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S. Korea Cloning Success Faked?
minus_273 writes "The BBC is reporting that it appears that the human cloning in Korea might have been faked." From the article: "At least nine of 11 stem cell colonies used in a landmark research paper by Dr Hwang Woo-suk were faked, said Roh Sung-il, who collaborated on the paper. Dr Hwang has agreed to ask the US journal Science to withdraw his paper on stem cell cloning, Mr Roh said ... Last month, Dr Hwang resigned from his main post as head of the World Stem Cell Hub, after it emerged that some of the eggs used in his research were donated by his staff - in contravention of international guidelines. Now it is some of the research itself which is being called into question."
The cloning has not been proven 'fake' yet. I think it is only some of the 'morality' of the experiment that could be called into question so far.
Personally I see no real moral problems with stem cell research, but then I am a complete amoral bastard.
It's only on Slashdot that you see "S. Korea Cloning Success Faked" as the headline instead of, "S. Korea Cloning Success Possibly Faked".
They're going to go and redo all the experiments. All the stem-cell researchers want this, they don't want idiotic media speculation deciding the outcome.
The BBC's Charles Scanlon in Seoul says the revelations have sparked a furious debate in the South Korean media.
Leading companies have pulled their advertisements from the television station that first revealed the reported problems with Dr Hwang's work.
Many commentators said it was unpatriotic to challenge someone who had given the country a lead in such a promising new area.
That is just scary. It is sad that a whistleblower, an advocate of truth, can be branded as "unpatriotic" for exposing a fraud. Once again nationalism and patriotism have overwealmed logic and common sense.
"Even if the paper was not faked, criticism will come from all sides, with questions ranging from the ethical standards/morality of scientists to the usefulness of the peer review process."
Why is this a bad thing?
Asking questions and challenging the status quo are the very foundations of science.
And if those ethical questions come up, why is that a problem? Or do you think ethical concerns should be swept under the rug?
Re: the peer review process, this is exactly what peer review is intended to do. Under peer review, the study results are not holding up. This is just an example of peer review working exactly as it should.
The problem, IMO, is that too many people take as truth that which hasn't been confirmed.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
yes, it is bad and discouraging it isn't exactly an onerous condition. the whole point is to avoid situations where pressure might be brought to bear on people who don't have a lot of power to refuse, regardless of whether there was coercion in any particular case. and you have to treat ethical lapses seriously, or else people get the idea that they don't matter if they don't do any "real" harm. the PI is responsible for making sure everyone understands the rules and plays by them.
in medical research it's of paramount importance to dot all the i's and cross all the t's and work methodically. even then there are lapses, but they are often easier to identify. plenty of really horrifying and morally repugnant things have occured in research history to warrant such hard-assed-ness.
You are not a stem cell researcher, or else you would know that stem cell research is not banned. You need to get your multibillion dollar corporation to pony up some cash instead of sucking on the Federal tit.
But hey, anything to get your troll modded up, huh?
As I understand it, it's mainly that the subordinates donated the eggs. Even if all involved agree that he discouraged them from doing so (overtly, anyway), there's still a sense of "we need eggs -- hey, you have eggs!"
It's like rules about conflicts of interest. An individual may be perfectly able to set aside his emotional or financial stake and make city zoning decisions that affect his own property, or preside as judge over the trial of someone who used to beat him up in the elementary school playground. But when that happens, it's all too easy for someone else to claim bias, so guidelines are in place to keep people out of those situations.
The rationale behind the staff-donor ban is that there's a potential opportunity for abuse; research heads forcing their interns and grad students to submit to tests. Ask a grad, you can imagine what professors would have them doing if there weren't these types of restrictions. One of my physics professors in college told a story of how he was sent into the center of a Gaussian surface experiment to investigate a "spark"!
Plus, egg donation is a painful procedure from what I understand.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I do agree that it isn't the "attempt to generate human cloning" isn't at issue here (there is an issue but that is another /. post for another day). The issue is simply this: To find a readily available source of material, did he asked his subordinates to provide the material? How much of this is "asked" vs "ordered" vs "threat" vs "we do this or fail" we may never find out. Considering if you are a research assistent working on your Ph.D under him and he approached you for tissue. If you say "yes" then the research goes on, your doctorate based upon helping write up the research, and a glowing letter of recommendation. If you turn him down, not only is there a risk the project could be a wash (weak research to write a paper on) but he may flunk you/not write a letter of recommendation/etc. By crossing the line and asking to experiment on his subordinates, he has put his subordinates in a seriously comprised position and possibly tainted the observed results which we may now find out to be fabricated.
The complaint is about a leader using their power to abuse their subordinates which is highly unethical in *any field*.
That is the problem. Who knows. The data is now pretty much useless. The results experiment will have to be done all over again with strict controls. All the time, money, and effort was wasted.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
One thing to point out is that scientific fraud at this level of the scientific game, while not unprecedented, is quire rare. And a big part of this is simply due to the fact that anything truly important is worth replicating and extending, and a result that was faked is often impossible to replicate because it is the wrong result. I like to think that scientists are more honest than average, but surely to some extent it is the fear and shame of being caught doing this that keeps them more honest than that.
So I was trying to think of frauds that even come close to competing with the high profile that this case could assume, and it hasn't been easy. The Piltdown Hoax was very different in spirit. The faking of data in the report of element 118 might be close, but the original report got nothing like press attention that the Korean cloning breakthrough did. Can anybody else think of anything that really would compete?
Babar
Good questions, but maybe the fact they'd even be asked sheds some light on the (possible) answers?
An AP article, Allegations of fake research hit new high, circulated this summer detailing the misconduct of Dr. Andrew Friedman (and attributing it to stress). In late October, Luk Van Parijs was fired over research fraud. More doubts raised on fired MIT professor:
So it would seem that these individuals start out with "mild" cheating -- rationalizing, perhaps, that it saves time without any "real" harm to the research. Getting away with that would then make subsequent cheating more attractive and more easily rationalized. Maybe it is the "inability to handle that pressure [to publish]" that precipitates the actual misconduct, but I suspect the dishonesty is there from the start, including the self-deception that it isn't significant or that he won't be caught.
I don't know if that applies to Dr. Hwang, but I think greater scrutiny is in order all around. As faking research, even minor details, is itself irrational, that the perceived benefit would be irrational shouldn't suffice to dismiss the allegations (assuming there is some basis for the allegations). But accepting the "common defense" cited above would be an example of doing just that.
The cornerstone of ethical research concerning human subjects research is "free and informed consent". A subordinate agreeing to participate is not "free" consent (for the reasons mentioned in the earlier posts). These guidelines are part of a worldwide norm for human subjects research (so that a rich company cannot just go to Africa and pay people to be subjects) and every researcher is expected to know them. It really is shameful that such high profile research was carried out by violating these basic safeguards.
If you're talking about theft of intellectual property, people everywhere are guilty of that, not just those in Asia. Just look at the popularity of technologies like BitTorrent, where some people "liberate" content. Furthermore, isn't the free flow of ideas something that /.-ers generally prefer to see? Technical innovation can consist of both inspiration and perspiration. Developing technology isn't strictly a pure brute-force process, I'd guess that clever researchers in all parts of the world have been able to advance science and technology.
Technology-wise, many of these Japanese and Taiwanese firms that you're bashing have pushed the technological boundaries farther than their Western compatriots. As another poster mentioned, much of the laptop designs these days are done in Taiwan. While you might bash their work as being cookie-cutter, the engineers there had to be be creative in order to create things that could be easily mass-produced. That takes a certain type of engineering brilliancel, wouldn't you say? If you're talking purely stylistic things, like the industrial design used by the iPod, that's pretty subjective - what works for some people don't necessarily work for everyone. However, there are high end design firms in East Asia as well. Witness some of the high end electronics vendors, particularly the Japanese. A lot of their gadgets, while possibly not "useful", are pretty creative, right?
I'm also assuming that you haven't watched East Asian movies? I'd say that the choreography of many martial arts movies are pretty creative, much more than some of the recent Hollywood flicks that have come out. And then there's anime. While not to the taste of some viewers, on the whole I'd say that they're much more creative, in many respects, than Western cartoons.
In any case, copyright is a Western legal idea that has some mixed blessings, as some of our /. compatriots can attest to. Copyright can be used to protect ideas, as well as to stifle creativity. It all depends on the legal structures that enforce copyright, the legislative bodies that codify the laws, and the judicial processes used to enforce them. A lot of the more "loosely" enforced nations seem to have higher growth rates, oddly enough.