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.
What do you mean "if they were"? You think maybe they were real?
Come on man, you are so emotionally tied to your religion you can't come out and clealry acknowledge haeckel was a total fraud.
This is a sign of cultism.
You are like the guy who sees something with his own eyes and gets asked, "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes" and you believe the object of your affection, not your eyes.
I've seen it before with you.
you are not objective or strong willed. Few on these threads are. If one in the prevo camp goes of and says goofy things that aren't scientific or are scientific just mistaken, the prevos keep quiet. They only will criticize the crevos.
It's weird cult-like behavior.
One of the best examples is the Haeckel" frauds and related to bioenergetic law and how buffoons like itchy man keep defending ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, or people pushing goofball ideas like embryonic tail and the like.
Even a fair and understanable mix-up of natural selection with evolution is never corrected.
I don;t see a quest for truth and knowledge I see a fear and attempt to control thought and belief in the prevos here.
And lets not forget the hubub over leakey breast implants...LOL
And the scare over toxic mold.
Millions changed hands over these bits of nonsense.
I have both corrected and been corrected by "prevos" quite a number of times. your generalization is inaccurate as stated.
"More circle the wgons."
More nonsense from you. Ichneumon said that Haeckel's drawings were wrong.
" It's weird cult-like behavior."
Yes, it is. You should be ashamed.
" you are not objective or strong willed."
And you lack basic honesty.
You think maybe they weren't fakery?
What is "fakery"?
Cut the you know what.
He also spammed huge posts talking about ontogeny recapitulating phyologeny. I can't believe it.
Not only is it being stuck in 19th century ideas and science as this prevo cult here is, it is being stuck in the 19th century ideas in biology that were wrong.
BTTT
IMO, that's a good guess. I saw someone's entire homepage get erased in the past. The owner had some controversial things on it. He never found out why it was erased and it wasn't restored by FR.
I did read. It's hard to refute ad hominem. Is Gish/Wells etc. giving incorrect info, because they are lying? Or just being sloppy or stubborn? Or are they giving basically correct info but are the victims of false witness?
The Talk Origin stuff had a lot of ad hominem and charges filled with ad hominem should not be taken seriously.
I know. It's mostly name-calling.
Demonstrations that someone is serially and incorrigibly repeating false statements are not argumentae ad hominem and at any rate should be taken seriously. It is true that such demonstrations at length leave no doubt that the person is a certifiable untruth-teller, but an inescapable conclusion is that the things the person is saying are untrue. I can't imagine how that is irrelevant.
I guess we'll know the answer if PH never gets an explanation and his homepage isn't restored. I'm assuming FR has periodic backups of homepages.
Internet wayback machines will get you pretty close.
There are some adult folks who defy classification even to order.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1577107/posts?q=1&&page=338#338. You'll note all the creationists jumping all over this person to clean up his act. Then again, no you won't.
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