But scientific claims are meant to belong to a different category of truth: They are the certified knowledge of a community of scholars who have rigorously tested their ideas through experiment and mutual criticism. ...Little wonder that Richard Doerflinger, an official of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, ridiculed the dreams of therapeutic cloning in a statement last week, scoffing that scientists were chasing miracle cures "in pursuit of this mirage." The contrast between the fallibility of Dr. Hwang's claims and the general solidity of scientific knowledge arises from the existence of two kinds of science - a distinction that is often blurred when new advances are reported first by scientific journals and then by the news media. ...But the roughness of the proceedings is not prominently advertised by journal editors, except when cases of blatant fraud are detected, whereupon they proclaim that peer review cannot reasonably be expected to detect fraud.... Because of Science's authority, Dr. Hwang's claims to have cloned human embryonic cells were prominently reported and presented to the public as if they were important breakthroughs. But any new advance belongs to frontier science, which is inherently fallible, and a journal's imprimatur, though worth something, is no guarantee of truth.... This presents a serious problem for journalists: many scientific claims, including those in leading journals, turn out to be overstated or wrong, and science reporting that presents these journals' products as gospel is likely to be misleading. ...As Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science, observed when the Hwang case first broke, journals often publish work that is innocently wrong. ...But last week Dr. Kennedy announced he was considering revising the journal's publication procedures, though not with any great hope of preventing future cases of fraud.... Dr. Schatten accepted senior authorship of - and thus responsibility for - one of Dr. Hwang's papers, even though Dr. Schatten had performed none of the experiments and was not in a position to vouch for them. ...A more effective protection against being surprised by the likes of Dr. Hwang might be for journalists to recognize that journals like Science and Nature do not, and cannot, publish scientific truths. You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ |