Scientific ethics

This morning, it was reported that the South Korean scientist, hailed for successfully cloning human stem cells only to be disgraced as a fraud, was indicted "on charges of fraud, embezzlement and bioethics violations in a scandal over faked stem cell research." Five members of his lab were indicted on lesser charges. This is very important. I don't know what the precedent is, but I don't recall a case where a scientist has been legally charged with fraud, at least not in the US - I'm not sure about other countries, as this case is (if someone can come up with one, please let me know). But this case was huge. The claims made in the article were huge, thus being proved fraudulent was enormous.

The thing that disturbed me initially when the fraud was exposed was how Dr. Hwang tried to blame his researchers. How he said that he did not realize they had made up the data. Which may be true. I have known many PI's who have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on in the lab - they are too busy grant writing, or on travel, etc. But the work that comes from a lab is the work of the PI. The PI, who generally does not touch an experiment, is the one who gets the acclaim, elevating the status of the lab in general. So the lack of responsibility taken really bothered me.

The other thing that bothered me was how this example called into question, once again, the peer review process in scientific publishing. Scientists are self-criticized, self-edited. But there in an inherent trust that the data being presented is truthful. The data is scrutinized, but rarely, if ever, are lab notebooks of the raw data requested and cracked open to check if what is reported was what was actually observed. When scrutiny is increased, the dissemination of scientific information is slowed. When it is lax, false information is published to the detriment of the rest of the scientific community. When seemingly large breakthroughs occur, however, it's easy to get overexcited and miss what can sometimes be obvious.

Scientists reputations are based on their integrety. When something is proven fraudulent, careers can be ruined, not only for the PI but also for the people in the lab, past and present. Having been a lab for the majority of the last decade, reports like this are still very close to my heart.