THE CORRUPTION OF SCIENCE

KAREN MALEC, PRESIDENT, COALITION ON ABORTION/BREAST CANCER

A report in the journal Nature, June 2005, shows that scientific misconduct is far more common than most people realize. Researchers anonymously polled thousands of scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health. They asked scientists to report their misbehaviours. An astonishing number of scientists admitted that they had participated in serious misconduct within the last three years. Here are just a few examples:

Falsifying or 'cooking' research data (0.3%)
Failing to present data that contradict one's own previous research (6.0%)
Overlooking others' use of flawed data or questionable interpretation of data (12.5%)
Changing the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressure from a funding source (15.5%)

The authors reasoned that their "estimates of misbehaviour are conservative" because "...misbehaving scientists may have been less likely than others to respond to our survey, perhaps for fear of discovery and potential sanction".

They concluded, "To protect the integrity of science, we must look beyond falsification, fabrication and plagiarism to a wider range of questionable research practices".

In regard to the abortion-breast cancer link cover-up, how can scientists be so heartless as to cause thousands of lives to be cut short because of their scientific misdeeds? It breaks my heart that young women are unwittingly exposing themselves to a deadly disease. A fifteen-minute surgical procedure can change the direction of their lives forever.

Linguistic Fraud: The issue of scientific fraud acknowledged in the Nature article is relevant to the cloning fraud perpetrated by Prof. Hwang of Korea. Another type of fraud is linguistic fraud - the re-definition of “embryo” as “tissue material”, the re-definition of pregnancy as commencing from “implantation” rather than conception or fertilisation, and worst of all, the failure to recognise the fetus as an individual. This is specially ironic when pre-natal surgery on fetuses to correct anomalies is increasingly successful.