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.
Philosopher stones are real; they are called nuclear reactors.
My point exactly.
I understand you are saying it doesn't have to be theological if the designer is not God, but the focus on the designer is the same. It isn't biology anymore but cosmology or theology or designerology -- whataver you want to call it. It is talking about your ideas on what a good designer would do.
Well it has to be.
ID is a "theological" theory.
Another of my favorites is Behe's admission that the designer might be dead.
You guys really sure you want this in science class?
I read this as meaning most biologists or stem cell researchers -- I did not read it as most investigators specifically doing embryonic stem cell work.
One is the *serves no KNOWN purpose* which is the point I was getting at earlier.
Two is this: the design doesn't appear very logical, but that it's easily explained in evo terms.
Do you realize how that came out sounding? It sounds like you're implying that evolution is very illogical, that it makes no sense. Now of course it would be in a way because there is believed to be no guiding force behind it and natural selection isn't intelligent. But if you get stuck saying it's illogical, then it's going to be much harder to defend.
You follow Behe closely. You must think highly of him.
If the claim is simply that "design can be detected", then no, they aren't theological.
The argument that ID is vacuous, and therefore isn't science, is not in the least theological
True enough. You do make a good argument that ID is scientific.
If the design inference has any relevance at all it has to make some assumptions about the motives, methods and goals of the designer.
I realize that the official Wedge position denies this, but without characterizing the designer, the concept is vacuous.
One of those concepts that is not simply wrong, but worthless. It doesn't inspire any research because it doesn't predict or rule out anything.
Peace is a goal for which all men should be striving. Pacifists are simply people who love peace. Some do so for noble reasons and some for baser reasons; in this it is no different than any other article of faith. I find it rather revolting of you to denigrate an entire group of people simply because you confused two concepts.
Yeah, I think so.
One of those concepts that is not simply wrong, but worthless. It doesn't inspire any research because it doesn't predict or rule out anything.
I don't disagree. I'm sure we do disagree that evolution has some of these same properties. That's not to equate the two, but evolution is so broad as to also not be able to predict or rule out anything either.
Then we should ask if they are able to substantiate their claims. It's all well and good to posit a theory that the reproduction of mammals is enhanced by the application of generous helpings of potassium cyanide, and such a theory is even scientific in nature by virtue of its testability and falsifiability. But even before falsifying such a theory, why should we present it in zoology classes, particularly in the absence of any affirmative evidence supporting it?
Perhaps you should follow him more closely yourself.
Then you might realize what nonsense ID is.
You must think highly of him.
You must think highly of Hillary.
Remember the human-chimp-gorilla ERVs? or the Precambrian rabbit?
ID doesn't rule these out, even thought they've never been detected.
To advance to the level of theory, it has to account for all the evidence that the ToE does, and then some.
Not true at all. Granted, it can't predict the futher, any more than meteriology can predict the weather much in advance. The lack of specific precictive ability does not imply lack of natural causes.
Where did I ever indicate otherwise?
Do you think ID is nonsense?
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