Posted on 03/05/2006 10:14:03 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Five decades after it was revealed as a forgery, the Piltdown man still haunts paleoanthropology. Now, thanks to the disgraced stem cell researcher Woo Suk Hwang, cell biology has a high-profile scandal of its own to live down. Few recent papers in biology have soared as high in acclaim as Hwang's 2004 and 2005 announcements of cloning human embryonic stem cells -- or plummeted as fast into infamy with the discovery that they were rank fakes.
Embryonic stem cell (ESC) research is no less promising today than it was before Hwang's deceit was revealed; most investigators continue to believe that it will eventually yield revolutionary medical treatments. That no one has yet derived ESCs from cloned human embryos simply means that the science is less advanced than has been supposed over the past two years.
Still, Hwang has badly sullied the reputation of a field that already has more than its share of political and public relations problems. Some longtime opponents of ESC research will undoubtedly argue that Hwang's lies only prove that the investigators cannot be trusted to conduct their work ethically, and the public may believe them. This is one more crime against science for which Hwang should be ashamed. (A minor footnote to this affair is our removal of Hwang from the 2005 Scientific American 50 list; see the retraction on page 16.)
In recent years, fabricated data and other fakery have been uncovered in work on materials, immunology, breast cancer, brain aneurysms, the discovery of new elements and other subjects. As the volume of publication rises, fraud will probably rise with it. Because of the growing financial ties between university researchers and corporations, not to mention the jockeying for leadership among nations in high-stakes areas such as stem cells, some scientists may feel more pressure to deliver results quickly -- even if they have to make them up.
These affairs have something in common with the Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass scandals that not long ago rocked mainstream journalism: all these scams exploited the trust that editors extend to submitting authors. The editors and peer reviewers of scientific journals cannot always verify that a submitted paper's results are true and honest; rather their main job is to check whether a paper's methodology is sound, its reasoning cogent and its conclusions noteworthy. Disconfirmation can only follow publication. In that sense, the Hwang case shows how science's self-correcting mechanism is supposed to work.
Yet it is important not to brush off the Hwang case as a fluke without considering its lessons for the future. For instance, Hwang's papers had many co-authors, few of whom seem to have been party to the cover-ups. But what responsibilities should co-authors have for making sure that papers bearing their names are at the least honest?
We should also think hard about whether Hwang's deceit went undetected for months because so many scientists and science journalists wanted to believe that ESC research was progressing rapidly, because that would hasten the arrival of miraculous therapies and other biomedical wonders. Extraordinary results need to be held suspect until confirmed independently. Hwang is guilty of raising false expectations, but too many of us held the ladder for him.
This is how it is supposed to work, but I question this. It works in fields where there is a lot of parallel research and interest, the "hip" science, but in other fields I don't see a willingness to verify other's work, or dig into the data in another paper. It is especially bad when the paper supports the prevailing belief, such as global warming.
The interpretation has certainly changed, but what, specifically, is fake about the drawings? What is fake about drawings of embryos in general?
Perhaps you share your vast knowledge of embryology and say exactly what features on the drawings are fake.
The embryo drawings, accurate or not, do not have the significance attached to them by anti-evolutionists. Embryo development does diverge at points consistent with common descent.
Lawyers too insist on policing themselves. Take your left hand and shake your right hand congratulating yourself. Oh, never mind, you've already done that.
I'm aware of this. I was just pointing out that, just as in the case of Piltdown man, it was an evolutionist and not a creationist who uncovered the fraud.
Piltdown Man. Science (not creationism) uncovered the fraud.
Nebraska Man. Also: Nebraska Man in Textbooks? It wasn't much of a fraud.
Peppered Moths. Another non-issue.
Ichneumon's Discussion of Peppered Moths. FreeRepublic post (#438).
Haeckel's Embryos. Yet another.
Ichneumon's Discussion of Haeckel's embryo drawings. A FreeRepublic post (#62).
Archaeopteryx. Despite howls from creationists, it's not a fake.
Archaeoraptor. A crude fake, publicised by Nat'l Geographic, then quickly exposed.
Lucy. The "fraud" claim is actually a creationist fraud.
We'll find the philosopher's stone any day, your Majesty, we just need a little more money...
If I had no integrity, and all I wanted was to scam some easy money, I'd go into politics or creationism. Biology wouldn't even be on the chart.
This, though, isn't true.
Oh sure, the most investigators *don't* believe that it will eventually yield revolutionary medical treatments. They're just hucksters like Hwang. Gotcha.
You are one amazing piece of work (or something).
And if you are in biology, I contend that politics might be too intellectually taxing for you.
Thanks for the ping!
Transmutation of elements is a fact. You are made of transmuted elements. We also make diamonds as cheaply as we mine them. You have any more impossibilities?
And yet gold has a relatively higher price than iron. Seems that the "fact" runs up against some reality. We just need that philosopher's stone, eh? Right around the corner, eh?
We also make diamonds as cheaply as we mine them.
Apparently, it's not cheap enough. And that isn't the transmutation of elements anyway.
Science does not always provide immediate financial payback. I'm sure it took a while for Maxwell's work to morph into iPods.
The question here is one of knowledge and understanding, not immediate financial gain.
Aside from that, what price do you put on the lives extended by medicine?
Of course it does! That's the whole point of stem cells, donchaknow.
Aside from that, what price do you put on the lives extended by medicine?
Actually, medicine happens to be shortening mine, but only because the medical profession happens to not know what the hell it's doing. Meanwhile, I'll let the flailing second-rate efforts at alleviating individual symptoms slowly kill me.
And thanks so much for bringing it up.
We'd be better off with a million monkeys in a lab, considering the history of medical success.
It ain't really laboratory science until the results are replicated. Up to that point it's tentative.
And remember folks, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Please feel free to point out the specific errors. And feel free to discuss how this relates to the claim that embryo developmment diverges in ways and places that are consistent with common descent.
Can you tell, for example, by examining a photograph of an early embryo, what species it is? Can you even distinguish between families?
Self-congratulatory HOOEY.
Whang Suk was outed on the internet, in an anonymous venue, but those who worked for him and competed with him.
PEER REVIEW FAILED
Curiously, it's the same kind of thing that is now causing a Korean online gamemaker all kinds of headaches--internet anomynity.
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