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.
Well, one of is ignoring 150+ years of scientific research in dozens of disciplines in favor of a Bronze Age document.
PH,
I love you man, but your catalog only includes demonstrated
frauds. Huge presuppositions aren't cataloged. Unspoken assumptions are not delineated. Any time I point these out in a posted article, I always get the same response (though not from you). It is far from objective.
best,
ampu
(for the record, I believe in creation - though not a young earth).
Apparently they still haven't restored PH's website for some reason, but someone found it all on an archive and posted it earlier.
Here's the link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050328085419/http://www.freerepublic.com/~patrickhenry/
If the claim were made that communication must have been by email because telephones don't exist or are extremely rare the finding that there actually are a lot of telephones would negate your idea.
And, I was drawing no conclusions. In fact the opposite. I was stating that the conclusions drawn were based on a lack of information. Just like thinking there aren't any telephones when there are in fact plenty.
To reiterate. Genomic science is fascinating and is finding a lot of unexpected things and will continue to do so. Previous pat simplistic arguments (as set forth for example in the tracts at t.o.) are not relevant. And, this has nothing to do with evolution being true or false.
Generally the organization that funded the dig. However, casts, photographs and inventory of not just the fossils but the dig are always available to others for inspection and if I understand the scientists I've spoken to correctly it is quite possible to get permission to examine the originals as long as you have valid credentials/associations.
When I was in grad school the bone lab had most of the major fossils as casts. We went through them a lot, both in evolution and osteology classes, and even one class in primates.
The professor was able to examine some of the originals, by appointment of course. From my understanding, the casts today are extremely accurate, with missing pieces very well identified.
Many of these are available from http://boneclones.com/, but there are a variety of other sources.
It's amazing stuff. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Actually the first plants were not grasses, but algae a bit earlier than about 425mya. Grasses came much later, around the time of T-Rex or a bit earlier (71 - 65mya). Up until recently it was thought grass did not arrive until the Eocene (54 - 37mya).
Interactions with tallhappy go like this. You post something. He contradicts you, usually without any substantive argument, and say you don't know anything about the subject. You point out that in fact the overseers of a not-completely unknown institution thought you knew enough to grant you a Ph.D. in the subject. You ask, in turn, what his credentials are. Chirp chirp chirp. You post a great deal of data rebutting his naysaying. Chirp chirp chirp. Then he goes off on another thread, smears you, and (of course) proves your already low opinion of you by not being Mensch enough to ping you to his libel.
And probably pretty hard to train to stay away from the neighbour's bamboo.
Belleview?
"Worse?" If we hadn't a clue how eukaryotes arose, wouldn't that have been better for your side? After all, you guys cheer for the gaps in our knowledge, hope to tear down what we do know, and cite decades-dead authorities to prove long-filled gaps are still empty.
Shocking, eh?
You'd think with the time you spent there, you'd have learned how to spell it. Of course, the haldol does make things a bit fuzzy.
It doesn't take long to realize there's no there there in a tallhappy discussion.
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