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Panel To Investigate Scientist For Cloning Claims
collegetoad writes "A panel of scientists from the Seoul National University will investigate scientist Hwang Woo-suk on whether he committed fraud in claiming he had developed tailored embryonic stem cells. From the article: 'Hwang also said in a paper published in 2004 in the journal Nature, that he had cloned, for the first time, a human cell to provide a source of embryonic stem cells -- master cells that can provide a source of any type of tissue or cell in the body.'" We've reported on this previously.
Is this the Enron of Biomed research? Do we need better accounting (of data and methods) like Sarbanes-Oxley? Just a thought.
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Hopefully the panel will go out and actually try to reproduce his results rather than having a political debate of whether not it is.
His business ethics are questionable, but if there is some truth to this then they should be able to follow a scientific method in order to prove or disprove the falsification of the findings.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
What worries me most is anything he has said or done which casts doubt on his work or credibility will be ruthlessly employed by the opponents of Stem Cell Research, which will be of no actual good service to anymone except on a dogmatic approach.
And then they will go on to assert that their word is beyond reproach.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Anti-intellectualism is seeing a renaissance, and this will only serve as "evidence" for those who decry science, deny logic, and advocate flim-flam. Despite the fact that I see this as proof that the scientific method works (they've rooted out phony research), those with other agendas will cling to it as proof that "those scientists in their ivory towers" are wrong.
Homeopaths, naturalists, new-age healers, dowsers, reflexologists, chiropractors, feng shui "experts," et all: they use any slip of a scientist to bolster their support from those who don't know better. It saddens me, but such is the nature of the game.
Real scientists need to stand up and denounce frauds loudly and strongly whenever they appear. Too many otherwise learned men stand idly by while charlatans ply their wares to the unsuspecting.
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I can believe that a third-rate paper published in a third-rate journal will not get much scrutiny from other researchers. However, these guys reported major results that many other labs were trying to achieve. What were they thinking?
A few weeks ago I posted a question on slashdot regarding scientists and ethics and was completely chewed out for it. It was NOT meant to be a troll, it was an honest question.
I've had some time to rethink the question and instead of finding answers (via Google as well as talking to scientists via e-mail who read my initial question), I have more questions.
I'm a free market guy -- I truly believe that everyone performs actions that help themselves first (and others, secondly, if they want to continue doing what they do). I believe we take jobs in order to pay our bills, and we do our jobs with the consideration of what will keep us employed, and what will give us bigger financial opportunities in the future. I believe that employers are the customers of employees, and that is how I judge employer-employee relations.
Scientists are starting to scare me. Many scientists find funding through government or taxpayer-funded programs and grants. Are we dealing with the same quality of people who review and allow frivolous patents and lawsuits to be enforced? Will we start seeing more scientists under review for doing what we all do in our jobs -- try and find ways to increase our pay while keeping our work the same (or lower).
In the past there was peer review, but when we involve public funds, I fear what I saw in my consulting business: many consultants bidding on public jobs in a "boat race" -- 5 or 6 state-licensed consultants allowing each other to win a bid in a round robin fashion. I don't do any state jobs because of the collusion I saw in my industries.
When I decry public funding of science, I'm blasted because people say that the free market won't pay for certain research. Now I see a more evil side of it -- and I fear that we'll see more investigations like this if I'm right. What can we do to combat humanity's deep need for self preservation in a scientist having the same human drives, especially when it is funded straight out of our pocket involuntarily?
Why bother investigating?
Anything this guy has ever written should be trashed.
The same could be said about Dr. Josef Mengele who commited far worse atrocities against humanity, but some of the kwoledged gain by his gruesome work is still used today in medical schools albeit as mear reference to the insides of a living being.
One can acheive those kind of things when you are doing live vivisections on human beings.
To throw away knowledge even if it was gained through horrible acts is almost as bad of a sin by trying not to better the world and correct wrongs with that knowledge. Its almost as if you declare those who were damned to this cruel fate, that their suffering and loss means nothing to the living and you are going to throw them away to the trash dump of history without trying to save another human life.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Hopefully the panel will go out and actually try to reproduce his results rather than having a political debate of whether not it is.
... doubt they are going to raise stem cell lines from human tissue in a week...
No. FTA: it would issue its final findings next week
-everphilski-
Are you saying that you want the Legislature to get involved? The most science illiterate group on the planet?! Or, President Bush? Mr. Global Warming isn't fact guy?
Female members of his team also said Hwang coerced them to donate their own eggs for his research.
I can see him now..."Give me your eggs so I can scramble the data and we can all go down in disgrace."
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
When I decry public funding of science, I'm blasted because people say that the free market won't pay for certain research. Now I see a more evil side of it -- and I fear that we'll see more investigations like this if I'm right. What can we do to combat humanity's deep need for self preservation in a scientist having the same human drives, especially when it is funded straight out of our pocket involuntarily?
There can be two sides to this issue.
1. If the research is funded with government money, it can be influenced by politics.
2. If the research is funded with private money, it can be influenced by its investors.
Think of it like a global warming research sponsored by a congressman who is lobbied by an oil company vs a TCO of Windows vs Linux research sponsored by Microsoft.
Both could have potential bias and complications.
Personally, I believe both private and public research can be beneficial. Take DARPA for example. I for one believe DARPA is the shining example of public research gone right. It is backed by public money, but often uses the private sector as a major part of its research. Take the recent Grand Challenge for example.
So I think there is a place for public funding at least to get the ground work. After all, the Manhattan and Apollo Project were publicly funded.
However, if you believe government funded projects are a waste of your tax money, then you can do what I do... Donate to a private non-profit research group that is tax deductible. I realized if I donate enough money to either Wikipedia or the Singularity Institute I could just write off all my taxes next year. Even though I don't get more money than I would have not donating, it means the IRS will have to give me a larger refund, hence putting my money where I want it to go and not where a congressman does.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
First of all, peer review functions in many places besides vetting articles for publication. Indeed, it's much more important in reviewing grant applications and in how and whether your colleagues direct good students and post-docs your way, since while publications are nice, it's successfully attracting research money and recruiting good employees that really counts. This guy is getting that kind of peer review now -- and greatly to his harm. So indeed the system is functioning as designed.
More importantly, if you're saying the system is busted because it must sometimes punish fraud after it's published, instead of preventing its publication entirely -- well, then perhaps something needs to be clarified about the nature of scientific publication. A scientific journal is not a textbook. Stuff published there is current research, not accepted wisdom. It's not meant to be archival quality, things that folks will stake a reputation on. It's meant to be the "bleeding edge" of knowledge, so to speak, the latest and (necessarily) shakiest bit of possible insight. Reasonable people expect much that is published in a journal to turn out to be wrong, or incomplete. They don't ordinarily expect it to be a fraud, but it does happen on occasion, and reasonable people keep that in the back of their minds, too.
In fact, one of the main reasons for scientific publication is to present new ideas and data to the widest possible audience, so that people who don't know, fund, or work for the original researcher have a chance to consider the merits and drawbacks of the idea, test it, challenge it, and prove or disprove it. You might reasonably think of scientific publication as more or less a "debugging" step of a new scientific idea, the process by which you submit some newfangled notion to the rigours of a bunch of "beta testers" (other scientists) who will bang on the idea, make sure it's sound.
You would not, I hope, conclude that because spectacular bugs are sometimes found in software at the "beta" stage this means that the authors were wrong to release it at all. Having a large community of interested expert users cooperate in beta testing your software -- think open-source software -- can speed up the process of producing quality products greatly. That's exactly how scientific publication works.
...my first reaction upon hearing this was a sense of indignation rather than shame. Although my field is physics rather than biology, we have had out own high-profile fraudsters recently. The actions of this clown reflect poorly on all scientists, but, even worse, he has wasted the time and resources of researchers who are trying to build upon his results.
Many people will say that this was a failure of the scientific review system, but the unfortunate truth is that peer review can do very little to defend against malicious scientific fraud. When I review a paper for a journal, I have to assume that the original data is correct and truthful. I don't have access to the author's work samples for testing, and wouldn't have the time or equipment to perform the appropriate experiments even if I did. A reviewer may question data that looks unusual (e.g. great signal-to-noise or an odd feature in a time-varying signal), but otherwise the data itself will likely go unchallenged.
A reviewer's job is largely to ensure that there is sufficient data to support the conclusions that are drawn and that the methodology used to derive the underlying data is sound. They also weed out the whackos who think they have a warp drive design or perpetual motion machine, but that's less common.
They are more devolped then embryonic, which is a good and bad thing (they can't become anything at this point, but that is partially good as embryonic cells can easily become tumors). They have proven useful in blood and marrow operations, and have started to show promise in other areas.1 7575710440.htm
Linky:
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200411/kt20041126
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
I'm a biologist working at a university currently as a postdoc. I don't work on stem cells directly, but have an interest in many topics in biomedical research. This situation went down exactly as it should have -- a fradulent scientist was methodically investigated and censured (officially and unofficially). Scientific fraud (and more often, inaccuracy) are generally fished out and prosecuted by the greater scientific community. There is a vested interest for all scientists to maintain the integrity of research in their labs as well as other labs -- much of biology research is interdependent and self-correcting. The main reason why this is elevated to "scandal" level is because of the topic -- stem cells. This man has done great harm to the stem cell field, which is struggling to gain acceptance in this increasingly anti-scientific culture. Some of the comments here have highlighted this alarming trend. It frightens me when people start claiming that scientists need more policing from the outside (re: dada21's post). Although external review is critical for government organization, science is a decentralized, distributed organism dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. As scientists we attempt to conduct our research and lead our lives, but we also strive to educate the general public (and indeed are excited when the public takes interest in our work). It's not "many" scientists that are publicly funded, it's MOST scientists. There are very valid reasons for that, and yet this year NIH has seen a cut in funding unheard of since the 70s. Please consider this next time you think about DNA testing, the quality of the food you eat, your health care, and something as simple as taking an aspirin. Please don't be deluled into thinking of science and scientists as scary. It attack on science is truly what is frightening.
I don't think so. Let me tell you from 15 years of publishing in scientific journals, and reviewing the proposed publications of others, that there is no clear and sharp division between an "honest" mistake and a mistake into which you are led by bias, preconceived notions, or your personal feelings for another scientist whose work you are challenging or confirming. Scientists are human beings as much as the next person. Very few will deliberately and with malice aforethought falsify data. But plenty will talk themselves into believing that a certain dubious "correction" of the data makes sense.
It's a lot like high-school chemistry lab, in which (if you were decently smart), you knew what the results of the lab should be. Does that affect the way in which you write down the data? You bet. You do the experiment once, and you get a result you "know" is crazy. So you say: "That can't be right, something must have gone wrong..." and you do it again. If you get the result you expect, then you tend to just write it down uncritically.
Just expand that typical human behaviour to much more complex experiments, and you'll see what I mean. Grown-up scientists do an experiment, and they get a result that "can't be right," so they do it again until they get a result that "seems right," or they talk themselves into some kind of data analysis that "corrects" the raw data. Have a look here (warning: PDF link) for an interesting discussion of the case or Robert Millikan, who "framed a guilty man", in the phrase made immortal by the LAPD, by falsely presenting experiments that led to a correct scientific conclusion.
The long and short of it is that the question of the "honesty" of the author of a publication is very much a gray area, and anyone who seriously just assumes that all the data from an experiment have been presented, and all the data analysis has been done in completely neutral way, without any influence of preconceived notions, is a fool. You must assume that the personal predispositions of the scientist doing the work had some influence on the experimental data reported. This isn't meant to be pejorative -- I'm not saying you assume other scientists are routinely dishonest. You just assume they're human, and may have fooled themselves or have a bit of an agenda when they present their data, and you take that into account. Healthy skepticism is the order of the day. That's why we like to see even experiments that seem completely unexceptional and from scientists of unimpeachable reputations repeated several times by a broad range of other workers before we accept them.
I certainly agree deliberate fraud is way out of any "gray area" about the motivations of the scientist submitting articles for publication. (And that's why the punishment for doing so is far, far harsher than for simply making an "honest" mistake, or even a mistake into which you are led by bias or incompetence.) But there is no way one can, or should, draw a sharp line between completely unconscious error and semi-conscious half-deliberate fudge, and it would be a great error for anyone to blindly assume that the data in any scientific publication is beyond question.