Art writes on MSNBC that stem cell research can survive and learn lessons from this encounter with the bizzare in South Korea. He details the fraud and then argues that:
At the end of the day the system worked. Hwang was outed. Cloning was shown to be as tough a strategy for obtaining stem cells as most experts had thought it was. Still, Hwang almost pulled off his great charade.
Science like all other human endeavors such as the professoriate, the priesthood or the military is only as strong as its weakest links. And that will be true long after the critics and the proponents of embryonic stem cell research find out whether it really can do anyone any good.
[UPDATE: William Saletan’s version of “what went wrong” is up today as well.]