It shapes up as a giant case of scientific fraud, with an odd twist: The cloned dog was real. Almost nothing else was.

A South Korean scientist who gained national hero status with his claims on the cloning of human stem cells used fabricated data in one of his two bombshell scientific papers, an investigation panel said Tuesday.

"The 2004 paper was written on fabricated data to show that the stem cells match the DNA of the provider, although they didn't," the panel's report said.

Snuppy, the cloned dog. (AP photo)
Snuppy, the cloned dog. (AP photo)

A mutated egg could appear to resemble a cloned early human embryo or blastocyst, the panel said.

Investigators concluded "the team was in possession of a technique of creating cloned human blastocyst," a finding that supports one of Hwang's claims.

The panel upheld Hwang's claim that he produced the world's first cloned dog, an Afghan hound named Snuppy, short for Seoul National University puppy.

Overall, the findings seem to complete the disgrace of Hwang Woo-suk, whose work has come under increasing suspicion.

He was toppled from his pedestal last month when the same Seoul National University panel ruled there was no data to support claims he made in the other paper.

Hwang's research, which appeared to open the way to patient specific treatments, raised hopes for progress in such areas as spinal cord injury and Parkinson's disease. Those hopes have now been dashed.

"Its always damaging when there's this large-scale fraud because it does reflect badly on everybody," said Dr. Janet Rossant, deputy director of the Stem Cell Network and chief of research at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children.

In Canada, it's against the law to experiment with the early cell stages of human cloning. Stem cell researcher Dr. Mick Bhatia fears the South Korean scandal will make it more difficult to get those research restrictions loosened.

"Certainly there is going to be fuel for opposition, this is already a very politically, ethically charged area of research," said Bhatia, scientific director of the Cancer and Stem Cell Research Institute at McMaster University in Hamilton. "This fabrication of data in this area will definitely be mentioned as a problem."

Researchers say they're disappointed but not discouraged, hoping one day stem cells will be used to treat incurable disease.