What's New
by Bob Park

Friday, December 16, 2005

1. SPACE DEVELOPMENT: WILL "SIX FLAGS OVER THE MOON" BE NEXT?
The big news this week is that New Mexico is building the first commercial
spaceport. British entrepreneur Richard Branson says his Virgin Galactic
Airline will use the spaceport to launch tourists on suborbital flights
beginning in 2008. A $200,000 ticket will buy you five minutes of
weightlessness, with no extra charge for space sickness. With America's
once-proud space program hard-put to support a crew of only two, wandering
lost in the cavernous ISS, the future in space seems to be theme parks.
According to China Daily, even the newest space-faring power wants some of
the theme park action. Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province, said to have
been visited by a UFO in 1994, received $20M from a Taiwan-based company
for a UFO research center.

2. CLONE SCANDAL: KOREAN SCIENTIST REPORTEDLY ADMITS FABRICATION.
The goal of treating people with tissues cloned from their own stem cells
had seemed almost in reach. In May, Woo Suk Hwang and his colleagues
reported in Science that they had cloned stem cells from 11 patients. Hwang
became an international celebrity and a Korean hero. Then there were
reports that women who worked in his lab had been pressured to donate eggs
for the experiment. Last month, an American collaborator asked that his
name be taken off the paper citing "ethical violations." Now the
work seems to be unraveling completely, with Hwang reportedly admitting
that critical parts of the "discovery" had been fabricated.

3. GHOST STORY: WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT OF SCIENTIFIC ETHICS.
On Tuesday, a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal, by Staff
Reporter Anna Wilde Mathews, dealt with publication of ghost-written papers
in major medical journals. The papers bear the names of academic
researchers, who presumably agree with the articles. The intent, however,
is not to disseminate knowledge, but to promote the products of the company
that paid to have it written. We expel students who turn in ghost-written
papers. WN has reported before on unhealthy ties of NIH scientists to drug
companies, (WN 9 Jul 04) . Something like it seems to be going on with
academic scientists.

4. EVOLUTION: THINGS ARE A LITTLE STICKY IN COBB COUNTY, GEORGIA.
Yesterday, a federal appeals court panel seemed to some observers to be
critical of the ruling requiring removal of a sticker from biology texts
(WN 14 Jan 05) . It read: "This textbook contains material on
evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of
living things. This material should be approached with an open mind,
studied carefully, and critically considered." The sticker was not
factually inaccurate. The attorney who argued the case against the stickers
at last years trial remarked admitted that, "I'm more worried than I
was when I walked in this morning."


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Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew{at}bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University,
but they should be.

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