Friday, December 16, 2005

Say it ain't so, Joe

It looks like another scientific hoax and medical journal scandal has surfaced with the claim by Roh Sung Il, a co-author of the acclaimed paper on the cloning of human embryos to make stem cells that appeared in Science last year, that the results were faked by the lead scientist, Hwang Woo Suk. This comes on the heels of the report last week of scientists' dropping test results from a study of Vioxx.

What is bizarre about this latest scandal is that Mr. Roh is the second co-author of the Science paper to say the reported results are questionable. Dr. Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh wants his name removed from the article. Why didn't these co-authors question the results before the paper was published? Why did they allow their names to be used if they hadn't checked the results?

Perhaps Hwang is a charlatan. But what would you call Roh and Schatten?

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