LOS ANGELES, Jan. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- Being shocked by the fact that South Korean researcher Hwang Woo Suk had faked all his claims of deriving stem cell lines from cloned embryos, the Science journal promised on Tuesday to tighten its publishing procedure.

    The journal had received a report from the investigating panel of the Seoul National University in South Korea, according to Science chief editor Donald Kennedy. The panel said Hwang's earliest claim of deriving human stem cell lines from cloned embryos was based on fraud data.

    The journal editorial is considering to withdraw this paper, which had been published in a 2004 issue of Science, Kennedy said in a video statement released to the press.

    "Since the paper...is implicated in these misconduct findings, Science will be retracting it editorially as well," he said.

    Hwang's latter paper, claiming success in deriving patient-specific stem cells and appearing in Science in 2005, was also proved to be based on fraud data. The journal has retracted the paper under Hwang's requirement.

    Meanwhile, the journal is rethink its rules of evaluating, reviewing and publishing scientific breakthroughs, according to Kennedy.

    "We are determined to do everything in our power to evaluate our own procedures for detecting research misconduct, and we will communicate the results of this effort to the scientific community when it is complete."

    "We are doing a systematic review of the editorial history of both papers and our procedures for evaluating them, to search for ways in which we might improve those," he said.

    The anonymous peer-reviewer picked by the journal may be insufficient to detect frauds, Kennedy admitted, noting that outside experts are needed.

    "Even unusually rigorous peer review of the kind we undertook in this case may fail to detect cases of well-constructed fraud. To support this effort, we are calling on outside experts, including members of our Board of Reviewing Editors and our Senior Editorial Board."

    The journal is considering additional procedural safeguards, Kennedy said. The steps may include requiring all authors to detail their contributions to the research submitted, and to sign statements of concurrence with the conclusions of the work.

    Underlying that Hwang had modified photos of embryos as supporting materials of his paper, Kennedy also promised to improve detecting methods for image alteration.

    "We are implementing improved methods of detecting image alteration, although it appears improbable that they would have detected problems in this particular case," he said. Enditem