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Policy

Baffling, Infuriating, And Sad

by Rudy Baum, Editor-in-chief
January 9, 2006 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 84, Issue 2

Every case of scientific misconduct is baffling and infuriating. Many are also terribly sad. If, as seems increasingly likely, South Korean stem cell researcher Woo Suk Hwang's landmark 2005 paper in Science on creating human embryonic stem cell lines is fraudulent, all three adjectives apply.

Misconduct, especially outright fraud, is baffling. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Hwang-like every other scientist who ever committed fraud-must have known that he would eventually be caught. A fraudulent paper may well get published if the scientist is clever enough because the scientific publishing process is based on scientific honesty. But the nature of science ensures that the fraud will be discovered.

During a television report on the Hwang situation that I watched over the holidays, Science Editor Donald Kennedy patiently explained that peer review's purpose is to ensure that the conclusions reached in a paper are supported by the experiments conducted and the data reported in the paper. Peer reviewers presume the good faith of the paper's authors.

It is the self-correcting nature of science, not peer review, that ensures cheaters will be caught-particularly cheaters who report dramatic breakthroughs, which was certainly true of Hwang. If he and his coworkers had done what he claimed they had done-developed a straightforward method for producing patient-specific stem cell lines-surely he would have been a strong candidate for a Nobel Prize. Work of that significance begs to be reproduced; indeed, it must be reproduced to be useful. When a report such as Hwang's is published, top-flight labs around the world rush to repeat the experiment.

Of course, that's not how Hwang was found out. Other scientists, many of them in South Korea, noticed troubling aspects of the paper itself, which led to an investigation by Seoul National University. Over a period of a few weeks, the entire edifice of Hwang's research collapsed under the weight of this scrutiny. My point, however, is that Hwang's deception would have been discovered eventually by scientists attempting to repeat the work. What was Hwang thinking?

All of Hwang's work is now in question. By all accounts, Hwang's research team was first-rate. Visiting scientists from around the world were uniformly impressed with the South Korean stem cell research efforts. An earlier paper in Science on creating stem cell lines from a cloned embryo and the claim that a dog was cloned also are now being investigated by Seoul National University.

Misconduct is infuriating because of the damage it does to science. Cheating is not new in science, but it shocks nevertheless. People expect politicians to be rogues. Businessmen's pursuit of profits not infrequently leads them to cut ethical or legal corners. The public does not have a high opinion of lawyers.

By contrast, scientists are presumably truth seekers, and they are held to a higher standard than members of other professions. Scientific misconduct suggests that scientists are as venal and self-promotional as any other professionals. Some sociologists of science would argue that they are; perhaps I am naive, but I do not agree. The vast majority of scientists are, in fact, truth seekers, and while they desire recognition as much as anyone, they desire it for genuine accomplishment.

Outright fraud is particularly infuriating because it undermines fundamental public trust in science. Science continuing to receive the support of the public-which often does not really understand what science is and how it operates and does not understand at a basic level the substance of many modern scientific discoveries-requires a level of trust that misconduct such as Hwang's severely erodes.

Hwang's fall from grace is, at least for me, also profoundly sad. I am sure some will say that he is getting what he deserves. Others, who oppose human embryonic stem cell research on moral grounds, will attempt to exploit Hwang's downfall in their cause. I see an enormously promising career in tatters; I see a man who, I am quite certain, is a gifted scientist with intelligence and talent that could and should benefit humanity but who is no longer able to do science. That's a shame.

Thanks for reading.

The research described in this article has since been called into question. See C&EN's further coverage at http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/84/i03/8403stemcell.html.

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