诚信制度之危.docVIP

PAGE PAGE 2 诚信制度之危[Dishonoring?the?Honor?System cientific review is not designed to catch cheats. But the South Korean cloning scandal suggests that the journals Nature and Science may be too powerful in deciding what research reaches the public.?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office / 科学评审的本意并非是要抓骗子。然而，韩国克隆丑闻说明，在决定将哪些科研成果公诸于众方面，《自然》和《科学》杂志或许有些过于强大了。 ? Jan Hendrik Schons success seemed too good to be true, and it was. In only four years as a physicist at Bell Laboratories, Schon, 32, had co-authored 90 scientific papers—one every 16 days—detailing new discoveries in superconductivity, lasers, nanotechnology and quantum physics. This output astonished his colleagues, and made them suspicious. When one co-worker noticed that the same table of data appeared in two separate papers—which also happened to appear in the two most prestigious scientific journals in the world, Science and Nature-the jig was up. In October 2002, a Bell Labs investigation found that Schon had falsified and fabricated data. His career as a scientist was finished. ? If it sounds a lot like the fall of Hwang Woo Suk—the South Korean researcher who fabricated his evidence about cloning human cells—it is. Scientific scandals, which are as old as science itself, tend to follow similar patterns of hubris and comeuppance. Afterwards, colleagues wring their hands and wonder how such malfeasance can be avoided in the future. But it never is entirely. Science is built on the honor system; the method of peer-review, in which manuscripts are evaluated by experts in the field, is not meant to catch cheats. In recent years, of course, the pressure on scientists to publish in the top journals has increased, making the journals that much more crucial to career success. The questions raised anew by Hwangs fall are whether Nature and Science have become too powerful as arbiters of what science reaches the public, and whether the journals are up to their task as gatekeepers. ? Ea