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Ethics and fake science

Hwang Woo Suk, the South Korean scientist disgraced over fraudulent research, will go down in history as having contributed to the cloning debate after all. While investigators at Seoul's National University charge Hwang faked his stem cell research, heralded as a breakthrough for therapeutic medicine, the scandal will help realign the balance between science and ethics.

South Korea's top university apologized Wednesday, and the government announced it would audit the public funds spent for Hwang's research. This newfound regard for openness and accountability should be useful the next time a pioneer puts his nation's money and credibility at stake. Scientific journals also are exploring better ways to avoid being duped. Hwang's discredited research showed not only how vulnerable professional publications are to fraud, but the extent governments and popular society defer to academic judgment.

Supporters still believe stem cells hold the promise to rejuvenate diseased tissue, making new treatments possible for everything from Alzheimer's to spinal cord injuries. The Hwang scandal, in that sense, affects timing more than the direction of science itself. It forces humans, who find convenience avoiding the morality of science by conceding its inevitability, to spend a little more time reconciling their beliefs with progress that could redefine life. Hwang likely didn't mean to lay open all that, but by exposing how unprepared government and academia are to negotiate this frontier alone and setting research back years in the process, he showed public sentiment has time to evolve and need not slip away in a lab.

[Last modified January 13, 2006, 01:45:18]