Spectacular science fraud shakes stem cell field

ap on San Diego Union Tribune ^ | 12/23/05 | Paul Elias and Malcolm Ritter - ap

[ndt]

I bow to you sir.

[razorback-bert]

what ever scientific field you disagree with must be wrong.

Nope, just that science has its' share of frauds and must be held to account.

The amazing Tasaday tribe

The krypton factor

Trofim Lysenko

Charles Redheffer

Jan Henrik Schön

[stacytec]

This is an example of why critical analysis in science is so important. You can never take one study or finding and make extrapolations until the methodology has gone through peer review.

[ndt]

"Nope, just that science has its' share of frauds and must be held to account."

That is what peer review is all about. Speaking of that, does anyone have a link to a description of HOW this came out.

[keithtoo]

Nope. Just means that folks will act in their own self interest to the exclusion of truth and others will go along to hear what they want to hear as long as it reinforces their worldview.

Just like the 'scientists' in the church of evolution.

[danmar]

A disgraced Hwang Woo-suk

They should've known, somebody with that name...

[Mr. Peabody]

public confidence in their work had been weakened by a sham branded by experts as the most visible case of scientific fraud they could recall.

Chernobyl? DDT? Acid Rain?

[TexasTransplant]

Politics, Science and MSM do we really need the unholy alliance?

[TexasTransplant]

Cold Fusion... (I still WANT to believe)

[185JHP]

BTTT

[sarasmom]

EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH

It is obvious, even to laymen, that scientific research in stem cells is viable and potentially another break-though in science and health care.

Adults can provide stem cells for research.
Discarded umbilical cords have promising results. Stem cells are readily available for serious scientific research.

EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH is unethical and junk science.

[BenLurkin]

Maybe it was "fake but accurate".

[Paul_Denton]

Makes me wonder how many other scientific breakthroughs are true or false.

[conservative physics]

they didn't catch it because they wanted to believe it was true the same way they want to believe humans are causing global warming.

[grey_whiskers]

"Jim and Tammy were frauds, just like Paul and Jan."

And does that mean Christianity is a fraud? If not, why not?

Your oppponent did not say that all of science was suspect, but pointed out that there is fraud that goes unchecked (for a time) in science. In other words, the validation mechanisms have been proven to be only partially efficacious. (Think "random walk" vs. "perfect markets" in Wall Street trading and you'll get the idea.)

Jesus Himself predicted the presence of frauds (parable of the wheat and tares); said that there would be people who had performed miracles in His name whom He would disown; and predicted the performance of acts to deceive, if possible, "the very elect".

Similarly a number of the New Testament epistles are replete with warnings of hucksters and frauds attempting to prey on Christians.

So the actual fulfillment of the predictions of Christ and the apostles are supposed to be a refutation of their teachings?

BAH! HUMBUG! :-)

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

That is what peer review is all about. Speaking of that, does anyone have a link to a description of HOW this came out. Then please re-read the article. It details how even peer review failed to catch the fraud until after the fact. And IIRC somewhere in the article, or later in the thread, it says that bloggers caught the guy. Think Dan Rather and Memogate...

"That's a difficult one," said Keith Campbell, the University of Nottingham researcher who helped clone Dolly the sheep in 1997. "Scientists are asked to referee a lot of papers and to a certain extent we have to believe each other as to the validity of the data."

[muawiyah]

No, because this man is a fraud it just goes to show you how far you can get in the business of hyping "embryonic stem cells" because there are so terribly many out there who really want to "believe" this is a legitimate line of research!

As I recall Californians voted to incur billions of dollars of additional debt to finance the quack claims of yet more fraudulent researchers. They did so in response to this Korean researchers claims. Somebody said "Gee, gosh, unless we waste billions too, the Koreans will take over the entire field".

[VOA]

for reference on stem cells that do appear to actually do some good
but just aren't "cool" enough for the media:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/010/24.71.html

Live Patients & Dead Mice
The little-known story of the stem cells that actually work.
by David A. Prentice

[VOA]

Seeing how the scientist are now trying to figure out what ethics mean
in a materialistic world...
an intriguing look into the ethics of the folks in the embryonic stem cell field:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/010/23.66.html

Ethics Interrupted
What does it mean when even embryonic stem-cell researchers have some qualms about their work?
by Christine A. Scheller