Con Men in Lab Coats [how science corrects itself]

Scientific American ^ | March 2006 | By the editors

[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.

[King Prout]

ah, more derision without articulate rebuttal.

fact: we have been ordered by the Mods to treat you creo gadflies with kid gloves.
fact: you creo gadflies are aware of this.
fact: you creo gadflies are attempting crudely to take advantage of this, in both increasing your own vitriolic attacks and in baiting evos into committing the very action the Mods have forbidden.

so, I display restraint in my behavior and well-informed distrust of yours in obedience to the expressed will of the Mods.

and this is paranoia?
hrmn.
No. It isn't.

[Ichneumon]

[They were inaccurate. Yes.]

Crazily, people like itchy man deny that they are even inaccurate.

Crazily, people like tallhappy flat-out lie about me, even though it's so easy to prove beyond any doubt that they're lying.

Patrick henry linked to his rambling comment on it.

Yes, let's check what I *actually* wrote in that linked post, shall we? Tallhappy says that I "deny that [Haeckel's drawings] they are even inaccurate". Now compare that to what I actually said about them, IN THE VERY SAME COMMENT TALLHAPPY REFERS TO:

Through laziness, sloppiness, presumption, or any of a number of other possible reasons, his [Haeckel's] plates of embyronic development took this "prettying-up" process too far, and gave the impression of much more similarity at an early stage of development than is actually present. Embryos at that stage *are* more similar to each other than are embryos at a later stage of development, but not nearly as much as Haeckel's drawings indicated. A few even look as if they were just copied from each other instead of drawn from real specimens.

[...]

Some biologists with experience in the field of embryology also noted that Haeckel's embryo drawings were, at best, over-idealized to the point of being wrong, even in Haeckel's own time.

[...]

Haeckel's drawings of embryos are hardly the only inaccurate information to make its way into textbooks for the lower grades, but as the old saying goes, never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidty (or carelessness, ignorance, etc.) There's no evidence that Haeckel's drawings were incorporated into textbooks with a purposeful intent to mislead students.

[...]

...and although some biologists had noticed from time to time that the illustrations weren't really accurate but hadn't made a big stink about it because textbooks generally have a *lot* of sloppy or oversimplified material in them (and doing them perfectly right would cost far more than most school districts could afford -- the classic "close enough for government work"), finally in 1997 a biologist raised the issue of Haeckel's drawings in a paper (again, as historical background) in a way that reminded a wider audience that Haeckel's drawings had some serious flaws.

[...]

The creationists were just the ones who decided they could misrepresent a case of inaccurate work by an early biologist and subsequent laziness by some textbook authors into some kind of Smoking Gun(tm) which allegedly demonstrated that those evil evolutionists have been knowingly lying to everyone all these years.

One just has to wonder why tallhappy would falsely claim that I "deny that they [Haeckel's drawings] are even inaccurate" when IN THE VERY SAME POST HE POINTS TO AS SUPPORT, I specifically called Haeckel's drawings "inaccurate work", and "inaccurate information", and "weren't really accurate", and "sloppy or oversimplified material", and "had some serious flaws", and took the illustration process "too far", and "were, at best, over-idealized to the point of being wrong".

Is tallhappy really so poor at reading comprehension that he could take these descriptions as my having *denied* that the drawings "are even inaccurate"?

No. If he were that abysmally poor at reading, he wouldn't even have the mental capacity to operate a computer -- the words on the screen would just be gibberish to him.

Instead, he's just lying, in a blatant attempt to slander me through false accusations.

These guys are not committed to the science obviously.

Tallhappy is not committed to the truth, obviously. And this is hardly the first time he has slandered me with false accusations for no cause -- and then not even been honorable enough to ping me to it when he publicly slanders me.

Tallhappy, I want you to explain this behavior. I'm giving you one chance to shape up and atone before I refer your stalking behavior to the moderators. If you fail to respond, or respond in a dishonorable manner (now or in the future) I'm going to leave it to the moderators to handle. I'd rather resolve this matter by having you begin to behave like an adult for a change, but if you are unable to do so, and since my past attempts to raise your level of civility have failed, I'll have no choice but to hand it off to those who have more options at their disposal than I do.

[Virginia-American]

and this is paranoia?

Sounds more like good manners to me

[King Prout]

efficiency and special creation do argue against the development of unretained features in the embryo.

In a maximally efficient production of a human from a zygote, the embryo would specialize directly into the human body plan immediately after the formation of the three principal cell layers, with no side tracking into unrelated morphologies.

AFAIK, the gill-slits are particularly objectionable from an efficient and designed standpoint as these structures do not develop into anything unique in the human body *and* do not appear anywhere else in the developing embryo.

[King Prout]

good manners... and experienced jaundice, yes.
but you and I like to look at things empirically.
if we instead preferred omphaloskepsis, perhaps we too would deem it "paranoia"

[Smokin' Joe]

There are scandals in science due to fraud and wishful thinking, just as there are in politics. If the pols cleaned up their messes a tenth as well as scientists do, we'd be a lot better off.

Well, one thing is for certain. We would have smaller government, finally.

[King Prout]

tchuss... now you are open to a charge of paranoia, old man.

[King Prout]

eh?
oh.
I know - I was just letting Mamzelle know that her Lindens are essentially invulnerable to mild surface sprays of the poison.

[Ichneumon]

Excellent post, thanks for writing it. I had not previously been aware of the laryngeal nerve issue. Fascinating.

[Virginia-American]

AFAIK, the gill-slits are particularly objectionable from an efficient and designed standpoint as these structures do not develop into anything unique in the human body *and* do not appear anywhere else in the developing embryo.

From Tree of Life Web Project- Chordata

The visceral (also called pharyngeal or gill) clefts and arches are located in the pharyngeal part of the digestive tract behind the oral cavity and anterior to the esophagus.

The visceral clefts appear as several pairs of pouches that push outward from the lateral walls of the pharynx eventually to reach the surface to form the clefts. Thus the clefts are continuous, slit-like passages connecting the pharynx to the exterior.

The soft and skeletal tissues between adjacent clefts are the visceral arches. The embryonic fate of the clefts and slits varies greatly depending on the taxonomic subgroup.

In many of the non-vertebrate chordates, such as tunicates and cephalochordates, the clefts and arches are elaborated as straining devices concerned with capture of small food particles from water.

In typical fish-like vertebrates and juvenile amphibians the walls of the pharyngeal clefts develop into gills that are organs of gas exchange between the water and blood.

In adult amphibians and the amniote tetrapods (= reptiles, birds and mammals) the anteriormost cleft transforms into the auditory (Eustachian) tube and middle ear chamber, whereas the other clefts disappear after making some important contributions to glands and lymphatic tissues in the throat region.

The skeleton and muscles of the visceral arches are the source of a great diversity of adult structures in the vertebrates. For example, in humans (and other mammals) visceral arch derivatives include the jaw and facial muscles, the embryonic cartilaginous skeleton of the lower jaw, the alisphenoid bone in the side wall of the braincase, the three middle ear ossicles (malleus, incus and stapes), the skeleton and some musculature of the tongue, the skeleton and muscles of the larynx, and the cartilaginous tracheal rings.

[Ichneumon]

re: Round up works.))) Even on a thick old vine with no leaves? Well, I'll try it. I'm trying to clear a walking path through the woods. I'm scared of roundup because I might miss the muskies and hit the laurel.

In tight situations, you can apply the RoundUp to the target with a fine-tipped paintbrush or some other direct applicator instead of spraying it.

[edsheppa]

Well let's see, you're saying literally that 1) I don't understand what I posted and 2) I don't know anything about stem cells except media hype.

It's elementary logic that if either part of a conjunction is false, the conjuction is also false. Since I do understand what I posted, your statement is false and so naturally I disagree with it.

However I also understand more than media hype about stem cells. While there's no such thing in ordinary logic as being doubly wrong, you seem to have done it.

[King Prout]

ah, thanks.

metmom, please see VA's post above - I was in error, to an extent: the gill slits do not simply "go away"

otoh, I cannot imagine why, in an efficient and purpose-built *special creation* design, those resulting human structures could not develop more directly from the 3 cell layers, without the intermediate (and apparently multi-potential) gill-slit structures.

[Virginia-American]

Excellent post, thanks for writing it.

You're welcome, thanks for the encouragement!

And thanks for all your posts; I've learned quite a bit from them. Your knowledge and patience are remarkable.

I had not previously been aware of the laryngeal nerve issue. Fascinating.

Isn't it?

When I was Googling to find pictures and links, I came across Ortner's syndrome:

Hoarseness of voice due to paralysis of the left recurrent laryngeal nerve caused by a dilated left atrium in mitral stenosis as discussed by Ortner, is a subject of controversy. Different authors have cited different mechanisms as explanation. A variety of cardiac problems such as primary pulmonary hypertension, ischaemic heart disease, various congenital heart disorders can all lead to paralysis of the left recurrent laryngeal nerve. Most authors believe that pressure in the pulmonary artery causes the nerve compression

[AndrewC]

fact: you creo gadflies are aware of this.

Are you an inept mind reader? Since you used the pronoun you, in a post addressed directly to me, you must have tried to use your skills to no success. I am not aware that you have been directed to do any such thing. What I am aware of is that PH posts on something about "Freepspeak", which evidently is avoiding the use of the word "liar".

As for articulate, you'd better complain to Dictionary.com, because all I posted in 326 was the definition of paranoia.

Here is some help.

ar·tic·u·late    ( P )  Pronunciation Key  (är-tky-lt)
adj.

1. Endowed with the power of speech.
2. Composed of distinct, meaningful syllables or words, as human speech.
3. Expressing oneself easily in clear and effective language: an articulate speaker.
4. Characterized by the use of clear, expressive language: an articulate essay.
5. Anatomy. Consisting of sections united by joints; jointed.

[BlueDragon]

"....and since my past attempts to raise your level of civility have failed, I'll have no choice but to...

So now YOU will raise one's level of civility???

Right after you (rightly or not) called him "monkey boy", amongst other insults, in addition to:

"Furthermore, I just thought I'd mention for no particular reason that there are good medications for the treatment of antisocial disorders which cause bitter emotional outbursts at inappropriate targets."

Does this mean that bitter emotional outbursts directed at appropriate targets, is o-k?.

...perhaps

Seems to me, you dished out as good as you got, while also soundly enough refuting the weakness of his comment.

BUt: also, you threaten to run crying to the mods, at the same time??? and think it "adult"?

That part, looks childish and silly. Ok--maybe 'silly', isn't quite right---girlish is better.

[King Prout]

I had (and retain) every reason to believe you had read the conversation you decided to jump into, and thus were aware that we are operating under a Moderator-imposed limitation.

[Virginia-American]

It's easy to see how Haeckel got carried away.

It is amazing that the folds develop in the same way in all chordates, and eventually turn into strainers, gill slits, ears, Eustachian tubes, and glands.

If I understand correctly, you can see actual gill slits turn into ears and Eustachian tubes by watching a tadpole metamorphose into a frog.

[King Prout]

GAH!
what was the designer thinking?
who in their right mind would make a shotgun slide frorward endcap that requires a specialized spanner to fully reinstall???

[Ichneumon]

So now YOU will raise one's level of civility???

Yes.

Right after you (rightly or not) called him "monkey boy", amongst other insults,

It was A MOVIE QUOTE, son, made in response to his "laughable clowns" comment, which was an insult at *me* made without provocation of any sort, in case you didn't notice. And rather than insult him in return, I decided to just laugh it off myself with a silly quote from a silly movie ("The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension"). Sheesh. Get a sense of humor installed.

in addition to: "Furthermore, I just thought I'd mention for no particular reason that there are good medications for the treatment of antisocial disorders which cause bitter emotional outbursts at inappropriate targets."

Does this mean that bitter emotional outbursts directed at appropriate targets, is o-k?.

The point is that that would be nonpathological behavior, as opposed to those directed at targets who had not actually provoked such an attack. Do I really need to explain this?

Seems to me, you dished out as good as you got, while also soundly enough refuting the weakness of his comment.

And yet, that does not excuse repeated outright false slanders on his part. Or do you consider that acceptable behavior?

BUt: also, you threaten to run crying to the mods, at the same time??? and think it "adult"?

See above. Do you condone such behavior, or not? It gets old after the twentieth time or so, and those are just the false slanders I've *seen* -- since he does it without pinging me, I have to wonder how many lies he has told about me that I *haven't* noticed and been able to set the record straight on.

That part, looks childish and silly. Ok--maybe 'silly', isn't quite right---girlish is better.

And your jumping to his defense looks like you're a meddlesome busybody who wants to throw stones at only one party without knowing the whole story. You're entitled to your opinion, but I submit that you have no clue about his past record of such behavior. One time would just be reason for eye-rolling. At the present time, however, and as I MADE CLEAR in the post you're whining about, it has continued to the point of outright stalking, especially since he finds excuses (often entirely illusory) to attack me out of the blue, when I had not addressed him on the current thread or any other for quite some time. He goes out of his way to frequently fire off a serious personal attack at me, usually quite false (while cowardly not even pinging me) on a regular basis and with no apparent triggering reason. He just has a fixation on me, and enjoys lying about me in a manner that often deprives me of the opportunity to defend myself in a timely manner. If you think that trying to find a way to put a lid on such behavior makes *me* the bad guy here, then just say so, and then I'll know to completely discount your judgment.