Waiting for the other shoe to drop...

. . . at 6:15 a.m., but not even my morning copy of The Korea Herald has yet dropped at my doorstoop.

I think the presses must have stopped last night. The big news is still to be printed.

The Korea Herald's electronic version, however, has an article by Jin Hyun-joo: "Hwang's stem cell research was fake: associate" (December 16, 2005).

Scientist Hwang Woo-suk fabricated his stem cell research published in journal Science this year and asked the journal to retract his paper, a close associate said yesterday.

Roh Sung-il, one of co-authors, said Hwang admitted there remain no embryonic stem cells which his team claimed to create through cloning.

. . .

Roh is the administrator of MizMedi Hospital, which provided the human ova for Hwang's research. He visited Hwang at Seoul National University Hospital.

. . .

Lee Wang-jae, a senior SNU (Seoul National University) official, confirmed that the research was fake.

"Hwang's research team admitted that there were no embryonic stem cells which it claimed had created," said Lee who was tapped to lead a SNU committee to investigate his research. "Today is the most shameful day for Korea's science community."

Readers who have been following this story as it has developed over the past several weeks will recall that Roh Sung-il is the man who paid for ova from women, including a couple of junior researchers on Hwang's stem-cell team, but swore that Hwang knew nothing about this.

Much of Korea has yet to wake up to this news, but there'll soon be a firestorm in Korea's politics of the vortex.

As for the dropping shoes, this blog wouldn't be Gypsy Scholar if I didn't wonder whence the expression "Waiting for the other shoe to drop" stems.

According to World Wide Words . . . nobody knows. But that doesn't stop triple-dub from speculating.