Yang weighs in on international debate about scientific fraud

In the wake of recent headline-grabbing revelations of cloning-research misconduct, Xiangzhong “Jerry” Yang, director of the University’s Center for Regenerative Biology, is calling for reforms at top-tier scientific journals.

In a letter to editors of the journal Nature published in the Feb. 16 issue, Yang acknowledges that large-scale scientific fraud “will have consequences for future research in this, and related biomedical fields.”

He specifically refers to South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk, whose claims about creating stem cell lines from cloned human embryos were recently revealed to be false.

However, Yang’s letter cautions, “this does not justify imposing more rigorous standards for reviewing manuscripts in this field [cloning] than others.”

His letter was co-signed by leading scientists at some of the nation’s most prestigious universities.

Asked how the letter to Nature came about, Yang said he had sent a draft to scientific colleagues in the fields of cloning, transgenic science, and stem cell research to solicit their opinions and comments.

“In the end, they all chose to sign on to make it a joint response,” he said.

“We believe a simpler system of checks and balances could reduce incidents of scientific fraud and increase our confidence in published reports,” Yang says in the letter. He then suggests a three-point course of action:

First, all co-authors of science papers must disclose the nature of their participation in a research project. This is a point of contention in the Hwang scandal, where the precise role of Hwang’s American co-author, biologist Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, was the subject of an investigation.

“Surprisingly, it seems clear in retrospect that many of the 26 authors on Hwang’s report [published by the journal Science] could not have attested to the veracity of the human nuclear-transfer embryonic stem cells presented,” Yang writes.