TinyBubbles said on December 28, 2005 14:34:

No time to reply, hello, goodbye, I’M LATE I ’M LATE I’M LATE!!!!

ncurran said on December 28, 2005 16:15:

having lived in south korea for 2 yrs this doesnt surprise me at all

ncurran said on December 28, 2005 17:16:

Its just a very corrupt country in general, including public/governmental institutions. It is also overly patriotic and it wouldnt surprise me if they fabricated things like this just to put south korea ahead in the field of research.

Rich-UK said on December 28, 2005 22:06:

I’m honest :-)

kachina008 said on December 29, 2005 11:19:

Richie: good on ya!! :D

Spooks: well this guy was sposedly doing the kind of research that yes, but with a difference. Frankly I myself don’t really know the debate, never cared much for politics, but what I do know is the big issue is the extraction of stem cells from embryos. But this guy side stepped the issue by putting the nuclei of the patients’ cells into totally unrelated egg cells, and he could extract patient specific stem cells from this. That’s why it was top news.

ally77 said on December 29, 2005 15:42:

An update today on it....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4566154.stm

My friend says she is an honest science person!

kachina008 said on December 30, 2005 10:41:

spooky why?

roxtexanet said on December 30, 2005 20:10:

I’m a researcher (cognitive psychology, for anyone who cares!) and I think the thing that really struck me here is that there is really very little to stop scientists from engaging in fraudulent practices (aside from their personal ethics and their responsibility to the public). Our whole professional lives depend on publishing interesting findings in order to secure research grants... it’s very difficult to get funding when your research doesn’t yield “positive” results. Nobody wants to hear about the factors that DON’T lead to better memory or more efficient division of attention. Failing to publish can mean losing your job if you work in an academic setting. Nevertheless, there is NO excuse for a scientist to cheat like this... I’d rather have a failed research programme than compromise my own integrity and cheat the public that funds my research with faked data. Very sad.

roxtexanet said on December 30, 2005 20:40:

@kachina: It’s true, there’s so much stuff that goes on... it’s always amazing to me when people eventually DO get caught, it’s easy enough to say “No, my data are private... if you can’t replicate my finding, you must be doing something wrong.” It certainly makes me wonder how many people out there with great tenured positions have gotten as far as they have on faked results... )-: I’ve heard of people getting their names tacked onto publications even though they haven’t contributed a thing, by mutual agreement (“I’ll put you on my paper if you put me on yours”) which is really awful, and makes it hard for the honest people to compete. Scary thought! I have to say, though, that most people I know are honest and would never dream of doing anything like that, but there will always be a few...

What kind of research do you do?

roxtexanet said on December 30, 2005 21:49:

@Kachina: You’re absolutely right... I’m an independent researcher now and I’ve been lucky in my career to never have had to work with skeezy people like the one you describe. But I can only imagine what I would have done if my supervisor - who I trusted implicitly - had told me to “massage” the data. I mean, we all use tricks to make our data look better than they really are - present the good stuff, downplay the inconsistent findings, adjust the y-axis on your graphs to make the effects look bigger, etc. but that’s a far cry from making something up. And, as scientists who do these things, we know to look for them in the work of others and interpret it accordingly. If I see a researcher who has made all of his or her claims based on only one dependent variable when several have been measured, I should be able to see the other data upon request, and the researcher should be able to justify why s/he isn’t showing it. But your point is taken... when you’re a grad student and your supervisor holds all the power, how do you say “no” when you’re asked to do something you’re pretty sure is unethical (or fraudulent!)?... I’d hate to be in that position. Of course I’d like to say that I’d never succumb to doing something fraudulent under those circumstances, but that’s easy to say when you’re sitting on this side of the fence...

Our graduate programme now includes a mandatory ethics course for students in experimental psychology... maybe part of this course should include what to do in a situation like this. Tricky stuff!!

Santi said on January 3, 2006 00:01:

Wow, this is really shocking, I didn’t know a thing until now :|
But I agree with you, for scientists it means a lot to publish stuff, and it must sound like a breakthru. I’m not really into molecular biology or so, but on environmental science. In this field it looks like the scariest results you get, the better. Everyone knows that, but if we don’t frighten the population and they ask their politicians to invest on this kind of research, what would we be doing? We need a big climate change (it’s funny how most people simply ignores that climate is a changing thing because is an average of weather or that for example 9000 years ago it was way hotter than now :D) and very scary stuff :P
Ever heard of the “hockey-stick” controversy?