It is a heartbreaking turn for science and Korea. Without trust, we just cannot imagine science. This is utterly unacceptable.
You always have the problem of dual-use in every new technology. Steel can be used to make sewing needles or spears.
We depend entirely on the truthfulness of the scientific community. We must believe that what they are showing us and what they say has been demonstrated is worthy of our concern and attention.
The fact that this raised the hopes of patients and then did not deliver that promise has special poignancy. Science should be based on truth.
This will have a profound impact on stem-cell research. The opponents of the research will feel themselves to be vindicated.
At the end of the day, this was an extraordinary failure on so many levels.
The technical challenges were solved in theory but not in practice.
The system broke down. We have to ask hard questions.
Scientists have to go back to the beginning and search for a way to overcome that barrier. Now people will approach this with a lot more caution.
This is powerful work and we live in an age that many tools and technologies can be turned into weaponry,
In the bioethics community, this is widely understood as utterly out of the realm of coherent human subject protections and a failure in the duties of a tenured professor.