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.
"A Toyota is better designed than a Buick" is a theological argument?
Not really analogous.
But, still, it is a comment on the designer and the design.
Likewise, in ID the designer is God and the argument that there are mistakes or the design isn't good is a theological argument.
In ID who do you assume the designer is?
Please reread your DI talking points.
If that's the case, then ID theory is unavoidably theological in nature, and one can hardly blame its critics for making it so.
DI == Discovery Institute (the guys who came up with "Intelligent Design").
Shhhhhh!
As long as it is clear that the argument is theological when people say God wouldn't make such a hapohazard design or the like.
Okay. So then the next question is, do such theological discussions really belong in a science class?
Thanks. I didn't get the reference to DI.
Thats being *extremely* charitable.
Dont forget the designer's liberal usage of a whole pile of genetic spare parts from yeast and viruses.
I dunno. At least one pacifist won the MoH in WWII. He was a Seventh Day Adventist who was drafted, and because of his religious views was made an Army medic (so he didn't have to "take up arms"). He still placed his life on the line for his people.
Methinks you are conflating "pacifist" with "coward." The two are not synonymous.
No. Therefore arguments of this sort agaist ID shouldn't be in science class because they are theological.
ID is the claim the design can be detected without any a priori assumptions about the designer.
Its advocates have presented a range of intricately interlocking parts of various organisms to show that they must have been designed by a great intelligence.
I'm doing the opposite, arguing that the RLN is evidence of a stupid designer.
AFAIK, the great majority of IDers assume that God (or Allah) is the designer, but the panspermia enthusiasts, Scientologists, Raelians, et al have a different one in mind
Perfect example. This is a theological argument. You are arguing against intelligent design based upon your idea of what the characteristics of "the designer" should be in your view.
Then why, in post 5 did you say this:
most investigators continue to believe that it will eventually yield revolutionary medical treatments.How can they be sincere if they don't think ESC research will yield these treatments?This, though, isn't true.
And I think there's the "losing one's head in excitement" factor, which makes it all the more tempting to fudge facts.
If ID wedges itself into science class, it and its assumptions will be subjected to empirical analysis and reasoning.
Naturally, arguments in favor of ID shouldn't be in science class either, because they are theological.
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