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5. Recharacterizing Science and Public Life: Trust, Dialogue, and Citizen Engagement
- The University of Alabama Press
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5 Recharacterizing Science and Public Life Trust, Dialogue, and Citizen Engagement As I conclude this book,headlines continue to deliver sensational tales of scientists cheating their way to fame and fortune.“Fraud Rocks Anesthesiology Community,”reported Anesthesiology News in March 2009,dramatizing the story of falling star and pain management pioneer Dr.Scott S.Reuben,who stands accused of fabricating data in twenty- one studies published in leading anesthesiology journals since 1996.1 Detailing “what may be among the longest- running and widest- ranging cases of academic fraud,”the New York Times revealed that officials at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts ,have determined that the influential anesthesiologist committed “massive” research misconduct in studies that have direct implications for postoperative pain management.2 Media coverage and medical journal articles suggest that Rueben is not alone: In 2001 international papers narrativized the deception of South African oncologist Werner Bezwoda, whose fabricated clinical trial data allegedly demonstrated the efficacy of high- dose chemotherapy with bone marrow transplant for advanced breast cancer .3 In 2003 the New York Times reported that University of North Carolina researcher Dr.Steven A.Leadon resigned after allegations that he faked data in breast cancer research on tumor suppression, while in 2008 news outlets reported that Big Pharma had hidden less than glowing results from its antidepressant studies.4 In short, the makers of Prozac and Paxil were not disclosing trial results showing that their products provided only modest gains over a placebo in fighting depression. Amid these disturbing reports appeared the shocking story of the iconic South Korean stem cell researcher Dr. Hwang Woo- suk, whose “spectacu lar fraud” shook the international scientific community in 2005. Prior to the news that he fabricated data, the “charismatic” Dr. Hwang had cap- 156 Chapter 5 tured public interest a year earlier when his coauthored Science articles announced stunning breakthroughs in embryonic stem cell research.5 “The papers transformed Dr. Hwang into a national hero,” explained one writer, “a handsome 53- year- old scientist who had risen from humble origins to lead South Korea to places it and the rest of the world had not seen. Web sites went up in his honor, women volunteered to donate eggs, Korean Air volunteered to fly him anywhere free.”6 The national mood turned from adu lation to humiliation, however, when news that Dr. Hwang had made up data, which was used in his now apparently false claims to have cloned embryonic stem cells,circulated among front- page headlines of the same international newspapers that had trumpeted his success. As the South Korean government rushed to remove his accomplishments from science textbooks and halt production of a line of Hwang commemorative stamps, Hwang offered a tearful apology and explained the pressures he faced: “I was crazy with work . . . I could see nothing in front of me. I only saw one thing and that is how this country called the Republic of Korea could stand straight in the center of the world.”7 Like Poisson’s misguided data falsifications, Reuben, Bezwoda, Leadon, and Hwang’s deceptions signal the particularly high stakes of health research where patients’lives are tightly yoked to scientific integrity.8 In Poisson ’s case, news of data falsification compromised trust in federally funded breast cancer research.In Reuben’s,Bezwoda’s,and Leadon’s cases,what experts believed to be true turned out to have been built on a foundation of lies. In Hwang’s case, South Korea’s scientific reputation plummeted when its iconic scientist tumbled from grace.These incidents recall Walter Ong’s observation that science hinges on trust. As Ong reminds us, “Science itself cannot live save in a network of belief.” “Even in the most ‘objective’of fields,” he explained, “the word of persons is more pervasive than factual observation.”9 Believing in the words of other scientists is a necessary condition for the contemporary clinic, laboratory, newspaper, and scientific journal office. Yet trust and truth are tangled in complexity, and when they are compromised or challenged, character becomes a mechanism for assessing the integrity of scientific claims. In this book I have sought to rehabilitate trust and character as significant features of publicly debated scientific research.The idea that character makes a difference to the outcomes, meanings, and receptions of science may seem outmoded in our fragmented, postmodern, globalized world, where cynicism reigns and the very idea of a subject—much less one with an old- fashioned virtue like character—has been thoroughly deconstructed.10...