Ethics in Research Debated

"We have a history of dealing with these kinds of matters, and we have gotten better at it. The Koreans are at a very nascent stage of dealing with these kinds of things," said Mark S. Frankel of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The association owns the journal Science, which published the disputed work.

Other experts said the problem is far from limited to overseas scientists.

"Right now scientific fraud and misconduct is alive and well in this country," Shamoo said. "We don't have to go to South Korea."

The increasing complexity of science makes it more difficult for fraud to be detected, Boese said.

"As science becomes more specialized, it becomes harder for scientists to check each other, which makes it easier to get away with fraud," Boese said.

At the same time, the proliferation of scientific journals and the advent of the Internet have put pressure on the journals to publish papers more quickly, some say.

"Because of the expansion of the number of journals and rapidity of publication, there's more pressure on the top-of-the-line journals if they have something hot to get it into print," LaFollette said. "That puts pressure on the internal and external review systems."

Others said journals do not have the resources to catch outright fabrication. Their review systems are set up to judge the design of studies and the analysis of data.

"When a paper comes in from South Korea, you have to make the assumption that they are telling a true account," said Drummond Rennie, deputy editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association. "It is not a system for policing. It's a system for detecting whether the science seems good. It cannot be a system for policing."

Journal editors could, however, do a better job of holding all the scientists who put their names on papers more accountable, Rennie said. In this case, for example, a University of Pittsburgh scientist's name was on one crucial paper.

"The single thing the journals can do is make the authors visibly responsible for the work because, in the end, the editors can't be there," Rennie said. "Credit and blame go together."

The University of Pittsburgh is investigating the case.

Most incidents of scientific fraud are caught when colleagues in the labs of dishonest researchers come forward, Rennie and others said.

"It's almost always that," Rennie said. "They start to realize that something stinks."

Because of that, the best way to foster honesty is to teach scientists more about ethics by requiring courses in responsible research conduct in graduate school, Shamoo and others said.

"Unfortunately, research institutions and universities have not taken this issue seriously," said Shamoo, who edits the journal Accountability in Research. "They pay lip service to responsible conduct and research integrity."

"It's unconscionable" they don't do more, he said.

Beyond education, independent auditors could make spot checks in labs to verify data in much the same way the Internal Revenue Service polices taxpayers.

"If the IRS never conducted audits, what do you think would happen to people paying taxes in this country? If the public knows the IRS never conducts audits, don't you think there will be an increase in problems?" Shamoo said.

Although such procedures might help, nothing can eliminate fraud, several experts said.

"It's like theft. We can have every law there is, but we're never going to eliminate it completely. It's the same with fraud. There's always going to be some people who take the short cut," Rennie said.

Luckily, the stem cell fraud was discovered before patients were harmed or other researchers wasted years or even decades building on the work, which has happened with other instances of fraud.

The case did, however, cruelly raise the hopes of patients who might benefit from stem cell therapy and undermine the public's trust in science, experts said.

"The fact that this raised the hopes of patients and then did not deliver that promise has special poignancy," Zoloth said. "Science should be based on truth."