Free Republic

... Ariely’s 2012 paper found that people were more honest when they signed a promise to be honest at the beginning of a transaction than when they signed the same promise at the end. ... The only problem is, it’s not true. Other scientists found that his work couldn’t be replicated. And a deep dive into the data Ariely used determined that it couldn’t possibly be correct. Even Ariely agrees that the criticisms are “damning” and “clear beyond doubt.”... Meanwhile, leading names in the field of social psychology turn out to have committed research fraud to an extent that it...

Vox published an interesting story today about the replication crisis in science. If you’re not familiar with this idea, it’s the fact that a significant percentage of all of the peer-reviewed social science that has been published in the past can not be replicated by other scientists, which is a pretty clear sign that the claims made in the original papers aren’t true. How bad is the situation. This bad: In an attempt to test just how rigorous scientific research is, some researchers have undertaken the task of replicating research that’s been published in a whole range of fields. And...

Key stage to dengue fever replication found 15:29 03 August 2006 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi The discovery that the dengue fever virus needs to bend into a circle in order to replicate suggests new ways to treat this and similar diseases, including West Nile virus and encephalitis, say researchers. Future drugs that prevent the virus from forming a ring shape could one day save thousands of lives, they add. “The challenge now is to see if we can design a small molecule to do the job,” says Andrea Gamarnik at the Leloir Institute in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There are...

A microscopic photo released by Seoul National University shows eight of the cloned embryos. SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) --South Korean researchers reported Thursday they have created human embryos through cloning and extracted embryonic stem cells, the universal cells that scientists expect will result in breakthroughs in medical research.Hanyang University professor Hwang Yoon-Young said, "Our research team has successfully culled stem cells from a cloned human embryo through mature growing process in a test tube."The findings by a team of researchers led by Dr. Hwang Woo Suk of Seoul National University were presented to South Korean scientists and will be...

Researchers in South Korea (news - web sites) have become the first to successfully clone a human embryo, and then cull from it master stem cells that many doctors consider key to one day creating customized cures for diabetes, Parkinson's and other diseases. This is not cloning to make babies, but to create medicine. It's sure to revive international controversy over whether to ban all human cloning, as the Bush administration wants, or to allow this "therapeutic cloning" that might eventually let patients grow their own replacement tissue. Embryonic stem cells are the body's building blocks, cells from which all...

Scientists in South Korea are reporting today that they have created the world's first mature, cloned human embryos -- an advance that could speed the development of new therapies but also brings scientists a big step closer to being able to make cloned babies. Each embryo was grown from a cell taken from a woman, a form of reproduction -- or, more precisely, replication -- never before achieved in humans. There was no contribution from a father.