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.

[Tribune7]

I stand corrected.

[Tribune7]

I stand corrected.

[Tribune7]

I stand corrected.

[Mamzelle]

It was Whang Suk's peer reviewed works of "genius" that has $3Billion dollars allocated in California.

[Tribune7]

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.

For the record, are you defending Haeckel and do you believe his drawings to be reasonably accurate?

[js1138]

For the record, I've asked a dozen times for someone to point out the specific inaccuracies in the drawings and point out how the inaccuracies discredit common descent.

I have photographs I can post if you distrust drawings.

[RightWhale]

Hwang's papers had many co-authors

The scandal at Bell Labs brought out some things about this point. Many of the co-authors are on the list because they are the boss or manager of the labs and may know next to nothing about the subject of the paper, their names appearing as a courtesy. Others are there because they participated in some insignificant detail of the experiments such as making the glassware. Since I figured this out, I have co-authored no papers at all; before that I did appear on a few, but in those days I also bought a lottery ticket now and then.

[Mamzelle]

Oh, he just feels free to make hugely general, essay-assignment commands to freepers, as if he's some kind of pasha. Bossy fellow.

I saw that embryonic chart, myself, in early schooling--the teacher really said that because of superficial appearance in embryonic development to other species, that proved our descent. Later on, I studied real embryology and came to understand how laughably impossible that was. The embryo developes like folding a paper crane, and we're not descended from cranes.

[jennyp]

Yup. Science is really full of revolutionaries. There's nothing quite so invigorating, and good for the career, as demonstrating that some famous old coot was wrong. The cranks, however, with their whack-job "theories," are forever claiming that there's some "orthodox conspiracy" that won't let their wonderful new ideas get a fair hearing.

For a very inspiring (IMO) break from the usual debate, check out this video lecture by Dr. Judah Folkman, the father of the anti-angiogenesis approach to fighting cancer. (His talk starts about 13:50 into the file.)

He mentions how all during the '70s there were only 3 papers on the subject: The two initial papers from his group, and one scathing critique of the idea by someone else. But his attitude was quite positive: It meant that his group could work in a field with no competition for a whole decade. LOL!

His response to the widespread skepticism of his theory was to do hundreds of experiments. (Obviously this tedious approach was a big waste of time. He should have taken his case to high school biology classes instead. :-)

He then goes into detail about the VERY exciting developments on this front. Just a fascinating lecture all around, plus he's a delightful speaker.

[omega4412]

It was Whang Suk's peer reviewed works of "genius" that has $3Billion dollars allocated in California.

Peer review catches some of the garbage but independent replication of experiments in other laboratories is the ultimate test. How the fraud is detected depends on how clever the perpetrator of the fraud is.

Peer review tends to check for internal consistency, consistency with the rest of the literature, misuse of statistics, misleading manipulation of images...

[Tribune7]

Haeckel's drawings. Note the fish is on the far left.

A photo of the embryolic development of a fish from Miller (as in uber evo Ken Miller) and Levine's revised textook in which they attempt to account for Haeckel's falsehood appearing in previous editions.

Haeckel lied. It was known he lied for over a century. Yet textbooks continued to publish his lie as fact for well over a century. (Some might still be doing it, although there is no debate from anyone that they should not be.)

point out how the inaccuracies discredit common descent.

If a textbook author publishes as fact information long (and easily) discredited, one wonders as to motive.

[King Prout]

from what I understand about artificial diamonds, the problem is not the cost of manufacture, but the taste of the consumers and resistance from the extant diamond economy, which prevents man-made diamonds from sitting on the fingers of women and bling-addicts.

iirc, there are three factors in this
1. just as there was an initial snobbish dismissal of "cultured" pearls, there is now a snobbish dismissal of artificial diamonds - as if naturally produced rocks are in some way better than man-made ones. This is emotional bias.
2. most synthetic diamonds can be identified as synthetic under alternative light source (I forget the freq.), as they will fluoresce. iirc, some russians are working on a fix for this. last I heard, they had succeeded... and De Beers et alia were NOT pleased.

in other applications - synthetic diamonds of industrial grade are far less expensive to produce than are comparable deposits to mine. however, Boron Nitride in the same adamantine molecular configuration is as cheap and more durable than carbon, so...

[Mamzelle]

Fraud's "outing" was not "how it's supposed to work" --this thread's title is nothing but self-promoting spin

[Tribune7]

Oh, he just feels free to make hugely general, essay-assignment commands to freepers,

Sometimes I oblige :-)

Anyway, when one continually demands details, it can be pretty certain that one has lost the debate.

[King Prout]

addendum:

3. De Beers et alia do what they can to prevent artificial diamonds from gaining a place in the market. And that ain't no small consideration.

[Mamzelle]

Yes, but sometimes politics and emotion and human frailty takes over. Probably more often than we know, since we know how much a scientist prizes his prestige.

This fraud was outed by a Korean pajamahadeen, not the precious system.

[PatrickHenry]

He should have taken his case to high school biology classes instead.

Yes. It's always best to let the children decide.
</creationism mode>

[js1138]

So if the drawings are false, the photographs shouldn't present any problem, right?

[Mamzelle]

Gerald Schatten and the $16 million-dollar grant

[Popman]

So, when are they finally going to come around and admit that the same kind of junk science and fakery is also happening in the "science" of global warming?

Now, now, let's not be so blunt as to destroy the liberals only hope of trying to make capitalism the global warming bogeyman it is so desperately trying to make it look like.

I saw a DU post the other day that linked the PH ping list. So they are lurking. We have enough trolls around here on a weekly basis.