Following weeks of scrutiny, the daughter of a high-profile official in South Korea has had a paper she wrote as a high school student retracted, in part because the journal determined she had made no intellectual contributions to the study.
Cho Kuk, who was officially appointed yesterday (September 9) as the top justice official in South Korea, is embroiled in a controversy over undeserved academic advantages his daughter, Cho Min, obtained.
According to a story by Reuters about the larger controversy last week:
Some of the allegations against Cho’s daughter that have drawn the most ire include her being named as first author of a medical paper in the Korea Journal of Pathology in 2009, when she was still in high school and had just completed a two-week internship at Dankook University’s institute of medical science.
She also failed her exams at Pusan National University’s medical school twice, according to school records, but not only kept her place but got scholarships worth a total of 12 million won ($9,900) over six semesters between 2016 and 2018.
About that paper, on which the young Cho was first author: We’ve just learned that last week, the journal — now called the Journal of Pathology and Translational Medicine — retracted the article, “eNOS Gene Polymorphisms in Perinatal Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy.” As the notice explains:
This article [1] has been retracted at the request of the Editors. Journal of Pathology and Translational Medicine, formerly known as Korean Journal of Pathology (1967 – 2014), requires that Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval is received for all studies on human subjects and that authors follow guidelines for research and publication ethics.
Concerns were raised about unjustified authorship and false statements regarding IRB approval. After evaluating the concerns carefully, we asked the corresponding author to provide an explanation for the concerns. The corresponding author notified the Journal that IRB approval from the author’s institution was not obtained for the human subjects research described in the article. In addition, the corresponding author stated that the five co-authors (MC, KSH, DCC, IYC, and MJK) were attributed as authors without having made intellectual contributions to this study, and therefore agreed with changing the five persons’ co-authorship to contributorship. In Korea, unjustified authorship is construed as a type of research misconduct (Ministry of Science and Technology, directive No.236, enacted 2007.2.8.).
As a consequence, the Editors of Journal of Pathology and Translational Medicine retract this article. The corresponding author agrees to the retraction and apologizes to the Korean Society of Pathologists for any inconvenience caused by the publication and retraction of this article.
The paper has been cited just once, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Knowledge.
Just goes to show you: Nepotism is like passing in football. Only three things can happen, and two of them are bad.
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I asked many times – whether Nepotism can be considered as one of the misconducts in science. this has serious implications – as nepotism may have different definitions. Please educate me on this.
Nepotism is a reason, not an action. If nepotism causes you to commit misconduct, it’s misconduct. Putting people on a paper who didn’t contribute is generally frowned on (though the accusations of scholarship fraud, while not scientific misconduct per se, are a lot worse).
Dunno that nepotism is a logical conclusion of what’s reported in this article. According to the retraction notice, it looks like a lone wolf tried to get an unethical study published and dragged five names through the mud who didn’t necessarily know about the lack of IRB approval.
If retraction watch has a reason to believe that this notice is false or misleading, please publish it to justify your tongue-in-cheek jab.
Not only nepotism, this guy (Kuk Cho) and her daughter (Min Cho) used this retracted manuscript for her college admission (Korea University, top3 university in Korea) and the medical school admission (Pusan National University). This is serious misconduct and corruption of power.
No, the paper was mentioned only once on the her college admission, not on other occasions. She registered it as an experience in participating in a research as an intern, and mentioned on her personal statement that she was named as one of the authors (not the first author) and did not submit the paper as a supplement material.
The paper was recently retracted not it has no direct relationship with her college entrance.
http://m.newstof.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1960
Her MEET score was lower than most of the medical school’s cut-line. The experience of the first author must be related somehow with the pass of the Busan medical school. There is a possibility that the paper may influence at the interview for the admission.
Or it may not be related with the admisson like you say, only because her farther is great ‘Cho kuk’, not her ability is real.
It is NOT FAIR whichever.
The admission of the Busan medical school shoud be canceled.
And your reference is biased.
The busan medical school course she applied requires a MEET test but does not use the score as a acceptance criteria. (They did not reveal her score. How do you acquire that…from the internet?)
https://m.mt.co.kr/renew/view.html?no=2019082011124428766
They also clearly stated that she did not mention her ‘first author’ paper on her personal statement submitted for the entrance.
https://m.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20190822098600051
The busan university is currently investigating the whole process regarding her entrance, so we had better wait the result, not jumping into a conclusion only with guesses.
By the way, her farther ‘Cho kuk’ was not ‘that’ great when she entered the Busan medical school. He was just an SNU professor, known for his opposition-leaning SNS writings and news columns.
I totally agree with you!
The admission of the Busan medical school should be canceled.
She should not be a doctor.
Just because you say the reference is biased doesn’t mean it really is. Her reference is not biased at all and in fact, it is one of the rare articles that dig deep enough to reveal a real story.
And back in 2014, the year his daughter was admitted to Busan Medical School, Cho Kuk wasn’t the ‘Cho Kuk’ that we know of today. So how would that affect her admission?
Please get your facts straight before scrutinizing a person you don’t really know.
You may wanna check this out:
http://naver.me/5TOQTttm
She submitted the paper when applying to Korea university.
You have an old news. You need to read this recently updated news. She submitted her paper for her admission to Korea university.
https://www.google.com/amp/m.chosun.com/news/article.amp.html%3fsname=news&contid=2019091700451
This is South Korea.
According to Korean fact check sites, the paper exerted a negligible influence on her entrance to the university. She did not even mentioned on her college application that she was named as the first author of the paper. The paper was recently recently mainly because the lead author did not receive an IRB approval needed for the paper research.
http://m.newstof.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1960
The fact check that you mention has no factual ground. High school sophomore earning first authorship after two week intership cannot be defended. It is simple misconduct. That she got eventually admitted after all the unjustifiable credits makes the suspicion reasonable.
About her studies at Pusan National University’s medical school, there are no problems at all. She failed the first semester and took a forced leave of absence. The next year, her supervisor suggested her a private scholarship (run by the very supervisor) under the condition of no further failure. She managed to succeed 5 semesters but failed again and the scholarship stopped supporting her.
When she began to take the scholarship, her father was an opposition-leaning professor at SNU with no official position at the government.
http://m.newstof.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1951
http://m.newstof.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1960
The above fact check summarizes the situation well with references (written in Korean.) The recent event of the paper retraction is not updated yet.
Providing the first authorship to a two-week intern is indeeded a misconduct of the lead author. The commitee also mentioned it when they decided to retract the paper with other major misconducts (such as faking an IBR approval).
What I am saying is that ‘the first authorship’ is not used for her college entrance. She registered it as an experience in participating in a research as an intern, and mentioned on her personal statement that she was named as one of the authors (not the first author) and did not submit the paper as a supplement material.
You’re not doing anyone a favor by suggesting that it’s all on the “lead author” (referring to the Dan Guk Uni. professor) and none of the blame falls on the daughter.
There are many cases where professors will exploit the labor of graduate students and other staff members so that their children can have a better shot at getting into a prestigious university. I think you’ve already heard about the Sunkyunkwan University professor who forced her graduate students to write her daughter’s thesis. What you’re suggesting just gives people like this a free pass for their unethical conduct.
https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/world/south-korea-professor-forced-students-to-write-daughter-s-thesis-report/ar-BBVedvd?li=AAggFp5&%25252525253Bocid=iehpelp
By saying that it’s not a big deal because she didn’t mention that she was “first author” in her college applications, are you suggesting that this is acceptable behavior? You are actually downplaying the severity of such actions. The fact that she was named first-author alone is a huge problem.
Fun Korea
No, I am not downplaying it. The first-authorness of the paper caused huge responses in Korea because it may imply an admission scandal. I am just saying that this is not the case and I just don’t figure out other reasons for which such a misconduct was needed.
Actually, when she entered a college, the govermnent changed the college entrance criteria from a single national-wide exam to a total evaluation ( exam + school grades + activitities). The government even encouraged high school students to write papers through internship. But it caused so many problems and now the policy is changed that even mentioning a paper work on the personal statement disqualifies the college entrance.
The fiasco about the changing college entrance criteria in Korea (especially on mentioning paper works on a personal statement ) can be figured out from the following news article.
http://m.news1.kr/articles/?3706058#ns1
By the way, what was the reason to put the picture of “Cho Kuk” here? Lets’ be fair and not be political. He is irrelevant of the retracted paper. The picture of the corresponding author should be posted if this site wants to any pictures. This site should remain free of any political agenda.
I am appalled to see people who still blatantly insist her innocence. Political support for her father appear to blind their eyes. The family was involved in the fabrication of the college application material, for which Dr. Cho’s daughter benefited. It is so outrageous and such a shame that Dr. Cho served as the Minister of Justice.
Can we include “nepotism” as one of the traits of scientific misconduct? we need to propose this…i am looking for the next world conference on scientific integrity to propose this…