What's New Friday December 1, 2006

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 1 Dec 06   Washington, DC

1. FRAUD IN SCIENCE: SCIENCE MAGAZINE HAS DELIVERED A RESPONSE.  It is not 
unethical to be wrong.  Every scientist will at times be wrong, but we 
assume that authors of science papers THINK they got it right.  The 
rewards of success are so high in certain areas, however, that it must be 
tempting to guess the answer without doing the research.  We saw it in 
2002 with Jan Hendrik Schoen at Bell Labs, and again in 2004 with the stem 
cell work of Woo Suk Hwang at Seoul National University.  In the Hwang 
case, Science, which published the work, immediately retracted the two 
papers and began a thorough review of the peer review procedure.  The 
report urges scientists to give special attention to research results that 
are especially visible or influential.  Today, in a Science editorial, 
Donald Kennedy invites comments.
	
2. INCONVENIENT REFUSAL: SO MAYBE SCIENCE TEACHERS LIKE IT HOT. If you 
haven’t seen it, Al Gore made a film about global warming.  It received 
overwhelming endorsement by scientists.  On Sunday, the Wash Post ran an 
opinion piece by Laurie David, a producer of the film.  She thought it was 
educational.  Of course, so did the Discovery Institute when it 
distributed, Unlocking “The Mystery of Life: The Scientific Case for 
Intelligent Design.”  When the company that made Inconvenient Truth 
offered the National Science Teachers Association 50,000 free DVDs for use 
in classrooms, the NSTA said “no.”  I wouldn’t want them pushing Mystery 
of Life either, but NSTA seemed more worried about its “capital campaign” 
contributors, including Exxon, Shell and the coal industry.

3. EXPORTING CREATIONISM: NO LONGER JUST AN AMERICAN PROBLEM?  For years 
American scientists endured the barbs of colleagues in Europe about 
fundamentalist Christianity in the US.  A Special Report in Nature this 
week warns that creationism is beginning to threaten science in Europe.  
Teaching creationism in public schools was outlawed by the Supreme Court 
in 1968 in Epperson v. Arkansas.  It has been in retreat ever since with 
one name change after another.  The latest was “intelligent design.”  
Meanwhile, the UK is finding it necessary to teach remedial evolution to 
college students.  Turks, and Islamic immigrants throughout Europe, cannot 
imagine anything happening except by God hand. 

4. THE LIMITS OF GROWTH: BEWARE OF THOSE EXPONENTIALS.   Yesterday in the 
NY Times, Thomas Homer-Dixon reminded us of a famous wager 26 years ago.  
Nobel Prize winner Paul Ehrlich bet the price of certain metals would 
increase in a decade as they were depleted.  The late Julian Simon, a U. 
Maryland professor, bet they would get cheaper as substitutes and new 
deposits were found.  Simon won.  He asked me why the physicists had all 
bet with Ehrlich.  “Because, Julian, they understand exponentials,” I 
said.  Today, Homer-Dixon points out, Ehrlich would win easily.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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