Journal Editors Are Urged To Demand More Evidence

"It isn't any change from what we all do anyway, every day," Lundberg said. What is needed, he said, is a more scrupulous review process and a willingness to "pin accountability" on those who try to scam the system.

The new report, by scientists from inside and outside the journal with expertise in stem cell science and publishing, will appear in Friday's issue of Science along with a response from Editor-in-Chief Donald Kennedy. It was released in a telephone news conference sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science.

"We found that the procedures and standards at Science . . . were followed with exceptional care," said panel Chairman John I. Brauman, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University and chairman of Science's senior editorial board, adding that he doubted any other journal would have detected the fraud.

Only after South Korean journalists raised questions about the work did investigators look into and confirm the fakery.

Hwang lost his job at Seoul National University and has been charged with fraudulent use of government funds. Co-author Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh committed "scientific misbehavior" and sought the "media spotlight" while "shirking" his responsibilities in the research, but he probably did not know the findings were fake, a university committee found.

Kennedy said his journal is weighing the recommendations and is already creating a screening tool to identify papers worthy of extra scrutiny -- especially those dealing with such charged topics as stem cells, climate change and medical breakthroughs. One emphasis will be on photographs documenting completed experiments, he said, which can today be easily manipulated by software programs such as Photoshop.

But it will always be difficult to detect a skilful liar, he warned.

"I don't think that the procedures we've been discussing so far would necessarily have caused us to not publish or to seriously doubt the publishability of these papers," he said.

Although editors were hobbled in their review of Hwang's papers because they did not speak or read Korean, Kennedy cautioned against instituting policies unfair to emerging, non-English-speaking scientific hot spots such as Korea. "We don't want to engage in profiling," he said.