The scandal of the South Korean clone scientist, Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, who faked stem cell experiments, is fostering a much needed debate on how to prevent and catch scientific fraud. Research is mostly self-monitored - which means that peers, or experts in the same scientific field, review to work to see if the studies are ethical and conducted well. We already heard about the ethical debate of Dr. Hwang's research in that he used eggs donated from researchers working in his lab (considered unethical because they might have been forced to do it) . The part about how the research was conducted is usually reviewed when the work comes up for publication. Most journals give the articles out to review boards who rely on experts in that particular field. But the researchers and the journals want to be first to publish, so the review boards are under a lot of time pressure, and mostly only review the material submitted to them (no side trips to check the data, etc...). Most often the fraud cases we hear about are denounced by colleagues in the same lab, who catch on to something and speak out (again, the need for whistlerblower protection). A lot of the discussion is now going towards the compulsory teaching of ethics at universities and research labs, and one cheater can ruin the reputation of the whole organisation. But as it has always been in all fields, the moment you measure performance, there will be people trying to bias the system. In order to maintain credibility in the measurement systems, education will not suffice, we probably will need a combination of education, regulation, peer pressure and public opinion.
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