Learning the Lessons of Hwang? Nope.

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Zach Hall the president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine says that peer review is the key to prevent fraud in stem cell research. Not a new kind of peer review, or a better review of peer review, or more peer review, just peer review. In the San Fran Chronicle, he is asked what will prevent Hwang-style fraud and other bioethics problems in California. His answer?

“Scientists,” responded Zach Hall, president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the funding entity created by Prop. 71. Warning that every industry has the potential for an Enron, Hall touted the American system of peer review as the best way to expose rogue scientists and bad science and to keep research-funding decisions apart from undue political, religious or geographic influences. “What will not stop this from happening is government oversight,” he said.

Not regulations. This from the guy who is giving out the money. Oversight is the key to giving the money out responsibly. It is one of the reasons why we should give government funding in the first place. California has become the standard-bearer for state-based biotechnology research funding. That could I have argued be ok. But not if the standard-bearer claims that fraud is best prevented by peer review.

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