The tip of the iceberg

Looks like the "pioneer" of Korean stem cell research did actually fake a good deal of his results. I have to admit that I enjoy the whole story. Not because I like to see the credibility of Korean science damaged. Simply because it is important that such stories reach a wider public than they usually do. It adds pressure to the scientific community to reconsider some of it's established practices.

At some point I was naive enough to believe "that science shouldn't be like this". There should be no elements of fraud. Every scientist should strive for pure, honest knowledge, nothing more. But science has become a very large system with thousands of workers involved. It is embedded into a well established capitalistic system.

There is no reason to be surprised that there exist other things than knowledge which also matter to scientists. Like the 40 million dollars Dr. Hwang received for conducting his research. Though he might have been more attracted by the amount of attention he received.

There is no "scientific law" that prevents scientists from manipulating, cheating and lying. It will be hard to actually prosecute Dr. Hwang even though he might have misappropriated millions of dollars. And the combination of a scientific environment without rules and the capitalistic system has led to an "interesting" situation in science. Manipulation or social engineering certainly plays the biggest role in the area of dubious "scientific" practices.

A good example of this is the science paper published by Dr. Hwang. There was an article on yahoo highlighting the position of Gerald Schatten, the senior author on the science paper. There is one sentence in that article that made me laugh:

Levine said it's unclear why Schatten was given senior author status among the 24 South Korean scientists who also signed on to the paper.

I wonder why somebody in the scientific community would say that this is "unclear"? It is common knowledge among scientists that it is very "helpful" to have the right connections in US if you want to publish a paper in Science or Nature. In this case I really hope that Gerald Schatten goes down together with Dr. Hwang. As a senior author he clearly had the responsibility to check the work rather than just adding himself to the list of authors in a prominent position.

So I hope that this case is just another warning signal to the scientific community that some practices should be reconsidered. One of my favourites is the way peer review works. Though I am probably not allowed to make any suggestions since I chose the easy way of just leaving the weird scientific system behind.

Posted at: 10:08 | Permalink | category: /english/personal/news/science

EU politics

I am about to completely loose any faith into the political system of the European Union. I still believe that the basic idea about the Union is pretty good but the politics behind it amaze me yet again.

The Commission of the EU recently authorized import of maize 1507 for use in animal food.

I am not so much against the decision itself since I don't see a large risk if it is neither cultivated nor used for human food. But the fact that this decision has been taken while the member states of the EU are still evenly divided between rejection and acceptance of genetically modified food is amazing.

The commission apparently has the right to decide as long as the ministries of agriculture are yet undecided.

I am back to the same problem the I had when I tried to follow the news on software patents. I simply have no clue how decisions are taken in the EU. I do have a better overview over the different bodies that form the government of the union now. But I am still helpless when it comes to predicting the possible outcome of the decision process.

At some point during the discussion on software patents I made the effort of reading through a lengthy description of the "workflow" of a new law. Reality did not even come close to that. There seem to exist a number of rather interesting, unwritten laws that are only known to the politicians involved in the process.

As a citizen of this union I simply wish to be able to understand how new laws are being generated. I would like to know how I could try to influence decisions that touch topics I am interested in. I acknowledge that this is also not an easy task in German politics. But I have at least the feeling that I know the general directions while I am completely lost concerning the EU.

And it is not possible to simply say "I don't care". The laws made by the EU are in general applicable everywhere throughout the union. Even if Germany reject GMOs, the company selling maize 1507 can enforce the law by appealing to a court.

In addition to my confusion I have the general feeling that the large companies are somehow much nearer to the process than any of the organizations that actually care for social concerns.

Would be nice to know if the constitution would have changed anything if it would have come into being.

Posted at: 22:42 | Permalink | category: /english/personal/news/science

Meat from cloned animals

Just catching up on the recent news. And this article on meat from cloned animals needed some comment. There is one passage that made me angry. The article states:

Advocates of livestock cloning say it will improve the quality of steaks and dairy products by propagating the animals that are disease-resistant, give lots of milk or produce lean and tender meat.

If these are the main reasons given by the companies that would like to sell such products then we simply don't need it. The selection of "better" products is in no way different from what the food industry has been doing for decades now. The process might have been more difficult since breeding is less predictable.

But did it give us food that tastes better? Oranges, apples, meat? Granted, the food I can buy today looks great. Just don't try to eat it...

So why would we need another technique to "improve" our food? Especially if it's cloning, since there is not that much known about the side effects of cloning.

Would really wish they would tighten the rules on GMO in the EU again.

Posted at: 08:49 | Permalink | category: /english/personal/news/science

Pharmaceutical patents

This has been a slashdot discussion that I really enjoyed reading.

It is concerned with the decision of Taiwan to ignore the Roche patent on Tamiflu, the vaccine regarded as being the most efficient one against the current bird flu epidemic.

Taiwan apparently tried to negotiate with Roche to be allowed to produce the vaccine themselves. Since these negotiations failed the country just decided to ignore the patent since it regarded the concern for the population as more important.

Some nice comments from the discussion:

What about less widespread, but equally fatal diseases? For example, why isn't it equally ethical for a country to ignore patent laws for cancer drugs? Why hasn't this already been done for AIDS drugs?

Should a lack of patent laws cause the death of people? Imagine that the entire world declared that for "serious disease" no one had to respect patent laws. Let's say that AIDS was declared such a disease. Would any more private sector research money (by far the most research money spent) go into finding a cure or better treatment for AIDS? Would anyone be able to write a business case to get venture money to start a new bio-tech firm looking at AIDS treatment?

If patent protection isn't required for drug development, where are the "open source" drugs? It only requires a few billion USD to develop drug lines... I'm sure there is plenty of non-profit, non-patent money to fund that, and so we can do away with the entire patent system.

An editorial in a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, possibly the most authoritative source in the field, pointed out how drug companies spend far more money in marketing than they do in research. Also, drug companies often outsource the pure R&D to little-known laboratories, or buy patents from them, just to re-brand the products.

Btw, Taiwan can afford the drug. The amount of money in the corruption-fueled grey economy of corrupt officials is more than enough to buy the drugs. Just check out the world-wide corruption studies in The Economist for evidence. It's not about lack of money in Taiwan, but about priorities of spending (bribing MPs is more important than buying drugs - so break the patents).

I'll raise exactly one counter-example: Should fire departments be run as for-profit enterprises, and only purchase fire trucks in jurisdictions where they can make money charging for fire protection services? Drug research is high tech, but it is a question of public health and safety, and the fundamental decisions should be made with that in mind - so it is more like the fire department, and less like high end consumer electronics.

Do you know why Roche, and so many other pharmaceutical companies, are based in Switzerland? Because when they were founded there Switzerland had no intellectual property laws and did not recognize any such foreign laws. So Roche, Ciba, and the rest set themselves up in Switzerland ripping off patented formulas from the UK and elsewhere.

Roche is Swiss. I'm sure China, mainland or Taiwanese, quakes in fear at the thought of the Swiss navy launching an assault.

It did not really help me to come to a final conclusion concerning patents. I still feel they are utterly useless but I understand that there were reasons why such a system has been established.

But patents are definitely nothing more than a bunch of concepts, ideas and laws. In cases where this leads to people dying I believe there is not much need for discussions anymore.

Posted at: 10:27 | Permalink | category: /english/personal/news/science

Scientific fraud

This article from Wired News has some info on the recent rise in scientific fraud. This topic started to fascinate me when I read somewhere that the phrase scientific fraud did not exist before the seventies. This is probably not quite correct because there are documented cases of scientific fraud even in the twenties and thirties. There is for example the case of Paul Kammerer who tried to prove the theories of Lamarck. Another famous case is the research in heritability of intelligence conducted by Cyril Burt.

Nevertheless the number of incidents of scientific fraud have been clearly increasing since the eighties. A reasonable explanation is given by David Goodstein:

In the past few decades, however, that state of affairs has changed dramatically. Science is now held back mainly by the number of research posts and the amount of research funds available. What had been a purely intellectual competition has become an intense struggle for scarce resources. In the long run, this change, which is permanent and irreversible, will probably have an undesirable effect on ethical behavior among scientists.

Currently the number of junior scientists is constantly rising while the number of positions in higher ranks remains constant. The impact factor of journals gets more and more important since it allows to compare the "quality" of scientists. There are a number of such indications of increasing competition in science.

What if competition does not provide the most productive basis for science? True, this type of rivalry apparently works quite well for our economy. But there is more to human interaction than competition and science might benefit far more from the collaborative part of our nature. Projects like WikiPedia present fascinating examples of the human ability to aggregate knowledge at an extremely fast pace.

While I'd like to see competition in science actually dwindling I don't believe it to happen anytime in the near future. Hell, I would not have left the field otherwise...

Posted at: 23:24 | Permalink | category: /english/personal/news/science