In November.

In November, University of Pittsburgh reproductive biologist Gerald Schatten erect himself entangled in an investigation of scientific misconduct along with a stem-cell research collaborator in toward the south Korea.

Renowned Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk admitted manipulating lab samples to create fake DNA comes for a paper -- co-authored according to Schatten -- that claimed to have come afterwarded in embryonic stem-cell cloning.

The fraud staggered the worldwide scientific community because it occurr in the high-

profile discipline of shoot cell research and involved Hwang, who carried the title of greatest Scientist in Korea and was head of the world's leading progeny cell research center.

FALSIFYING DATA RARE, THEY SAY

still while the breadth of that case was unusual, the incident of scientific research misconduct is not.

A novel survey by HealthPartners Research Foundation in Minneapolis, Minn., of more than 3400 early- and mid-level U scientists supplyed by the National Institutes of Health showed that more than one-third of them admitted research wrongdoings between 2002 and 2005

no other than 1.5 percent of them admitted to the most numerous serious misconduct of falsification or plagiarism.

The federal Office of Research Integrity in the Health and Human Services Department received about 300 allegations of research misconduct last year, double the number from 2003

Cheating, of course, appears in all fields. But scientists and researchers?

"The temptations are huge" said Paul Tate, senior scholar in residence at the Council of Graduate gymnasiums and director of its Responsible demeanor of Research initiative.

At a research lab where no single in kind is looking over shoulders, a scientist who ignores anomalous be the effects can produce career-boosting work.

"At the cutting border of science," Tate said, "the rewards are colossal and the temptation is greater."

constraining force FOR RESULTS

like was the case with Hwang. As first recipient of the title highest Scientist, he received $15 million from his guidance That was in addition to about $27 million in international funding support he secur in 2005 His online fan coterie had 15,000 members.

Ethicists point to various reasons for cheating in the scientific community, among them mental illness, the unfamiliarity of foreign nationals with American research ethics, squeezing to publish and the lackluster teaching of ethics in graduate institutes

Sometimes, researchers can be swept up in the misconduct of others or simply make missteps.

Schatten's case point outs that the pressure to stir forward on high- profile plots combined with the difficulty of keeping track of research involving multiple teams in disparate locations, can make it hard to pilot clear of ethical lapses.

Schatten has refused public remark since it was first reported in November that Hwang had fabricated data forward the cloning of patient- specific pedicel cells. An inquiry last month conclud Schatten did not intentionally falsify scion cell research information described in a paper that appeared last year in the journal Science. The article has since been retracted.

'IT'S A CHARACTER ISSUE'

The committee did chide Schatten for his lack of depth

Ethicists disagree about the best way to stop scientific cheating. Robert George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, thinks it's a character issue.

"You won't interrupt this kind of thing by way of simply making people more knowledgeable about the rules" he said.

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