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Science is inherently self correcting. The universe functions as it does. If I announce a discovery to make rocks fall up, or that I can create cold fusion reactions, I eventually need to publish how I did it. Since these would be important findings (and why fake a result that is not important?), other scientists will jump in to extend or disprove my findings. They will first try to do what I did, but the rocks will not fall up, because that is not what rocks do. Word will get around at scientific meetings that nobody can replicate my results using my methods, and the journal that published me will be notified. I will be investigated, and fired, or at least my reputation will be besmirched, and no results from my lab will have credibilty to anyone any more. Hwang Woo-Suk had to know this. He clearly has mental problems, or need for immediate fame and gratification, or the idea that he could publish now and find the methods to back it up later. Or found an error in his reports, and desparately kept covering up with more lies. This happens to politicians too, but it is not inevitable that they will be exposed, as it is in science. In any case, as must happen, he was exposed. The system has worked, we can look at the case and think of ways to tighten up, but the defense is not against someone who will fool the world forever, but someone who has needs or warpage enough to lie when he knows he must be exposed and discredited eventually. We do not need to mess with the system of peer reviewed publication, or investigator guided research programs. Mistakes happen, and occsionally lies are told, but they self correct. A commercial industry that lies about what it can do will evenutally have to put up or shut up. The ethical breach of using employees eggs is serious, and not necessarily self correcting, although it did get exposed in this case. Had the science worked, he might well have gotten away with that if no one blew a whistle. Some controls and oversight on procurement, or an audit path of where important tissues and cell lines came from, may be in order, especially at the frontier and high pressure labs in science. Cordially, Charles W. Scouten, Ph.D. myNeuroLab.com 5918 Evergreen Blvd. St. Louis, MO 63134 Ph: 314 522 0300 x 342 FAX 314 522 0377 [log in to unmask] http://www.myneurolab.com -----Original Message----- From: Parkinson's Information Exchange Network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bernard Barber Ph.D. Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2005 3:24 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: FW: Stem cells -------------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial: Phony cloner Why Korea stem cell fraud matters here Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, December 29, 2005 Story appeared in Editorials section, Page B6 Can California's $3 billion stem cell institute learn something from the misdeeds of South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk? It can, but only if leaders of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine take the time to publicly grapple with this scandal. So far, they have acted as if Hwang is a distant aberration whose fabrications don't affect them. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a column on the opposite page notes, Hwang was once the world's master "cloner" in creating lines of embryonic stem cells. Last Friday, he admitted faking key parts of his research and resigned from Seoul National University. Hwang's methods first came under scrutiny when some of his colleagues accused him of buying human eggs from his underlings, a breach of ethical protocol. Now investigators are examining if Hwang broke other rules and faked other studies. While California's institute can do only so much to combat scientific fraud - the responsibility lies largely in the hands of peer-reviewed journals - it can set standards for obtaining eggs and other biological material, and ensure those rules are enforced. The institute's medical standards working group is now preparing such regulations. Yet at their last meeting, on Dec. 1, the committee's members went out of their way to avoid any discussion of Hwang's mounting troubles. Why is Hwang relevant? Because up until this month, he led the world's top lab in this field, and he supposedly had rigid standards in place. Now, as we have learned, Hwang created a Potemkin Village of ethical standards - a façade that he could display at colloquia that was as thin as a sheet of cardboard. How did Hwang create that façade? How was he able to exploit it? What institutional safeguards were missing that might have exposed Hwang's fraud earlier? While the answers are still murky, the California institute needs to at least start asking the questions - assuming it wants to avoid a similar scandal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn