the availability of cheap genetic tests poses a privacy issue. However, the possibility of such tests could not have been reasonably forseen by Lacks' doctors, so they cannot be criticized for disrespecting her privacy.
@@dwaynepeters4520 "that wasn't the standard back then" isn't an argument that something was morally correct. plenty of horrific things have been "standard" at one point or another in history. additionally, the anecdote that you would personally be okay with non-consensual samples of you being taken for research has no bearing on what the overall practice should be or what's an ethical treatment of humans in general; you are just one person and if i were, say, okay with being murdered, that wouldn't suddenly make murder okay. you'll need to make better arguments than that lol
Part 1 left me on the edge of my seat. Part 2 made me sit back, stunned. Those poor women. The details surrounding the coersion is sickening, but the front of helping IVF is downright insidious. And the treatment of not only the donors, but infertile women in general is so heartwrenching. I did not expect to feel this emotional after watching! Brilliant work, Mr. Broccoli. I'd normally say, "Can't wait for the next one!" but you deserve to rest after what I assume to be a hell of a lot of work! Take a break, take your time. The wait is well worth it. Congratulations on being full time now!!!
I'm in the middle of a PhD on ethical and social issues in assissted reproduction, so I was very familiar with this story before watching. I watched anyway, because I knew from your other work that it would be entertaining, and a good refresher of this familiar story. But you really hit it out of the park with this one BB. You captured intricacies and social factors I had never heard of, and you explained so many concepts remarkably well to make the story digestible to a wider audience. Incredible work mate, keep the stellar scicomm coming!!
what make Hwang scandal different and (IMO) hit harder than Schön, Ninov (and Bogdanoff brother maybe) scandals is that how much people actually involved in the scandals. It's pretty much a whole country against a small innocent group. And the fact that Hwang himselft didn't even get punished more than some of his coworkers is made me both angry and sad. really love your documentary mate.
It’s even simpler than that; elements, semiconductors, the beginning of the universe… these are all physical science subjects detached from life, and so the scandals are questionable solely on the basis of intellectual and academic integrity. Nothing can compare with the involvement of actual human lives when it comes to ethics.
As a Pittsburgher, I did not expect this story to end up in my neighborhood! Schatten is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. His lab work was done at the women's hospital where my Nana was a nurse. I started as a mechanical engineering major when I was an undergrad at University of Pittsburgh, and Schatten is listed in the biomedical engineering department. We might have been in the same building at any time in 2016.
i'm not surprised that the public at large did not find issues with the ethical problems in the way the eggs were obtained. i worked in a korean lab before and when i asked the professor where one of our hcc cell lines came from he had the audacity to wink at me and say it's illegally obtained from his friend at the hospital, and for me to keep it a secret. i got out of there as fast as i could.
People place value on life with age. They don't care for embyros because they can't see it. They view it as less than human and blame religion for the ethicsl dilemma.
@@Cherry-pu4mx you do realize the reason the egg "donations" are scandalous is because human WOMEN getting their bodies taken advantage of and not the debatable life status of an zygote, right?
As a Korean American PhD student, I think this story hits home for me. I quit my biotech job in pursuit of scientifc progress. Even though my current field (biomedical engineering) is not riddled with fraud, it is definitely like any other scientific institution that revoles around cult of personality, which is a microcosm of what Hwang developed. Also, science preaches ethics but always prioritizes progress when it comes to grants and publications Though kind of depressing, this video was a great allegory on how empirical science is as human as any other field because it is humans who provide the data
Sounds like Adorno is right about the enlightenment. Now think of who is the one that is paying for grants and publications. So much for "trust the science"
The plea to let him return to his career is baffling. What career? His results weren't real, and he didn't do any of the technical work. He just had a corrupt management role.
Funnily enough, I saw a similar thing with Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. I was following it bc heaps of my school friends/colleagues were in biomedical instruments. After the technology fraud was uncovered, professional chatter fell to zero but the public on the whole were under the impression that she could ‘get it right the second time around’ - Like it’s roulette and not technical knowledge/expertise. People assume ‘trustworthy‘ people do good work and if it doesn’t pan out, it’s due to confounding/random variables. Hell, public opinion only really turned on Holmes when the law caught up with her and cracks in her public persona worked. What Kwang did was (diabolical) genius in the sense that he knew the official (lawmakers) and unofficial (the public) calls were what mattered to dodging responsibility, and not the scientific community.
Hwang laying on hospital bed reminds me on my half-assed attempts to fake illness when I did not want to go to school. I must say the beard adds credibility
I usually don't have an interest in STEM topics but find myself sitting through 2 whole hours WITHOUT stabbing my eyeballs out. You threw science, history, politics and culture in a blender and went to fucking town. This was entertaining while comprehensive, accessible, balanced and well structured. You get a Nobel prize for helping me genuinely understand a complex story with ease and learn things I would never have known if this video didn't randomly pop up. 👏
I love how unique your style is. It’s so satisfying to see the entire “board” completed by the end of the video. Great way to visualize such complicated topics.
Genuinely insane to see you go from a handful of subs, to suddenly exploding and getting millions of views. You genuinely deserve it man, you clearly put a lot of hard work and dedication into these excellent videos and I look forward to seeing how you progress and grow from here.
[EDIT: Thanks for the corrections! Itching to talk about this subject plus my knowledge of unhealthy work culture elsewhere combined into me assuming it was because people were against taking care of your mental health instead of seeing this is as a PR stunt. Looking at the situation again, I agree it was way less sinister than I thought.] Thank you for the coverage! It's given me an insanely wide perspective on a situation I never knew happened until now and a fantastic message to spread.
it's equally depressing to me that the scandal of unethical practices isn't the one to get him, that 70+% support rate for his method of soliciting eggs was appalling. it's the faking of successful results that got him. Really shows where the priorities laid in the public consciousness at that point, the end justifies all the means, especially when the means is the health of vulnerable women.
Granted, it sounded like the problem was less him checking into a hospital and more that he that and then immediately started doing photo ops with politicians. That would definitely feel extremely disingenuous, lol.
The public turning against him was more so because the hospitalization was seen as a pr move. He was recieving tv crews, politicians, reporters from bed and they were constantly broadcasting images of him disheveled in a hospital gown. People got suspicious very quickly. Apparently dude would only lie down once he saw the cameras rolling.
@Sunny Dong I mean, this is just the culture for most Asian countries. It's the whole reason for imperial Japan, North Korea, and China for 90% of its life. Its terrible too because that simple mindset created some of the worst atrocities known to man.
A very typical response for that area of east asian countries. They're already used to working themselves to death every day, who actually gives a fuck about their lives or consent or happiness.
Incredible work once again. I really appreciate you giving the cultural context specific to South Korea, and reminding us all that this could easily happen anywhere where we allow society to devalue women’s bodily autonomy. I bought Nebula just to watch this early, and I’m going to watch this again.
I personally doubt that a situation where women are misled and/or cohersed into "donating" part of their bodies "for science" would happen in the west. Not in academia, too many failsafes
@@danielo7985sadly, when the failsafes are made by a society that harbors misogyny, they may not be as effective as you think. i admit i’m not terribly informed on the scientific community, but i have seen misogyny thrive in places one might not expect.
Yet, the counter argument arises by itself, when we see that many women on their own volition included fellow scientists and politicians were willing to throw themselves into the procedure just to give this guy more eggs even after the truth surfaced. So the question is where is the line? How can we trust that people truly know what is best for themselves? To give them complete autonomy. The best answer is external regulation. Hwang didn't get away with it because his society was mysoginistic even though it was for the average citizen, the laws were there, more importantly the whole world was watching, he couldn't publicly show his processes and he knew it. He got away because he lied and because of corruption.
one really upsetting thing about this story is that the investigation and exposé aren't a lot more ethical than the experiments themselves. threatening and coercing hwang's junior lab staff in order to get information from them, exposing the names of egg donors in a massive breach of patient privacy when they'd already been exploited - i understand this needed to come to light, but it's disturbing that the search for the truth continued to exploit people as hwang had. the whole story is terrible.
To be clear here, at no point did PD Notebook publish the names of the egg donors. Their footage blurs their faces and voices and respects their privacy. All of that info was dug up by other media outlets once the story was blowing up.
@@BobbyBroccoli an important clarification, thank you, but the sentiment stands :( the whole thing really sucks. your video is really illuminating though and i appreciate the opportunity to learn.
39:50 Going to be honest, Hwang may have been a horrible human being, but I can only name on one hand the number of people that could turn a pr disaster like that on its head.
Great video. As a Korean I was rather surprised to see a video on this topic done in a Brocumentary. The first video definitely has more talking points but this one also has a few things I would see as interesting. One, the liberal media outlets where the protagonists against Hwang yet people how would be viewed as liberal like Yoo Shimin and president Noh where advocates of Hwang. Two, 2005 was a important year in women's rights in Korea ending the controversial 'head of the family' system and yet Korea was still shockingly misogynistic for a farley developed nation. I just found these points as interesting and maybe worth thinking about. Great job on the video. Hope you keep up the good work. I can see the immense amount of research youust have put into making the video. And little side note it's president Noh not Roh. Roh would be the North Korean way of addressing that surname. Just so you know.
“The liberal media outlets were the ones against Hwang, yet the liberal politicians were advocates of Hwang” Politicians don’t care about what side they are on or what beliefs they are promoting, they just say what will get them popular, like promoting the national sweetheart. This occurs to every nation and every place where politics applies. If you are 100% honest about your beliefs, you are never going to be voted for.
This whole scandal reminds me a lot of Lance Armstrong’s doping ring. You have the feel-good story of beating cancer/saving lives, the immense nationalistic fame from being world-class in a field, the powerful connections in media and politics used to intimidate and ruin the lives of critics, and the lack of severe consequences for the ringleader. Lance Armstrong even pressured his teammates into using PEDs, which is pretty similar to Hwang pressuring his grad students to donate eggs.
@@killerkitten7534 Not to defend Armstrong for pressuring others into taking drugs and lying about doing so himself, but it is worth noting that a large number of top athletes in cycling at the time were actively taking PEDs. It was getting to the point where taking them was almost a requirement to compete at the top level. Armstrong may have been the most successful to be caught, but he was by no means alone.
Man, this absolutely highlights some of the sicknesses that are malignant in South Korean society...We often talk about the damage that the introduction of Christianity has done to various societies in the context of colonialism (And obviously there is even stuff to be said about Korea here!) but the legacy of neoconfuscianism is absolutely brutal when it comes to the ingrained misogyny, hierarchical nature, and complete disregard for the individual in favor of the group. The whole "Patriotism is more important than truth, more important than ethics, more important than law" type of conservatism is just awful and self-destructive. Incredible video, this channel has very quickly catapulted to one of my favorite channels and even though the videos take a long time to produce, I adore them. Keep it up.
your right, though it's not hard to understand why, Korea has been a place of Conflict, economic growth, destruction so on especially in the last 100 years, it means that South Korea as a nation i think is having an identity crisis and struggles with where it wants to be. 1900 it was colonised by Japan until 1945 which during the Second world war was destroyed in an attempt to leave a permanent mark on Korea, and as Imperial Japan is known for commited a few atrocoties, then as soon as the war finished Korea was again divided by foreign intervention with the US occupying the South and the USSR and China occupying the North, this is big cause now 2 ideologically opposed nations had a war despite having the same history, same culture, same people and same way of life were now divided. during the 50s military dictatorship after military dictatorship until about the 90s, South Korea largely stayed extremely poor and in poverty during that time apart from Miracle on the Han river after the war. and from the 90s it has been relatively stable for south koreans. though during the early 2000's political and scandals like in this video made people question national identity, So Koreans have been in hard times from 1910 to the late 2000's. it means there hasn't been time for sociatal development. think of the work and not so much nowadays but defnitely 2 decades ago sociatal culture as the 1970s in most of the western world especially when it comes to women and what role they play in South Korean society and how they are expected and what jobs they can do in an average job, it definitely has gotten a lot better, especially since Koreans have the internet now to see and have access to the outside world, it's definitely getting better as someone who lives in Korea right now but there are still issues to be worked on!
@@17Trees33 You're right, and yeah, I am hopeful for the future. South Korea has had their economic miracle and there is no reason to think they can't find better social equilibrium in time.
Honestly, it reminds me so much about Asia society. We have a phase in Chinese "識人好過識字" which literally means it is better for you to know how to socialize than for you to know how to read. Hope something like this wont happen again, but I doubt it. Thank you for making this video.
There's so many visual details in this... but the one that GOT me was at the end of The Line where it zooms out to "Pay To Play" and it hit me what that really meant. Horrifying, but great storytelling.
This was amazing! better than the Netflix special by a long shot. Hwang moving to the private sector actually sounds like an excellent super villain origin story. Maybe in a decade we'll see him with a legion of cloned Jurassic horse army taking over the world.
I've recently watched hbomberguy's video on anti-vaxxers, and the "doctor" that started the whole affair also still had supporters even after all the damning evidence. You both came to similar points: these people, as stubborn as they seem, are also victims. It's just uncanny.
this comparison is probably going to be really annoying (even if I read it myself instead of wrote it it would probably annoy me), but it does remind me a bit about US politics currently (everyone's favorite subject, wooo). Trump was repeatedly shown to be lying about a multitude of things, and yet he still has millions of diehard supporters. I guess when you are truly convinced of a single person or idea, it is hard to accept that it might be false.
@@Zorro9129 hbomberguy has like, evidence, usually. he also makes it clear that he gets shit wrong a lot and is stupid like the rest of us and that you should research shit on your own
Excellent, as usual. You are creating here a detailed library of material to study scientific malpractice and misconduct. I’ve been sharing your videos with my colleagues in the past, and I expect many more to come in the future. Thanks for the work you do.
You should visit America...especially Oklahoma, full of similar scientific corruption. Simco labs? Battery testing or hacking systems of secret servers? Hiding a Romanov heir in plain sight and allowing neo-nazis and other cults to use for research, testing, nuclear power? And for certain these same networks work with the likes of these scientists as well as those of Wuhan.
Can I just say, I'm really happy that you've done your best to pronounce all the Korean names and such in this story - I'm so sick of hearing youtubers say "haha, I'm gonna butcher this, please don't be mad" instead of practicing with one of the many available services that will read other languages out loud for you however many times.
While I agree with what you said, I think some understanding is necessary here. It can be difficult to switch language pronunciations for one or two words (names) when they're embedded in a sentence that's a different language. I speak English and Japanese and I have difficulty sometimes saying the Japanese "r sounds" during an English sentence. Ex: I was walking down the street to the ramen shop when Rui saw me. Talking just normally that can be a difficult sentence to say. That's why practice is, as you mentioned, vital. But even with practice I can say confidently that I would not accurately pronounce it sometimes.
if you are going to be speaking about people with a non english name you are literally obligated to learn to properly pronounce it, all else is lazy ass behavior
Dude shut the fuck up not everyone can or wants to learn to pronounce a foreign language in a specific tiny island country that isn't fucking Japan, I'm guatemalan and when I hear people butcher Spanish names and phrases it's just really funny to me
I'm sorry, if that's an accurate pronunciation then Korean needs to seriously rethink its romanisation, because oo for [u:] doesn't make any sense, as well as ar for [back a:] (I don't have IPA on this device)
Man when you said "one of the few human doctors" I was like wait were they hiring aliens then, idk if cloning should be the highlight of this man's life lol
A fellow research scientist here in Canada… man, you’re something else, the quality in your production value is off the charts! I’m a chem undergrad so I hope to maybe see you tackle scandals in that field one day, keep it up!!
so excited for this. just discovered your channel and my only criticism is that you dont have enough videos lmao i've watched everything already and hungry for more content! but i appreciate content of this quality takes time and it is worth the wait, keep it up! S-tier creator
@@takanara7 oh believe me, there have been many. He'll get around to them eventually. But what I respect about the scientific community is that the moment someone is caught, just about everyone comes out against them.
I loved how the whole thing turned the other way because of a forum post detailing the specific faked images. It really shows that when you have the opportunity to lay out all of the facts and evidence, with no bullshit or drama getting in the way; regardless of where someone swings ideologically, many will listen.
I wonder if it’s known who made the forum post. But yeah I think a similar theme happened with the Schön case, with the similar diagrams. In fraud cases often once there is clear evidence in the open, it will make its way to the people who need to see it if it’s irrefutable enough.
oh man, ngl, the ending of the video was a huge downer - Hwang basically got away with everything and to add insult to injury is still allowed to do cloning. WTF! Regardless, fantastic video once again! This channel is quickly becoming one of my favorites
It's a very complex story because he seems to have legitimate talent as a cloner and did eventually admit to his fraud. He should've served jail time and should be forced to pay millions in restitution; if he was, I might be ok with him trying to continue research again since he's apparently making real progress, and the money from his company could help repay what he embezzled. It just feels undeserved because he was barely punished.
@@tunnelsloth5948 the lack of punishment is what irks me. I think it's safe to say that most scientists' carrers would've been over after a scandal like that. But Hwang was in a very unique position, with powerful friends and the public on his side, both of which allowed him to get away. I think I wouldn't really mind his current situation - IF - he actually faced punishment compatible to what he did.
If it makes you feel better, he's widely known now throughout Korea AND the world as a national embarrassment, and used as a prime example for what kind of scientist you should strive to NEVER become. The people and the government keep one eye trained on him at all times so he won't try to pull shit like this again. He's only successful now because of the one genuine accomplishment he got: his cloned dogs. You can tell he's grasping at straws by agreeing to the stupid mammoth cloning project. He has the barebones now. I hear plenty of stories of people pelting his house with eggs and stones, and apparently they destroyed his wife's car when they learned where the money used to buy it came from.
@@-psilo-9071to be fair he did clone that dog so it's not impossible that he does make another genuine discovery or advancement at some point. probably not a very good chance though...
@@everythingpony That's still not a reason to let him continue. Not to mention there are hundreds if not thousands of genuine, non-fraudster scientists around the world who are also working on cloning. Hwang is not so important that he should be absolved of all wrongdoing.
god the part where someone was belittling and insulting the women selling their eggs made my blood boil, the misogynistic way women are spoken about in korea remains unchanged
I think this case just highlights the toxic structures and culture in science.. too many PIs have way too much power over ppl in the lab and influence in institutions. They take credit for far more than they should. They play off the "great man" idea of where breakthroughs come from rather than teams in multiple labs over time and some luck. It unfortunately also causes funding to go to establish PIs and not new scientists with new ideas just simply based on name alone. It causes hyper competitive environments that encourage mistakes, fraud, abuse, and theft... its just so outdated and not a science based way to organize science ironically...
The thing that always gets me most with these kinds of controversies is to this day, people still try and deny that there can be corruption in the sciences and pretend like scientists have 0 reasons to lie or fake data. Theres been so many situations where due diligence was completely ignored solely because the person speaking was a scientist of some sort only to come out years later they didn't say a single thing that was true. Everyone needs to be held accountable.
I'm a biologist myself and have even worked for years specifically with the stem cells (primary cultures and transformed lines, both, made iPSC too), and I, personally(!!!), think it would be very cool if I could use my own samples to do some work on it, but oh my god... I felt so sick, so uncomfortable and creepy when the fellow researcher, Park Eul Soon, told about her experience with working on her own eggs... Like. I just have no words. I'm so, so sorry she had to go through it. Thank you for another great video! They are amazingly done and I have rewatched some already too☺️
yeah and there’s a difference between voluntarily using your own cells and pressuring your subordinates. especially in a country where women already feel pressure to give up their personal autonomy
That part was also among the most harrowing lines in this part to me. Interested to hear it hits the same note even for someone who had considered a similar possibility in the past.
That sketchy interview tactic to get the dude to give up information may have worked, but it also could've easily led to the dude making stuff up to save himself. Ya don't want to go with that approach because it can undermine the credibility of true testimony EDIT: Called it
Your documentaries are incredibly well researched and with great storytelling. The fact you're getting some of the people in the case interviewed now speaks to the quality of your work, I hope your channel stays strong for year to come, you have one loyal viewer here.
Ugh.. the donors 😰😰 I thought I would be just irritated that a scientist lied but as you mention, this goes much deeper. The human cost is outrageous, the missteps and mishandling of multiple agencies.. this guy is a monster. Thank you for a fantastic video, I love the great graphics, tons of details and sensitivity to the Korean culture.
When he said that Hwang didn`t really do any of the hard work, he just posed for pictures, I got whiplash from personal experiences. Yeah, that does happen a lot, especially with PIs
I really really hope you have a video on the IPSC (induced pluripotent stem cell) disaster at the Riken Institute in the making. That story is also so interesting, both from a personal and a scientific point of view. It also immediately connects with the Yamanaka factors that you mention in the last section of the video. Their claim was in essence that they had found an even easier way to create IPSCs. Instead of needing to make cells produce a whole host of these Yamanaka factors, they claimed they had managed to do it using just citric acid. Of course a shocking claim and one that could be easily tested in other labs. Which it was and universally the result that this was of course a bogus result. I don't recall if they ever got convicted of falsification of data, I just remember when we reviewed the paper at uni, we thought there was an alternative explanation for the data that wouldn't involve fraud. Basically, they used a reporter construct that randomly inserts into the DNA of the cells they were testing. The point of the reporter construct is to make the cells produce a fluorescent protein (GFP) when the cells are making stem cell factors. The construct contains a sequence called a promoter which is copied from actual stem cell factor genes. You can think of a promoter like an on-switch - so if you copy the on-switch from a stem cell factor gene to let it drive your reporter, your GFP is supposed to be produced whenever the actual stem cell factor is being produced. 99.9999% of the time that's not a big problem - there is so much DNA, and a lot of it can be safely inserted into without adverse side effects. One possible explanation that we discussed is that this random insertion could have happened next to a promoter (on-switch) that was controlled by acidity. It's a really simple explanation and one that is easily tested as well. However the personal consequences are what make this story so damning and interesting - iirc one of the authors committed suicide, the Riken institute cut around a third of their staff? It was devastating, and all over a result that was a little too good to be true and not properly verified.
The real shocker of this story is the Japanese figuring out a way how to get stem cells without needing an embryo, basically making the sacrifice of 2000+ embryos pointless.
@@iau You're right, the commentor worded that poorly, probably meant it in a similar way to how we say that we "sacrifice our time" for projects even though "time" as an entity itself isn't physically capable of being sacrificed. It is so sad that some of these women reported side effects due to the procedure that they weren't fully briefed about. Their quality of life was greatly affected for project many (like the woman donating her eggs for IVF) where unaware of. They went through this for nothing it seems :( Rip to those little eggs tho
Your animating style feels kind of reminiscent of Jon Bois, which I really love! A meticulously arranged larger graphic that contains the whole video plot with dramatic zoom ins on story beats. But you’ve definitely made it your own, love it!
Bobby has acknowledged the Jon Bois inspiration in the past! And in turn, I've been seeing more creators take on clear influence from Bobby's style lately.
really well put together! This had me on the edge of my seat. Thank you for going over something from South Korea, as a Canadian about the same age as this scandal it's really nice being able to watch such an in-depth breakdown of something I never would have known about without it
at 5 min: Dr. Hwang's description of employee work schedule is nearly spot on with what ive heard a handful of old school biology professors say nearly verbatim (esp. "your cells dont take the weekends off, so you cant either.") to their grad students. im not super surprised whatsoever that Dr. Hwang's work ideology fit in perfectly with high-intensity, cutting edge labs of the time (and honestly ones that still work like that today)
When I first watched this two-parter, I believed it to be one of the videos I liked less from your channel. I still liked it, but felt like it was missing someone. After some rewatches, I realised that instead I was missing things. When watched multiple times, you just see more and more things, especially with the playing cards. This is just a great triumph on your part, and thank you for the excellent videos!
Want to directly support me and see videos like this 2 weeks early? Nebula is the best way to do that: go.nebula.tv/bobbybroccoli
It is weird to have heard you, a TH-camr that puts immense research and effort into his video, shout out RealLifeLore (in ad-read) in the last video, a TH-camr that does seemingly 0 research, puts out one error ridden video after another and often comes down to "I made it tf up buddy"
David Cyranoski needs to share his skincare routine. The dude looks like a 20 year old with gray hair.
Does watching on nebula if I already have it support you more than watching on TH-cam?
@Nikolaus Luhrs yes!
I didn't realize you posted on nebula 2 weeks early. I was wondering if you had to re-upload since I had seen it already. If it’s just a trick to make me comment and tell you how awesome your content is, well... it worked.
The dog actually being a real clone is the funniest part of this whole thing, shoutout that dog
That is why dog cloning is now commercial.
SPOILERS 😢😢😢
All this talk about dogs is making me hungry
How is this comment one day old?
@@suzbone You are at fault! Why even come down here before watching?
As a Korean, I would like to mention that public perception of Hwang has drastically changed during the last two decades. He's now seen as a criminal and a national embarrassment. His story is always mentioned in schools and universities as a prime example of what NOT to do as a scientist. It's also used as a constant reminder that with the right friends, one can get away with almost anything.
At least something good came out of it. I hope future generations of scientists will learn a lesson from it
@activationfunction a Japanese scientist involved in another scientific fraud with stem cells did in fact committed suicide after the blowout
@@activationfunctionsame. I had expected at least one and was bracing for it.
@@activationfunctionlol
I mean there are bad things (faking the research from 2005 and coercing subordinates into donating).
But donating the eggs for money should be allowed in my opinion. Yes, poor people will donate to get some money - but that's like saying "let's increase minimum wage to 20 USD, 10 million people will lose their job, but working for 10 USD is bad!" - the women that donated the eggs, donated for a reason. By banning donating for money, you are harming the science and the women (as they won't get the money they need) :)
The whole ordeal coming from a bad law from politicians and conservative mindset. How unsurprising.
I'm sure someone has already pointed it out but I need to say this for my own sanity. There is no such thing as a fancy Peugeot. Peugeot doesn't make ultra luxury super cars for rich people, they mostly make small cost effective hatchbacks. Hwang Woo-suk was admonishing his employee not for driving a Lamborghini but for driving something that in Europe is considered less fancy than a VW.
I imagine the real reason Hwang Woo-suk was so angry was because the car wasn't Korean.
Yeah seeing that part made me watch it 2 or 3 times just to be sure I heard right this man was insane
Good catch! I’m glad I saw your comment now that I’m rewatching the Bobby’s Hwang videos.
You’d be surprised at how Western products are blindly overvalued in Asian countries regardless of their reputations in their places of origin.
Agree that their cars aren’t fancy but some of their cars do a good job of looking fancy from the outside and it could have been one of them. Some of them look like supercars compared to the cars korean brands were putting out back then. Regardless, huang had no business telling him what car he can drive
@@Bruno-xb2mt Yeah I suppose it could've been the 406 Coupé, those did look kinda snazzy.
Saying "sorry I can't verify anything from this paper that my name is on because of a time difference" is actually so funny
Sort of, it's more that he's saying "I have 13 hours of jet lag every time I travel back and forth and I'm only there a couple days, so I'm too tired to think or remember clearly."
"Did you collude in scientific fraud?"
"Whaaaat, I'm just a sleepy little guy. I like to collude with my blankie and have big naps"
Almost a time travel excuse
Similar to recent history where, president trump started taking ivermectin. A medication for parasites but for covid, a viral infection. Literally, apple and oranges
That's not that surprising. I work as a scientist and from my experience, the names on publications often mean nothing. I have seen cases of people not even knowing that their name even was in a paper. Sometimes people are just worried to miss someone and they consider missing someones name not as bad at having an extra name that should be there.
The money laundering portion was such an OUT OF NORWHERE piece of information. "Buddy what are you doing" is 100% my response.
"Oh hey, btw, he also laundered funds using roughly 30 or so bank accounts. But like, didn't even do it well because he used his own private account as the washing-hub." Lmao.
Spoilers...
@@KN-hg2nv why are you looking at the comments of a video you havent even finished lmao. comments are for discussing the whole video. it isnt spoilers
@@KN-hg2nv You wouldn't be getting spoiled if you did literally anything besides look at the comments of the video you're watching
It was kind of obviously to me honestly considering how much money the government had given him
Park Eul Soon’s diary entry is *heartbreaking*. A young, hardworking scientist, with a heart to help humans fight disease and heal the world, coerced and manipulated, and hurt. I dearly hope she’s doing okay now. God bless her. She did her best. I hope she’s okay.
Given where she lives and how women are treated there, I'm betting no. No, she's not ok.
@@WobblesandBeandidn't she move to America
@@speedwagon1824 You say that like it would invalidate their comment lmao
@@Avendesora nobody's trying to invalidate anybody, they're just pointing that out as a potential positive turning point. chill out
@@actuallyasrielNot leaving your home country doesn't really clear up anything about how someone is doing, certainly not the US
I just realized that the cards actually represent the field of each person
Hearts is scientists
Spades is government
Diamonds is the media
Clubs is everyone else
And the higher cards mean more power
I can’t imagine how much work went into making just that graphic
To think I was looking at this for hours, and didn't notice...
Mad respect to the author.
Alice in borderland style ahaha
@@Bufallobill we don’t sink that low
@@Notsiphen ?
@@Notsiphen not all documentaries come from the History Channel
I now understand why Hwang was depicted as the “King of Hearts”. That’s exactly what he was in the Korean public eye, and he used that power to his own advantage. Love the way this is formed as a card game, and it’s one hell of a full house
Oh shit lol. When I first saw this on Nebula, I thought BobbyBroccoli just close a random king
you mean a pandamonium
funny coincidence that the king of hearts is nicknamed "Suicide King"
@@hobbiefox-pastrycat4568 really? What are the nicknames of the others?
@@lou626 You can find a list of them all on Wikipedia, but most cards don't have one. King of Hearts' one comes from the drawing of him. He's got his sword positioned in a fashion that makes it look like he stabbed it through his own head
I find it interesting how he argued that cloning research was completely okay when looked at through the lens of Buddhism, only to violate a frankly _obscene_ number of Buddhist principles behind closed doors.
no cloning theorueum says you can't be a true clone but can teleport fully Buddhist compatible
@@UnrebornMortuus thats not what the no cloning theorem is
Yup. A lot of people will showboat religion in the public eye and in areas where they are seen, but don’t follow those same principles that they preach in there personal lives.
@@americankid7782 To be fair, with a lot of religious texts, its literally impossible due to blatant contradictions
No, usually they just speak in generalities to avoid that lol. @@Brent-jj6qi
Props to Snuppy the dog for surviving this mess and being (possibly) the only genuine clone in a sea of fakes.
Imo I'm willing to bet that some of the cows and pigs are actual clones given that his biotech company is massively successfull, but the complete lack of record keeping in his early days is a huge red flag
@@BobbyBroccoli I think the animals you can reasonably accept can be possible clones, after all there is a lot less ethical hoops to go through than human stem cell research.
(And it has been done with a sheep, so given enough attempts it should have been done at least once with the other animals in the early research)
If you had a near limitless supply of eggs for the animals even with the low succes rates it’s going to work eventually.
💀
Spoilers
I guess you can say Snuppy got that dawg in him😤
i'm still impressed at Hwang's ability to navigate the social landscape of the scandal. it's amazing just how much he got away with through networking and people's skills.
to be fair the korean masses are pretty dumb and they don't care for such things as morals and doing the right thing
It makes social ability a damn near super power
Goes to show the importance of these skills that we often underlook
Social intelligence really was Hwang's most useful trait. He knew what to say, how to say it and when to say it. It's frightening just how far he got with this alone. It's really frightening.
The most surprising thing is he really did go from being a normal farm veterinarian but somehow worked it all the way to the top and even then stayed there for a while
The minute your boss tries to imply your job is a "family" you should start submitting applications elsewhere. Literally one of biggest red flags the company is irrecoverably toxic
“we’re like a family” well- my family is toxic to begin with sooo
Especially if it's an east Asian family
It was so satisfying when this was addressed in the second video, because when that “family” description popped up in the first video, alarm bells were going off for me. Because, you’re right. It is a _giant_ red flag when an employee describes their company or team as being “like a family.” Run and never look back.
I worked for a lab where the CFO (presidents wife) said that and it ended up being the most toxic place I've ever worked at. So yeah it's true.
All I can think about whenever someone says they're like a family is that one comedy skit where Olive Garden employees were yelling at each other and customers about not taking out trash or flunking college courses. When a customer complained about how they were treated, they snapped at him like "don't talk to your mother like that!"
Even as a joke, it displays the issues with "family" environments nicely.
I love how the story of this ends up working like a reverse murder mystery. We already know the villain is bad we just have to work backwards and find all the breadcrumbs.
Columbo basically. Fitting given his usual “clientele.”
My dad would say it’s not a “who dunnit” but rather a “how diddit”
why are you here lmfao
There's a neat detective video game called "Her Story" which is where you browse through a series of recorded interviews to find out just *what* happened and why the woman in them is being questioned. Because the videos can be discovered in any order, the story unfolds differently for each player. (Spoiler-Free details below)
In my own playthrough, the LAST video I revealed, which finally unlocked the final piece of the mystery, was instead among the FIRST videos in a different player's run
So my own playthrough was to answer "what happened," while theirs was probably to find out "why this happened."
@@vitoc8454oh love that game, depending on what clips you watch first, you can come to completely different conclusions
The fact that they masked an IVF assistance website using infertile couples to harvest eggs sent chills down my spine. That's just horrific, I cannot describe how I feel in words.
"Utterly dystopian" would be my way to put it
Sperm/ egg donation and IVF industries are downright predatory in most places! Just google the number of fertility Dr that have swept donor sperm with their own!
humanity progress > rights that literally no one cares about
@@kaih7647 “the Industrial Revolution and it’s consequences”
Just like many association of "donate to stop the wars, save civilian and well send medical supply to them" end up being directly send and stored by Talibans like groups
Wars funded and fueled by the money of anti-war people to keep countrys away from recovering
I am a former egg donor. Watching this video made me sick to my stomach. At least in the US nowadays, donating takes a long time from the initial request to the actual procedure - several months AT LEAST. There were also SEVERAL TIMES that I was given the option to back out. I was given months to make my decision. I cannot imagine how stressful it must have been to have your employer pressuring you to make a huge decision like this, especially since this was 20 years ago and the procedure was probably more dangerous than it is today. My heart breaks for these women.
At least now you know why Republicans don't want this kind of thing funded with tax dollars.
What is the honest exact reason you donated? Did you know the couple? Are fighting to increase human population?
Most egg donors do it for the money. There's no difference in their situation or the one in the US except for more red tape and steps to make other people money. Don't kid yourself.
Yeah, the West is full of "butterflies" like you.
Same. I donated because I don't ever want to have kids, so I decided if I wasn't using them, I wanted to help other people have families. And my egg was successfully implanted and the recipients had a healthy baby girl! That's all I know, obviously they're very confidential about all of this, but the mom wrote me a letter to inform me.
But the whole ordeal was very painful, and extremely invasive. I had to have so many injections, internal ultrasounds, I got poked, prodded, and examined constantly. Knowing these women had to go through all that against their will makes me feel physically sick.
@@SergeantExtremeit’s because of the eggs, not the women 😂😂😂
I absolutely love these multi-hour marathons of scientific scandals. There is so much to learn, and so much juicy drama within the community that isn’t too different from stuff you’d see in the music or gaming industry.
The best part of it is that it's even educational, and you end up learning a lot because of the drama.
the human-interest angle is definitely what gets a lot of people in the door here and bobby broccoli simply does a phenomenal job of using that to both tell a super engaging journalistic story as well as to educate people … but i’d say we need to maybe stay away from comparisons to gaming and music drama? i _think_ i get what you might be trying to say here: like, maybe that it’s surprising how a video covering science can be _just as interesting_ as drama from the entertainment industry.
but i feel like the difference in _the actual content_ and substance between these kind of dramas is really quite important, and perhaps we shouldn’t just be focusing on how the spectacle of the form is similar from the instrumental perspective of our own personal entertainment.
these science docs by bobby are usually about things that have had a surprisingly, often not widely known, societal impact. laws changed, people got killed, social norms were altered, etc. over this stuf. the music and gaming drama, by comparison, is often just kind of tabloid-level fluff-which isn’t to dismiss it completely or say that enjoying it makes someone stupid: i eat that shit up like candy, too-but, like, it’s just very much _not_ the same thing in a kind of really important way. and if we had more people making this quality level of science “drama” docs instead of the endless mountains of music and gaming content which require far less of a qualified background to do (which is in part an explanation of why there’s so much more of it), well, i’d definitely make that trade in a heartbeat.
Gonna get deep into a well-known shady biology project specifically so I can shout-out Bobby Broccoli in court.
You mention this other industry- are there currently any TH-camrs that are covering this? I would love to watch these!
I recommend his vid “the man who faked an element” it’s soo good 👍
Producer's Note: "Do you have any DNA we can test?"
Hwang: "I forgor 💀"
I was thinking this
How could anyone "misplace" such valuable samples? His respose was honestly so hilarious
Where is the nearest rest room, and I need 5 minutes and some porn....
it's basically just code for "I have no excuse but I'm not going to admit it"
💀💀
I salute that person who posted the real photos. 'The show must go on'. They finally pushed through fear and were able to save the entire opposition and enforce it and swing everything in favour against Hwang
fr who was that?
@@NithinJune I think it was a whistleblower on Hwang's team
It is actually amazing that despite everything, this guy actually is responsible for the first cloning of a dog, which was a genuinely impressive achievement. He reached the sky, and in going for the stars, he failed spectacularly
He tried to reach the sun and the heat burnt his wings.
He shot for the moon, and in doing so SMASHED THROUGH THE FUCKING MOON AND FUCKING DIED AMONG THE STARS??? but was fine
@@MaxJ.ProfessionalLilGuy nah, more like he bounced back from the moon but the air didn't slow him down on the way back
A rocket running on dirty fuel will never make a return trip.
He didn't "fail". He literally comitted fraud
Moral of the story: If you're doing fraud make sure you include and support as many government officials as you can.
Noted
Better yet, if you become part of the government, you can commit as much fraud, insider trading, and corruption as you want!
The peasants are far too comfortable to do anything to fix it, so we can operate without any risks!
That's was Epstein's trick too - he got as many high society/important figures implicated with him as he could so it was in all their interests to keep him a free man.
Sam Bankman Fraud did take notes^^
And become the image of a nation, nationalism makes wonders, look at WW2 germany and japan, when a person becomes an icon more worthy than the self of the public, you can do anything you want and get away with it, because society wants you to get away with anything, because the self is no more.
The fact that no one was really upset at him when he coerced women, but they got mad at the fraud… that certainly says a lot.
It's unfortunate but this is quite common in East Asian countries. It's not uncommon in Korea and Japan when a female sexual abuse victim/survivor comes forward against a public official or other famous person, *they* end up apologizing for the scene it creates even when they were innocent and the one who should be apologized to, and far more likely to be on the receiving end of harassment and given the "you'll never work in this town again!" treatment, which hits even worse in societies that have more culture around familial and personal honor. The status of women is certainly improving over time there (despite everything she did wrong, Korea had a woman president decades before even the United States), just not all at once.
them making a bad decision because money is mentioned is hard to blame on him tbh
@@bmac4 is there a place in the world where it doesnt hurt to be a woman :(
I think there are three sides of it: the donors who were misled, the allegation that some of the women on his team volunteered, and the allegation that at least one of them was coerced. Most people probably only had awareness of the first two. Unfortunately the team member did confirm that she was coerced, though.
@@softsweetfemme no
my heart breaks for those women manipulated and pressured into donating their eggs, i can't imagine thinking you were donating an embryo to a needing couple only to find out it was used for fraudulent human cloning... that's just so horrific. and the way they were treated by the media and public makes it even worse. i hope those women have healed
Us so sad that one of the women that found out the truth about het eggs donations felt "embarrassed" like it was het fault. She acted on good intentions, had no control tif the outcomes and should feel angry at being taken ot her generosity. Shame on Hgwang, not on her
Eh. It's really sad that they weren't properly informed and the research was ultimately fraudulent, but I guess eggs just aren't sacred to me and etting emotional over a cell makes me want to go "Women ☕". We already sell ourselves out one way or another so in theory I have no qualms with poor women selling eggs, it's better than prostitution.
Oh yeah and Korean work culture is atrocious, my condolences to those grad students.
@@eriktrp women are born with all of their eggs. we cannot get new ones. having this procedure done can seriously affect your fertility, and many women who did this were not properly informed of the risks. any medical procedure done on somebody without informed consent is very unethical, even if you find it insignificant. the choice is not between sex work and selling your eggs, many women would not have done sex work either way.
@@belle8732 Don't feed the troll, read the user name.
This scandal felt a lot more emotional than the Schon and Ninov scandal. And a lot more disturbing 😞.
With Ninov, element hunting has little to no real practical value now. All of the radioactive elements that were useful and discovered in the hunt are below 100, so going beyond 118 is honestly just a glorified pissing match. It's nice to have it, but not needed.
With Schön, improved semiconductors would have been great and useful, but the thing is they're kind of abstract and distant to the layperson, so it doesn't feel as emotional.
With Hwang, stem cell treatment was (and still is) sold as a cure-all. People suffering and dying of incurable ailments finally saw light at the end of the tunnel, only to be crushed by the fraud. Not to mention the medical abuse he inflicted on his egg "donors". Biology scandals just seem to have high stakes, at least emotionally, since the layperson understands their effect even more.
@@Ramboost007 No need to sell it as a cure all. Stem cell treatment is absolutely capable of it.
And yes medicine unlike physics is very practical and has actually delivered numerous results in the past couple decades. It is also very promising. Physics especially particle physics is abstract and actually useful results are at best decades away. More like centuries or ever in most cases especially when we are talking about element hunting.
The fact that the latter receives so much funding in comparison always annoyed me.
@@Ramboost007 I think it's also the matter of how it affects a nation. Korea was definitely lacking in modern folk heroes since the Korean war, someone to cling to to give the nation a foothold in the international zeitgeist. Hwang in this situation represented more than just a company, or a lab, or a field, he represented the hopes and dreams of a nation. So not only were the actual lives of people involved handled poorly, but the entire nation had to come to terms with this borderline cult figure they rested many of their hopes and dreams on being rather scummy.
Like keep in mind by the mid 2000s, people basically always asked "North or South" when "Korea" was mentioned in the States because probably the most famous Korean (either) was one of the Kims of NK, for all the wrong reasons. There wasn't yet the likes of BTS, or a Faker, Bong Joon-Ho hadn't yet made Snowpiercer or Parasite, they had some decently successful baseball players like Chan-Ho Park but nobody who reached the status of "transcending the sport" like Ichiro Suzuki for Japan or Fernando Valenzuela for Mexico. People like having that iconic figure who can put them on the map.
The media and the population thinking that national pride and the hope for a magical cure must supersede the truth, because of emotions....🤔
@yishto I'm from the Philippines, so Southeast Asia, and therefore I easily forget that before PSY, South Korea didn't really have pop culture capital in the West. This is not true in Asia. We already experienced the First Hallyu Wave, where Korean TV dramas were shown on our local channels dubbed and what Westerners would call "proto-KPop" was already popular here. But then again it doesn't really matter to South Koreans as much as Western influence due to the inferiority complex all colonized nations have.
I currently live and work in South Korea as a teacher. The fact they masked the purpose of the egg donation as for IVF is particularly horrifying in light of the fact I have an extremely high (abnormally so) percentage of students who are twins, and I discovered it was because Korea has a high incidence of infertility, so IVF is very common. In very expensive schools it's not uncommon to have a set of twins in nearly every class (of only 14 students each). It is a very common and highly valued procedure, and poorer families will take on massive debt to have it done since carrying on family lines and confucian values are very important here. There's a lot of fear and sadness surrounding the declining population, fed by the many tragedies and constant oppression Korea has experienced as a nation over history, so any way to help their people and culture survive through future generations is is of paramount importance here. To take advantage of those fears and desperate hopes is truly vile, and I understand how people could choose to put on blinders to keep just a thread of hope for the future and progress.
The declining population may come from more factors than just the past tragedies...
The whole working ethics are making out probably hard as well. And the rampant Sexism.
Declining birth rates are a thing in Japan, China and Taiwan among others.
@TerryClarkAccordioncrazy it's also a societal issue
11:00 Love the story telling. As soon as you mentioned Hwang's female employee in the last video and the number of egg cells required, I had a feeling where they were coming from.
Knowing koreans its a good chance that he slept with them too
The way part 1 ends on "where did you get those eggs?" as the camera zooms in on her is just unsubtle enough to hit hard
I actually sucked in my breath a bit when it zoomed in on her in last video, nobody does it like this guy I swear
My stomach dropped when he asked that question. The fact it's easy to accept people reading off such absurdly high numbers as fact, just because it's coming from a confident/authoritative voice is unnerving.
The subtly stated gut punch. The way he used the question to reveal its own answer. Tope tier film making.
I must say the part where an anonymous person said "The show must go on" was the best part of the whole thing
Legit chills when he said it! And then the callback to the anon post when producer's note went back on air for part 2 👏 guy's got a sincere gift in storytelling and dramatic timing
anon saved the day again
It was probably one of the reporters leaking info from the unreleased expose
Wow the fact he pressured and lied to those women to donate eggs is so horrific. I’d looked into egg donation in the past but decided against it because the procedure is risky and the recovery is painful and very long. You get a lot of money for eggs in the US and I still didn’t think it was worth it. I can’t imagine getting nothing or almost nothing and being lied too. That’s disgusting
I think one of the most depressing parts of the story is women who felt pressured to use the eggs, especially the women in the labs. Korea is still to this day, a very conservative in its views of women and their place in work, so imagine a young female scientist trying to make a difference and then your boss pressures you into donating eggs? Ignoring the creepy part it’s very devaluing to see how instead of being seen as an equal in your field, you are reduced to your ability to reproduce. I can’t imagine the opposite happening where they asked a male scientist to donate sperm…
Ah, about that...
Ironically but not surprising, these countries often ban single people getting access to assistive reproduction technology. A woman's value of reproduction is only valid when she is married to a man. 😓
when I got to that part of the video, and the woman says she felt terrible doing experiments on her own eggs, I felt sick to my stomach. That's awful
And the procedure to harvest eggs is so much more invasive than a sperm donation. The fact that they didn’t even give the women proper post-operation care and left them in pain, bleeding and gave them no informed consent. 😢
If your boss told male co-workers to donate sperm, it would be seen as sexual harassment.
As much as I have pride as a Korean and love for my people and my culture, a lot of the societal/cultural pitfalls that lead to this encompasses a lot of the criticisms I have. The sentiment of a paternal like attitude for the scandal rings. Listening to this story and I'm having a "I'm not mad, I'm disappointed" attitude. Not that nothing in this story angers me, but I understand that this has already happened. Disappointment comes from the fact that, the dog was a real clone and if things had gone differently, Hwang might have made a name for himself and become the pride of S Korea with integrity.
I will say though, that there is a lot stubbornness in the face of hurt pride that is done in such a Korean way, that it makes me laugh.
It honestly bothers me when people who *could* achieve greatness opt to lie and cheat instead of actually doing the work. It's such a senseless waste of resources and the potential of those involved.
I am from the Netherlands. Our society is probably as far removed from Korean society as possible among western countries in terms of cultural norms and values. Still we had the story of social psychologist Diederik Stapel, which is much the same as the stories of Hwang or that organic crystal dude Broccoli made a docuseries about. The problem in all these cases of fraud is not linked to anything typical to the culture. I mean in the story of Hwang there are definitely some cultural aspects that would only exist in Korea, but this is also true for any other story. The culture is just not a key aspect. What is? Implicit trust and lack of oversight. In the case of Stapel he was always at some point in control of the research data and he would change the data to make the outcomes seem interesting (which it normally isn't as humans are scandalously stubborn and boring). No one had any serious reason to ever doubt him and when challenged about the origin of the results he would just get angry and tell people not to waste time on these sorts of questions. Where Hwang and that organic crystal dude were caught pretty quickly because their research made them instant superstars Stapel was in a different field. Stardom as a social psychologist is just not happening. As such there was not a lot of attention. Catching him took well over a decade. In one of the most egalitarian, transparent and least corrupt countries a fraudulent professor was running amok for over 10 years. His punishment? Three weeks of forced labor.
Worry about Korea. It is your home. But don't worry about it because of Hwang. Hwang could happen anywhere.
@@InfernosReaper The idea that people need to achieve greatness is part of the issue. Science does not need heroes. It does not need that one genius of the century. This is what broader society is enamored with but it is far removed from reality.
Real science gets done by funding a thousand institutes over decades, having a ton of scientists per capita and ensuring a proper scientific process.
Accepting the pitfalls of one's country and trying to improve instead of claiming to be the best in the world is the difference between patriotism and nationalism. The Newsroom "America is not the greatest country in the world anymore" speech is a great example of that.
Anyway, S. Korea is a top country to live in Asia but there are really serious issues that need to be addressed like inequality from the Chaebol dominated economy. When the government pardons fraud criminals like Samsung's ex-chairman Lee Jae Yong citing that he'll improve the economy, it feels S. Korea took nothing away from the Dr. Hwang scandal.
@@AlacrityTW Wow, even the US wasn't that bad. No pardons for Madoff or Ebbers, just slap on the wrist punishments.... Wait a minute....
the dog being genuine got me 💀 science frauds are one of my favourite genre of obscure history, keep rm coming
Thanks for talking about the misogyny inherent in egg donation in korea - very sad that the women who donated their eggs without even knowing all the side effects were attacked for donating their eggs
One thing I would like to add here is that the Hwang affair impacted the iPS discovery. When the first iPS papers were published starting 2006 people were so disillusioned from the scandal that everyone was sceptical to the point where the iPS replication attempt was done immediately by no fewer than three independent labs.
ADDENDUM: Additionally, by the author's own account, he was hesitant to publish the work precisely due to the Hwang affair until his student can replicate it separately.
PS: as an Indonesian who has seen plenty of similar cases, seeing nationalist grifters face-plant spectacularly never fails to warm my cold, dead heart.
That 2006 paper by Takahashi and Yamanaka was beautiful though, very very straightforward.
And their follow up 2007 paper on testing the Human cells was confirmed by other lab very fast.
I can only think of the forex trading fraud case with Indra Kenz and Doni salmanan. They both have kinda same downfall with Hwang; still getting some support although Hwang are on a different level.
@@DFH4071 Also happened with Malaysia's Prime Minister, right?
Bener banget 'PS' nya. Bukan tidak mungkin di masa depan Indonesia bakal punya kasus yg sama. Apalagi sekarang ada BRIN yg... Ah sudahlah
@@detleffleischer9418 yes, but I forgot the details
It breaks my heart that the victims are blamed and hounded for something that isn't their fault and when they actively need compassion/care. Goodness. Thank you for shining a light on this.
Welcome to Korea.
What astounds me is how Hwang was able to fake so much research and probably would have gotten away with it if it weren't for the ethics violations.
I mean would they not have eventually been noticed when their results could not be replicated
It's been mentioned on this channel that there's a bit of an institutional incentive against uncovering fraud in science, but I think a common pattern for the really high profile fraudsters like Hendrik Schon and Hwang is a specific political/financial environment. For Schon, it was Bell Lab's kind of desperate financial straits and in this case, it's Korea staking its national identity on Hwang.
If your house is on fire and someone hands you a fire hose, you're probably not going to ask them where they're getting the water from.
@@daydodog Conveniently, attempting to replicate them was illegal in many places. Pretty fantastic cover for fraud.
@@daydodog Replication is famously thin on the ground. A lot of studies aren't replicated.
Makes you wonder what false studies and research have never been exposed...
Honestly, the last thing I expected was for Hwang to actually do legitimate cloning work after all this.
I mean, that is actually a decently common thing among cheaters in any field(Videogames, science, journalism, etc). Frauds are not always fakes. Some are legit people in the field that simply can't get enough of their own success, so they set up smoke and mirrors to look like the next big breakthrough when they aren't.
The thing is Hwang actually did make a breakthrough in the stem cell field amidst all of this. It's just... not what he claimed to be doing.
After his work was investigated, it was discovered in 2007 that, unknowingly, he managed to induce parthenogenesis in human egg cells. In other words: the egg cells' chromosomes were 'duplicated', making it functionally similar to fertilised eggs.
@@Malleonardone do you have any links to info?
Have looked for it but found nothing except that parthenogenetic events cause teratomas, except for one single case of a baby chimera whose other genetical lineage was product a parthenogenic event that was only successful because of them becoming a chimera where it used the "healthy" cells as a sort of scaffolding (also that one of the things that makes actual human parthenogenesis likely impossible is the fact that the parental genes basically compete for gene expression during the conception of the baby, competition without which apparently the process is botched and the result is teratomas)
@@KibitoAkuya Good question
right? everything was so bad but the fact a dog was actually successfully cloned is what made me do a double take
I watched the Netflix documentary on this situation. It was muddy and confusing. Your coverage of the issue is FAR MORE thorough. Your analysis is league's ahead of the Netflix coverage. Bravo! Thank you!
Because Netflix documentaries seem to almost be made by AI now
For those who don't know, to get your eggs extracted you need to get hormone injections that mess with your health, mood, weight, metal health in general, then they have to invasively use instruments to go up inside you to suck out eggs which is incredibly painful as the cervix is more innervated than your butthole, so it's all round very very unpleasant and prone to fail, so often needs to be done multiple time, and to have THAT many eggs from just 16 people... there's no way all of them escaped gainint negative and permanent health consequences from all of that.
And let me guess.... No general anesthetic?? And you are told you are overreacting if it hurts??
to be clear, it's confirmed at 1:04:25 that it was in fact over 2000 eggs from 121 donors. I'm still shocked that the number is that high, and that they tried to get away with it, but it's at least not AS horrific as just 16 donors
@@thedragonryder with 121 donors is an average of 18
With 16 donors (185eggs) is an average of 11 (the 2005 paper)
I forgot how many donors were in the 2004 😅
You know what? I might be wrong.
I just thought the actual donors /eggs ratio at the end was worse.
@@tagaway6173 oh, maybe I misread what this comment meant, I was under the impression they were talking about all of the eggs for both studies coming from just 16 people, which would have been extraordinarily horrific and probably flat out impossible
Wasn't the whole point they lied, and used waaaaay more donners that they admitted to?
1:07:24 How you found the strength of will not to say "place all your eggs in one basket" here is beyond me. Terrific video, as always! You are in a class of your own; the visuals, the stories and the undoubtedly massive amounts of research are equal parts complex and compelling.
That was my immediate thought. 🐣
I know right. He probably didn't want to break the tension right before the end, with that punchline. I wouldn't have been able to help myself
The irony that Hwang went through all that unethical research, only for a fully ethical way of creating stem cells to make his paper irrelivant 2 years after it was published is really funny to me
The fact that it was specifically Japanese researchers and that they got a noble prize feel lik salt in those wounds
Man, this two-parter has been done beautifully and is beefy with the amount of stuff it teaches. Absolutely loved it!
it always comes back to beef
@@matthiasbaaij8667 even in Dead Rising.
This is a horrific story, although brilliantly told. The contraversies you've covered in the past never had the same human risk element and mistreatment that Hwang is guilty of
I'm just left repulsed by Korean culture for blatantly wanting to trample women's rights AND human rights to protect a fraudster. For no reason other than jingoism.
@@WobblesandBean This comment goes against the very point that the video makes in its closing minutes 😂
@@WobblesandBean It's true that this was partly a product of Korea's culture and its place in the world at the time--but I really feel it could have happened anywhere. Just about any country has problems and tendencies that can and do lead to massive scandals like this going on far longer than they should.
@@WobblesandBean Sounds like the US right now
Can't express how much I appreciate your coverage of the misogyny in play, and to specifically name it. Thank you for acknowledging this huge part of the world.
(Warning for those perusing the comments, it's as much of a minefield on this topic as you'd expect.)
I absolutely agree! 😅
I agree as well
That comment about "selling their bodies" fucking got me, I'm really glad it wasn't sugarcoated or glanced over. Shit was nasty.
@@chimkim i got kinda angry when i read that tbh
It is sad to see that misogyny continuing to be a massive problem particularly in South Korea and Asia... or using BB's videos as example, his Lena video have comparatively higher dislike rate...
It's fascinating to see Hwang and the institutions that stood by him gradually fess up to the truth, changing their story little by little with each new revelation
That's called "trickle truthing", and it's commonly seen in malignant narcissists like Hwang.
everyone's playing safe because all seek benefits but don't want to take any risks
What was really interesting to me from a story telling standpoint is how (and I’m just realizing how apt this is) Hwang for a moment played his cards perfectly and put himself in a position to come out of this scandal not just unscathed, but even more popular than before.
Usually in these stories once the scandal starts to play out, the moment part of the truth is uncovered by someone, the entire web of lies begins collapsing.
It is fascinating in a kinda horrific way how for a couple months, several people knew the whole truth, the public knew about the egg donation scandal, and for a less socially talented person this would have meant game over, but Hwang in this position was more popular than ever and managed to repress the damning parts of the story until one random internet post
Trickle truth!
@@elbr3376 It is important to note that Hwang could fight back the first strike against him and remain intact because the first accusation made was not about his work being fraud, but ethic violation. As soon as the fraud accusation was made publicly with a smoking gun (the duplicate photos), Hwang's house of glass shattered just like it did for Hendrik Schon and Ninov. This shows how sacred data are in Science. You violate ethic? It is OK so long as you are friend with politicians. You falsify/fake data? Not even God can save you.
I commented this on the last video but wanted to say it again, I’d be very interested in a video from you on Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cell line. It is a vitally important part of medicine history but it is also steeped in some of the deepest ethics drama about patient consent, research ethics, and exploitation of vulnerable groups
seconding this, this would be a good thing to see covered
Nobody was exploited. If I go to a hospital for cancer treatment, and the hospital wants to use the tumor they remove for medical research, I'd be nothing but delighted. No, they don't need to ask my consent, informed or not. They definitely don't need to pay me. After they remove the tumor, it's no different from a hair or dead skin cell that I shed.
@@dwaynepeters4520 that isn’t the point. You absolutely have to get consent to use someone’s biological materials, or at the VERY LEAST inform them of what you are doing. Additionally, the story involves a lot more complicated exploitation than just taking the cells as it involved abusing a group who didn’t have the power to stand up for themselves at the time. Also regardless of your personal opinion on the matter, it is a important and really interesting point in medical history both for medicine itself and medical ethics and it would be a really informative and interesting video
@@elbr3376 "You absolutely have to get consent to use someone’s biological materials, or at the VERY LEAST inform them of what you are doing. "
That was not the standard back then. I agree that it is the bioethics standard right now, but I don't agree with the standard either from a moral or practical point of view.* For that reason, I also don't agree that any abuse occurred.
Sure, a video would be interesting. I'm just worried that it would be so biased that it would leave viewers knowing less and not more. Certainly that's the case for many of the terrible pieces I've read that treat Lacks as some kind of medical hero, which she definitely wasn't (and to be clear, she did absolutely nothing wrong; she just isn't a hero).
*I should add that I think requiring informed consent for using discarded biological materials makes more sense now than it did back in Lacks' day, because the availability of cheap genetic tests poses a privacy issue. However, the possibility of such tests could not have been reasonably forseen by Lacks' doctors, so they cannot be criticized for disrespecting her privacy.
@@dwaynepeters4520 "that wasn't the standard back then" isn't an argument that something was morally correct. plenty of horrific things have been "standard" at one point or another in history. additionally, the anecdote that you would personally be okay with non-consensual samples of you being taken for research has no bearing on what the overall practice should be or what's an ethical treatment of humans in general; you are just one person and if i were, say, okay with being murdered, that wouldn't suddenly make murder okay. you'll need to make better arguments than that lol
Part 1 left me on the edge of my seat. Part 2 made me sit back, stunned.
Those poor women. The details surrounding the coersion is sickening, but the front of helping IVF is downright insidious. And the treatment of not only the donors, but infertile women in general is so heartwrenching.
I did not expect to feel this emotional after watching! Brilliant work, Mr. Broccoli. I'd normally say, "Can't wait for the next one!" but you deserve to rest after what I assume to be a hell of a lot of work!
Take a break, take your time. The wait is well worth it. Congratulations on being full time now!!!
I'm in the middle of a PhD on ethical and social issues in assissted reproduction, so I was very familiar with this story before watching. I watched anyway, because I knew from your other work that it would be entertaining, and a good refresher of this familiar story.
But you really hit it out of the park with this one BB. You captured intricacies and social factors I had never heard of, and you explained so many concepts remarkably well to make the story digestible to a wider audience.
Incredible work mate, keep the stellar scicomm coming!!
Do you have any advice on references to read on other case studies, books, or similar to someone interested in this field of ethics?
Good to know that this video can be used to study for a PHD.
what make Hwang scandal different and (IMO) hit harder than Schön, Ninov (and Bogdanoff brother maybe) scandals is that how much people actually involved in the scandals. It's pretty much a whole country against a small innocent group. And the fact that Hwang himselft didn't even get punished more than some of his coworkers is made me both angry and sad.
really love your documentary mate.
It’s even simpler than that; elements, semiconductors, the beginning of the universe… these are all physical science subjects detached from life, and so the scandals are questionable solely on the basis of intellectual and academic integrity. Nothing can compare with the involvement of actual human lives when it comes to ethics.
Honestly I think the thing that blew me away the most is the fact that you can grow genetically human teratomas on immunocompromised mice. Insane
As a Pittsburgher, I did not expect this story to end up in my neighborhood! Schatten is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. His lab work was done at the women's hospital where my Nana was a nurse. I started as a mechanical engineering major when I was an undergrad at University of Pittsburgh, and Schatten is listed in the biomedical engineering department. We might have been in the same building at any time in 2016.
i actually work in the department of medicine but i don’t know any of the engineers so i’ve never heard of him haha
i'm not surprised that the public at large did not find issues with the ethical problems in the way the eggs were obtained. i worked in a korean lab before and when i asked the professor where one of our hcc cell lines came from he had the audacity to wink at me and say it's illegally obtained from his friend at the hospital, and for me to keep it a secret. i got out of there as fast as i could.
Bro acted like it was a film he torrented 😅
People place value on life with age. They don't care for embyros because they can't see it. They view it as less than human and blame religion for the ethicsl dilemma.
@@Cherry-pu4mx you do realize the reason the egg "donations" are scandalous is because human WOMEN getting their bodies taken advantage of and not the debatable life status of an zygote, right?
@@Cherry-pu4mxthe problem isnt with the eggs themselves but how much risk is involved in getting them, moreso that this was 20 years ago
Dude was definitely joking when he said that... then again he probably didn't say that at all, because that little story is most certainly fake.
As a Korean American PhD student, I think this story hits home for me. I quit my biotech job in pursuit of scientifc progress. Even though my current field (biomedical engineering) is not riddled with fraud, it is definitely like any other scientific institution that revoles around cult of personality, which is a microcosm of what Hwang developed.
Also, science preaches ethics but always prioritizes progress when it comes to grants and publications
Though kind of depressing, this video was a great allegory on how empirical science is as human as any other field because it is humans who provide the data
Sounds like Adorno is right about the enlightenment.
Now think of who is the one that is paying for grants and publications. So much for "trust the science"
The plea to let him return to his career is baffling. What career? His results weren't real, and he didn't do any of the technical work. He just had a corrupt management role.
Funnily enough, I saw a similar thing with Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. I was following it bc heaps of my school friends/colleagues were in biomedical instruments. After the technology fraud was uncovered, professional chatter fell to zero but the public on the whole were under the impression that she could ‘get it right the second time around’ - Like it’s roulette and not technical knowledge/expertise.
People assume ‘trustworthy‘ people do good work and if it doesn’t pan out, it’s due to confounding/random variables. Hell, public opinion only really turned on Holmes when the law caught up with her and cracks in her public persona worked. What Kwang did was (diabolical) genius in the sense that he knew the official (lawmakers) and unofficial (the public) calls were what mattered to dodging responsibility, and not the scientific community.
He did produce the first cloned dog. And it was a real clone, amazingly enough!
You probably missed the part where after the scandal, he went on to and continues to have a successful career in animal cloning.
He's actually continuing and running a successful cloning business.
Hwang laying on hospital bed reminds me on my half-assed attempts to fake illness when I did not want to go to school.
I must say the beard adds credibility
At the beginning, I thought the playing card animation was a weird background choice but by the end it was brilliantly laid out, literally. Well done!
I usually don't have an interest in STEM topics but find myself sitting through 2 whole hours WITHOUT stabbing my eyeballs out. You threw science, history, politics and culture in a blender and went to fucking town. This was entertaining while comprehensive, accessible, balanced and well structured. You get a Nobel prize for helping me genuinely understand a complex story with ease and learn things I would never have known if this video didn't randomly pop up. 👏
This. Right here. Every single video is so digestible (perfect word usage homie) it's unreal
I think you both need to get out more.
@@mikesanders8621 I can't. I'm locked in my uncle's basement.
@@mikesanders8621 i’m also in their uncles basement
@@mikesanders8621I am their uncle
I love how unique your style is. It’s so satisfying to see the entire “board” completed by the end of the video. Great way to visualize such complicated topics.
Genuinely insane to see you go from a handful of subs, to suddenly exploding and getting millions of views. You genuinely deserve it man, you clearly put a lot of hard work and dedication into these excellent videos and I look forward to seeing how you progress and grow from here.
[EDIT: Thanks for the corrections! Itching to talk about this subject plus my knowledge of unhealthy work culture elsewhere combined into me assuming it was because people were against taking care of your mental health instead of seeing this is as a PR stunt. Looking at the situation again, I agree it was way less sinister than I thought.]
Thank you for the coverage! It's given me an insanely wide perspective on a situation I never knew happened until now and a fantastic message to spread.
it's equally depressing to me that the scandal of unethical practices isn't the one to get him, that 70+% support rate for his method of soliciting eggs was appalling. it's the faking of successful results that got him. Really shows where the priorities laid in the public consciousness at that point, the end justifies all the means, especially when the means is the health of vulnerable women.
Granted, it sounded like the problem was less him checking into a hospital and more that he that and then immediately started doing photo ops with politicians. That would definitely feel extremely disingenuous, lol.
The public turning against him was more so because the hospitalization was seen as a pr move. He was recieving tv crews, politicians, reporters from bed and they were constantly broadcasting images of him disheveled in a hospital gown. People got suspicious very quickly. Apparently dude would only lie down once he saw the cameras rolling.
@Sunny Dong I mean, this is just the culture for most Asian countries. It's the whole reason for imperial Japan, North Korea, and China for 90% of its life. Its terrible too because that simple mindset created some of the worst atrocities known to man.
A very typical response for that area of east asian countries. They're already used to working themselves to death every day, who actually gives a fuck about their lives or consent or happiness.
Incredible work once again. I really appreciate you giving the cultural context specific to South Korea, and reminding us all that this could easily happen anywhere where we allow society to devalue women’s bodily autonomy. I bought Nebula just to watch this early, and I’m going to watch this again.
I personally doubt that a situation where women are misled and/or cohersed into "donating" part of their bodies "for science" would happen in the west.
Not in academia, too many failsafes
@@danielo7985 "Misogyny? In _my_ academia?"
It's more likely than you think.
[FREE FIELD CHECK]
@@danielo7985sadly, when the failsafes are made by a society that harbors misogyny, they may not be as effective as you think. i admit i’m not terribly informed on the scientific community, but i have seen misogyny thrive in places one might not expect.
Yet, the counter argument arises by itself, when we see that many women on their own volition included fellow scientists and politicians were willing to throw themselves into the procedure just to give this guy more eggs even after the truth surfaced.
So the question is where is the line? How can we trust that people truly know what is best for themselves? To give them complete autonomy.
The best answer is external regulation. Hwang didn't get away with it because his society was mysoginistic even though it was for the average citizen, the laws were there, more importantly the whole world was watching, he couldn't publicly show his processes and he knew it.
He got away because he lied and because of corruption.
@@danielo7985 Oh, you sweet summer child.
one really upsetting thing about this story is that the investigation and exposé aren't a lot more ethical than the experiments themselves. threatening and coercing hwang's junior lab staff in order to get information from them, exposing the names of egg donors in a massive breach of patient privacy when they'd already been exploited - i understand this needed to come to light, but it's disturbing that the search for the truth continued to exploit people as hwang had. the whole story is terrible.
To be clear here, at no point did PD Notebook publish the names of the egg donors. Their footage blurs their faces and voices and respects their privacy. All of that info was dug up by other media outlets once the story was blowing up.
@@BobbyBroccoli an important clarification, thank you, but the sentiment stands :( the whole thing really sucks. your video is really illuminating though and i appreciate the opportunity to learn.
39:50 Going to be honest, Hwang may have been a horrible human being, but I can only name on one hand the number of people that could turn a pr disaster like that on its head.
meh, good social skills are not a respectable trait on their own imo. especially when used to manipulate others
And then there's the fact that there's still people that support him. Insane manipulation skills.
Great video. As a Korean I was rather surprised to see a video on this topic done in a Brocumentary. The first video definitely has more talking points but this one also has a few things I would see as interesting.
One, the liberal media outlets where the protagonists against Hwang yet people how would be viewed as liberal like Yoo Shimin and president Noh where advocates of Hwang. Two, 2005 was a important year in women's rights in Korea ending the controversial 'head of the family' system and yet Korea was still shockingly misogynistic for a farley developed nation. I just found these points as interesting and maybe worth thinking about.
Great job on the video. Hope you keep up the good work. I can see the immense amount of research youust have put into making the video.
And little side note it's president Noh not Roh. Roh would be the North Korean way of addressing that surname. Just so you know.
Just to correct a correction, it's surname
Can you talk more about the head of the family system, or give some names that I can use to look it up?
It's not a surprise knowing that Bobby covers academic scandals and this is by far the biggest modern one in Biology
Such words are overused when women were working in scientific labs. Joining western dysfunction and sterility, not a good thing for anyone.
“The liberal media outlets were the ones against Hwang, yet the liberal politicians were advocates of Hwang”
Politicians don’t care about what side they are on or what beliefs they are promoting, they just say what will get them popular, like promoting the national sweetheart. This occurs to every nation and every place where politics applies. If you are 100% honest about your beliefs, you are never going to be voted for.
Reads the title: "What?! They're cloning criminals!??"
This whole scandal reminds me a lot of Lance Armstrong’s doping ring. You have the feel-good story of beating cancer/saving lives, the immense nationalistic fame from being world-class in a field, the powerful connections in media and politics used to intimidate and ruin the lives of critics, and the lack of severe consequences for the ringleader.
Lance Armstrong even pressured his teammates into using PEDs, which is pretty similar to Hwang pressuring his grad students to donate eggs.
Oooh, cool observation
Hwang had 2 nuts and no Sheryl Crow
It’s ridiculous that so many critics and fellow athletes had their entire careers ruined because they rightly pointed out what was going on
@@killerkitten7534 Not to defend Armstrong for pressuring others into taking drugs and lying about doing so himself, but it is worth noting that a large number of top athletes in cycling at the time were actively taking PEDs. It was getting to the point where taking them was almost a requirement to compete at the top level. Armstrong may have been the most successful to be caught, but he was by no means alone.
Man, this absolutely highlights some of the sicknesses that are malignant in South Korean society...We often talk about the damage that the introduction of Christianity has done to various societies in the context of colonialism (And obviously there is even stuff to be said about Korea here!) but the legacy of neoconfuscianism is absolutely brutal when it comes to the ingrained misogyny, hierarchical nature, and complete disregard for the individual in favor of the group. The whole "Patriotism is more important than truth, more important than ethics, more important than law" type of conservatism is just awful and self-destructive.
Incredible video, this channel has very quickly catapulted to one of my favorite channels and even though the videos take a long time to produce, I adore them. Keep it up.
Yes because obviously we should have let the Aztecs keep ripping people's hearts out and the Nigerians leave twins to starve to death in the forest
@@jasonhaven7170 vague agitprop devoid of substance or value please try harder at the very least
your right, though it's not hard to understand why, Korea has been a place of Conflict, economic growth, destruction so on especially in the last 100 years, it means that South Korea as a nation i think is having an identity crisis and struggles with where it wants to be. 1900 it was colonised by Japan until 1945 which during the Second world war was destroyed in an attempt to leave a permanent mark on Korea, and as Imperial Japan is known for commited a few atrocoties, then as soon as the war finished Korea was again divided by foreign intervention with the US occupying the South and the USSR and China occupying the North, this is big cause now 2 ideologically opposed nations had a war despite having the same history, same culture, same people and same way of life were now divided. during the 50s military dictatorship after military dictatorship until about the 90s, South Korea largely stayed extremely poor and in poverty during that time apart from Miracle on the Han river after the war. and from the 90s it has been relatively stable for south koreans. though during the early 2000's political and scandals like in this video made people question national identity, So Koreans have been in hard times from 1910 to the late 2000's. it means there hasn't been time for sociatal development. think of the work and not so much nowadays but defnitely 2 decades ago sociatal culture as the 1970s in most of the western world especially when it comes to women and what role they play in South Korean society and how they are expected and what jobs they can do in an average job, it definitely has gotten a lot better, especially since Koreans have the internet now to see and have access to the outside world, it's definitely getting better as someone who lives in Korea right now but there are still issues to be worked on!
@@17Trees33 You're right, and yeah, I am hopeful for the future. South Korea has had their economic miracle and there is no reason to think they can't find better social equilibrium in time.
33:09 “stem cell brothers divide” that headline deserves a pulitzer
Honestly, it reminds me so much about Asia society. We have a phase in Chinese "識人好過識字" which literally means it is better for you to know how to socialize than for you to know how to read.
Hope something like this wont happen again, but I doubt it.
Thank you for making this video.
English has something like that too, "it's not what you know, it's who you know"
Sadly, these phrases only serve to encourage people to exploit others' hard work
There's so many visual details in this... but the one that GOT me was at the end of The Line where it zooms out to "Pay To Play" and it hit me what that really meant. Horrifying, but great storytelling.
This was amazing! better than the Netflix special by a long shot. Hwang moving to the private sector actually sounds like an excellent super villain origin story. Maybe in a decade we'll see him with a legion of cloned Jurassic horse army taking over the world.
I've recently watched hbomberguy's video on anti-vaxxers, and the "doctor" that started the whole affair also still had supporters even after all the damning evidence. You both came to similar points: these people, as stubborn as they seem, are also victims. It's just uncanny.
“we’re with wakefield! we’re with wakefield! we’re with wakefield!” *slowly fades out*
this comparison is probably going to be really annoying (even if I read it myself instead of wrote it it would probably annoy me), but it does remind me a bit about US politics currently (everyone's favorite subject, wooo). Trump was repeatedly shown to be lying about a multitude of things, and yet he still has millions of diehard supporters. I guess when you are truly convinced of a single person or idea, it is hard to accept that it might be false.
@@thezipcreatorcults of personality,, the scurge of politics :(
You could say the exact same thing about hbomberguy watchers.
@@Zorro9129 hbomberguy has like, evidence, usually. he also makes it clear that he gets shit wrong a lot and is stupid like the rest of us and that you should research shit on your own
The editing, the storytelling, the willingness to go into the really fine details, I love this channel!
- Where are DNA tests, professor?
- Um, my skid mice ate them
Really sad to hear how the whistleblowers like Ryu Young Joon were treated. It's true everywhere, no good deed goes unpunished.
Classic disinformation technique. See: Nixon and Watergate
Excellent, as usual. You are creating here a detailed library of material to study scientific malpractice and misconduct. I’ve been sharing your videos with my colleagues in the past, and I expect many more to come in the future. Thanks for the work you do.
The amount of corruption in all of this is disgusting.
You should visit America...especially Oklahoma, full of similar scientific corruption. Simco labs? Battery testing or hacking systems of secret servers? Hiding a Romanov heir in plain sight and allowing neo-nazis and other cults to use for research, testing, nuclear power? And for certain these same networks work with the likes of these scientists as well as those of Wuhan.
Can I just say, I'm really happy that you've done your best to pronounce all the Korean names and such in this story - I'm so sick of hearing youtubers say "haha, I'm gonna butcher this, please don't be mad" instead of practicing with one of the many available services that will read other languages out loud for you however many times.
While I agree with what you said, I think some understanding is necessary here. It can be difficult to switch language pronunciations for one or two words (names) when they're embedded in a sentence that's a different language. I speak English and Japanese and I have difficulty sometimes saying the Japanese "r sounds" during an English sentence. Ex: I was walking down the street to the ramen shop when Rui saw me.
Talking just normally that can be a difficult sentence to say. That's why practice is, as you mentioned, vital. But even with practice I can say confidently that I would not accurately pronounce it sometimes.
if you are going to be speaking about people with a non english name you are literally obligated to learn to properly pronounce it, all else is lazy ass behavior
Dude shut the fuck up not everyone can or wants to learn to pronounce a foreign language in a specific tiny island country that isn't fucking Japan, I'm guatemalan and when I hear people butcher Spanish names and phrases it's just really funny to me
I'm sorry, if that's an accurate pronunciation then Korean needs to seriously rethink its romanisation, because oo for [u:] doesn't make any sense, as well as ar for [back a:] (I don't have IPA on this device)
I think it’s partially because most speech on youtube is not practiced, whereas this is basically a documentary with the level of detail.
Man when you said "one of the few human doctors" I was like wait were they hiring aliens then, idk if cloning should be the highlight of this man's life lol
my thought was 'wait who gave the cloned cows doctorates'
@@0katsuki0 "It all comes back to beef"
A fellow research scientist here in Canada… man, you’re something else, the quality in your production value is off the charts! I’m a chem undergrad so I hope to maybe see you tackle scandals in that field one day, keep it up!!
so excited for this. just discovered your channel and my only criticism is that you dont have enough videos lmao i've watched everything already and hungry for more content! but i appreciate content of this quality takes time and it is worth the wait, keep it up! S-tier creator
We need more scientific scandals so we can get more Bobby Brocolli videos. Get on it, mad scientists of the world!
@@takanara7 oh believe me, there have been many. He'll get around to them eventually. But what I respect about the scientific community is that the moment someone is caught, just about everyone comes out against them.
I loved how the whole thing turned the other way because of a forum post detailing the specific faked images. It really shows that when you have the opportunity to lay out all of the facts and evidence, with no bullshit or drama getting in the way; regardless of where someone swings ideologically, many will listen.
I wonder if it’s known who made the forum post.
But yeah I think a similar theme happened with the Schön case, with the similar diagrams. In fraud cases often once there is clear evidence in the open, it will make its way to the people who need to see it if it’s irrefutable enough.
oh man, ngl, the ending of the video was a huge downer - Hwang basically got away with everything and to add insult to injury is still allowed to do cloning. WTF!
Regardless, fantastic video once again! This channel is quickly becoming one of my favorites
It's a very complex story because he seems to have legitimate talent as a cloner and did eventually admit to his fraud. He should've served jail time and should be forced to pay millions in restitution; if he was, I might be ok with him trying to continue research again since he's apparently making real progress, and the money from his company could help repay what he embezzled. It just feels undeserved because he was barely punished.
@@tunnelsloth5948 the lack of punishment is what irks me. I think it's safe to say that most scientists' carrers would've been over after a scandal like that. But Hwang was in a very unique position, with powerful friends and the public on his side, both of which allowed him to get away.
I think I wouldn't really mind his current situation - IF - he actually faced punishment compatible to what he did.
If it makes you feel better, he's widely known now throughout Korea AND the world as a national embarrassment, and used as a prime example for what kind of scientist you should strive to NEVER become. The people and the government keep one eye trained on him at all times so he won't try to pull shit like this again. He's only successful now because of the one genuine accomplishment he got: his cloned dogs. You can tell he's grasping at straws by agreeing to the stupid mammoth cloning project. He has the barebones now. I hear plenty of stories of people pelting his house with eggs and stones, and apparently they destroyed his wife's car when they learned where the money used to buy it came from.
The lack of prison time this man received is disgusting.
HE STILL GETS TO DO CLONING WORK IT'S HORSE SHIT
@@-psilo-9071to be fair he did clone that dog so it's not impossible that he does make another genuine discovery or advancement at some point. probably not a very good chance though...
@@-psilo-9071because who else will? Are you?
@@everythingpony That's still not a reason to let him continue. Not to mention there are hundreds if not thousands of genuine, non-fraudster scientists around the world who are also working on cloning. Hwang is not so important that he should be absolved of all wrongdoing.
@@everythingpony Well certainly not the guy whose been proven to have faked his results multiple times.
“Stem-cell brothers divide” is an excellent pun
god the part where someone was belittling and insulting the women selling their eggs made my blood boil, the misogynistic way women are spoken about in korea remains unchanged
I think this case just highlights the toxic structures and culture in science.. too many PIs have way too much power over ppl in the lab and influence in institutions. They take credit for far more than they should. They play off the "great man" idea of where breakthroughs come from rather than teams in multiple labs over time and some luck. It unfortunately also causes funding to go to establish PIs and not new scientists with new ideas just simply based on name alone. It causes hyper competitive environments that encourage mistakes, fraud, abuse, and theft... its just so outdated and not a science based way to organize science ironically...
True although the circumstances and accuracy of data was obviously different, the work environment just seems like similar cultures in western labs
The thing that always gets me most with these kinds of controversies is to this day, people still try and deny that there can be corruption in the sciences and pretend like scientists have 0 reasons to lie or fake data. Theres been so many situations where due diligence was completely ignored solely because the person speaking was a scientist of some sort only to come out years later they didn't say a single thing that was true. Everyone needs to be held accountable.
Stem lords are generally very assholish and i say that as a phd student in physics.
Yes yes very true anyway what specifically are you referring to I am very curious
This is an oddly specific situation you described there. I am not aware of it, so...
story time?
@@whyiseverysinglehandletaken2 what's oddly specific about it? We just watched one such case, it's what the whole video was about
@@MizutamariVT he wasn't believed just because he was a 'scientist'. It's a very different scenario.
When you said "the show must go on" got literal chills. Shame i just found this. Keep going on man, great content.
I'm a biologist myself and have even worked for years specifically with the stem cells (primary cultures and transformed lines, both, made iPSC too), and I, personally(!!!), think it would be very cool if I could use my own samples to do some work on it, but oh my god... I felt so sick, so uncomfortable and creepy when the fellow researcher, Park Eul Soon, told about her experience with working on her own eggs... Like. I just have no words. I'm so, so sorry she had to go through it.
Thank you for another great video! They are amazingly done and I have rewatched some already too☺️
yeah and there’s a difference between voluntarily using your own cells and pressuring your subordinates. especially in a country where women already feel pressure to give up their personal autonomy
@@sasha8345 exactly! it's a big fking difference, and using your power over your employees in such vile and horrific way... it makes my skin crawl.
That part was also among the most harrowing lines in this part to me. Interested to hear it hits the same note even for someone who had considered a similar possibility in the past.
That sketchy interview tactic to get the dude to give up information may have worked, but it also could've easily led to the dude making stuff up to save himself.
Ya don't want to go with that approach because it can undermine the credibility of true testimony
EDIT: Called it
Your documentaries are incredibly well researched and with great storytelling. The fact you're getting some of the people in the case interviewed now speaks to the quality of your work, I hope your channel stays strong for year to come, you have one loyal viewer here.
Ugh.. the donors 😰😰 I thought I would be just irritated that a scientist lied but as you mention, this goes much deeper. The human cost is outrageous, the missteps and mishandling of multiple agencies.. this guy is a monster. Thank you for a fantastic video, I love the great graphics, tons of details and sensitivity to the Korean culture.
When he said that Hwang didn`t really do any of the hard work, he just posed for pictures, I got whiplash from personal experiences. Yeah, that does happen a lot, especially with PIs
I really really hope you have a video on the IPSC (induced pluripotent stem cell) disaster at the Riken Institute in the making.
That story is also so interesting, both from a personal and a scientific point of view. It also immediately connects with the Yamanaka factors that you mention in the last section of the video.
Their claim was in essence that they had found an even easier way to create IPSCs. Instead of needing to make cells produce a whole host of these Yamanaka factors, they claimed they had managed to do it using just citric acid.
Of course a shocking claim and one that could be easily tested in other labs. Which it was and universally the result that this was of course a bogus result.
I don't recall if they ever got convicted of falsification of data, I just remember when we reviewed the paper at uni, we thought there was an alternative explanation for the data that wouldn't involve fraud. Basically, they used a reporter construct that randomly inserts into the DNA of the cells they were testing.
The point of the reporter construct is to make the cells produce a fluorescent protein (GFP) when the cells are making stem cell factors. The construct contains a sequence called a promoter which is copied from actual stem cell factor genes. You can think of a promoter like an on-switch - so if you copy the on-switch from a stem cell factor gene to let it drive your reporter, your GFP is supposed to be produced whenever the actual stem cell factor is being produced.
99.9999% of the time that's not a big problem - there is so much DNA, and a lot of it can be safely inserted into without adverse side effects.
One possible explanation that we discussed is that this random insertion could have happened next to a promoter (on-switch) that was controlled by acidity.
It's a really simple explanation and one that is easily tested as well.
However the personal consequences are what make this story so damning and interesting - iirc one of the authors committed suicide, the Riken institute cut around a third of their staff?
It was devastating, and all over a result that was a little too good to be true and not properly verified.
The real shocker of this story is the Japanese figuring out a way how to get stem cells without needing an embryo, basically making the sacrifice of 2000+ embryos pointless.
_Sacrifice_ of the embryos, or of the 121 women who were coerced into donating them?
@@iau You're right, the commentor worded that poorly, probably meant it in a similar way to how we say that we "sacrifice our time" for projects even though "time" as an entity itself isn't physically capable of being sacrificed.
It is so sad that some of these women reported side effects due to the procedure that they weren't fully briefed about. Their quality of life was greatly affected for project many (like the woman donating her eggs for IVF) where unaware of.
They went through this for nothing it seems :(
Rip to those little eggs tho
@@iauthe embryos were still sacrificed
@@wolfetteplays8894embryos are a clump of cells, not actual human beings
@@elilass8410 i guess you're right, but aren't we all a clump of cells, just in a much higher scale?
Your animating style feels kind of reminiscent of Jon Bois, which I really love! A meticulously arranged larger graphic that contains the whole video plot with dramatic zoom ins on story beats. But you’ve definitely made it your own, love it!
This is the best compliment that you can receive...I agree with you
Bobby has acknowledged the Jon Bois inspiration in the past! And in turn, I've been seeing more creators take on clear influence from Bobby's style lately.
I think in his earlier videos he is a video titled "animating like Jon Bois"
@@nor3spect430 it's not stealing if you cite it, then it's inspiration.
Good artists borrow great artists steal or something
@@nor3spect430 if it ain't broke, don't fix it
This. Was. INCREDIBLE. The graphics, the script, the presentation, the production quality.. you'll have a million subs in no time!
really well put together! This had me on the edge of my seat. Thank you for going over something from South Korea, as a Canadian about the same age as this scandal it's really nice being able to watch such an in-depth breakdown of something I never would have known about without it
at 5 min:
Dr. Hwang's description of employee work schedule is nearly spot on with what ive heard a handful of old school biology professors say nearly verbatim (esp. "your cells dont take the weekends off, so you cant either.") to their grad students.
im not super surprised whatsoever that Dr. Hwang's work ideology fit in perfectly with high-intensity, cutting edge labs of the time (and honestly ones that still work like that today)
When I first watched this two-parter, I believed it to be one of the videos I liked less from your channel. I still liked it, but felt like it was missing someone. After some rewatches, I realised that instead I was missing things. When watched multiple times, you just see more and more things, especially with the playing cards.
This is just a great triumph on your part, and thank you for the excellent videos!