No, not that one, but another one has been caught faking scientific research data, this time from the prestigious Korean “Caltech”, KAIST. His name is Kim Tae-Kook, caught fabricating data, even in an article published in the prestigious Science Magazine, has officially been suspended.
Even though this news seems tragic, and really embarrassing, I really do see this news as very positive because it will institute rapid change in bioethics in Korea.
When I worked in Korea at a lab, there were many things that were shocking…the way Korean scientists handled research animals, submitted papers to peer-reviewed journals, or treating patients in the hospitals…very different from what I was used to American labs or hospitals.
I think the peak of my shock about ethics happened when my friend, a med student at a Korean university, told me she had a patient in the hospital dying of AIDS, and the patient’s parents (in order to “protect” him) decided not to tell him he had AIDS and that he was dying of AIDS complications. The physicians all kept his diagnosis from him, in order to “protect” him. I couldn’t believe it. I grilled my friend, “Are you sure? Are you sure the patient didn’t know he has HIV?” She said many times that she knows for sure that many patients in hospitals are not told they have HIV…she told me that in most cases, doctors will tell the parents of the male patient if the patient has AIDS, but will not tell the wife. (In this case, the male patient was gay so he did not have a wife). To my ears, this was so incredibly shocking…can you imagine how many HIPAA rules that breaks? I went home and asked my dad, who was working as a visiting professor at the Seoul National University Medical School, and he said that was a very common practice, “hiding” diagnoses from patients in Korean hospitals, especially if the diagnoses is stigmatized and “embarrassing”.
Now, this is all from my personal experience, so I cannot vouch that this happens at all hospitals in Korea or Asia. I can only hope change will occur quickly, and I do know from a personal source that Seoul National University is very upset they did not make the top 100 medical schools in the world. (Or was it top 100 hospitals?) I am not sure. While SNU is poised to attract prestigious professors to their faculty in order to raise their global ranking, I can only hope change can occur quickly.
Ethics is seen often by many clinicians as a “luxury”, “a bother” and “more paperwork” in American and abroad, but in cases such as these where there is such little oversight, I have much hope that change will occur quickly. Most of the time, the ends do not justify the means, especially if the ends are faked.
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G wrote:
Out of curiosity, where do you think this sort of behavior originates? I work in a stem cell group and obviously the whole Korean stem cell fraud thing has severely hurt our field’s image and credibility. At the same time, you can’t help but wonder why they would do something that brazen.
My only guess would be that since the Korean scientific community is fairly young, they haven’t had a chance to institute the rigid controls that the U.S. currently has in terms of validating research and other forms of accountability.
Posted on 11-Mar-08 at 7:41 pm | Permalink
Jen wrote:
hey g! i can’t imagine what a blow it must have been to the stem cell community, it’s such a pity. i think it originates from a lot of different factors; a small country whose fiercely proud of their work, and are seeking recognition from abroad…and because it’s such a competitive society, and so crowded…they will do anything to get ahead? Who knows. Having a young scientific community is also a part of it, as you point out…I mean, the oversight to catch these “errors’ is simply not there. Why would you act ethically if no one is expecting/demanding/requiring it?:I guess there’s nothing like “losing face” before drastic changes are instituted. One can only hope!
Posted on 11-Mar-08 at 7:48 pm | Permalink
Xxxtine wrote:
man, it’s one thing to be debunked, but to fabricate results in order to satisfy a theory is like an accountant cooking the books before tax season. Or like that Beijing journalist faking some news event to advance their career - in the worst possible way. I think sometimes the prestige and their ambition for professional recognition in their respective fields oversteps their need to be … well … professional.
If you want to know more about the Korean society and their less than ethical ways of operation - mostly media/ journalistic- related, read Metropolitician.com. Just a disclaimer though - it IS a blog.
Posted on 12-Mar-08 at 10:26 am | Permalink
Efren wrote:
Your comments on the inconsistencies regarding telling patients’ relatives about their diagnoses is very similar to research that I was doing in medical sociology (before I left the program) on disclosure, though this was done in American hospitals and primarily concerned how to tell (or not to tell) a patient that s/he has a terminal diagnosis while telling the relatives. The practice technically doesn’t break any HIPAA rules as long as the patient doesn’t ask (which is paramount), but its practice does have an obvious emotional/mental cost on the doctor and the patient’s relatives, and the studies discuss a linear trajectory that shows how both patient and family/provider come to a consensus about the patient’s diagnosis and imminent death.
On a tangent, my studies were more on the emotional costs of gay Filipino American men and coming out, and I was arguing that disclosure doesn’t come in a one-way linear fashion, but often goes back and forth as people deal with coming to grips of disclosing secrets that could cause social death (such as coming out) or actual physical death (like terminal diagnoses).
Posted on 12-Mar-08 at 1:20 pm | Permalink
jennifer wrote:
Efren, you bring up some interesting points…but I’m wonder….How does a patient *not* ask his physician why he’s dying? Or why he’s sick? Do some patients not even bother asking? In that case, I can see why a physician can be *ok* ethically not to tell the patient his or her diagnosis.
Posted on 12-Mar-08 at 2:14 pm | Permalink
Efren wrote:
You’d be surprised–a lot of patients don’t want to know that they’re dying or why they’re sick, regardless of their ethnicity. I think that these patients feel that if they don’t know, there’s a glimmer of hope that they can get better due to their religious beliefs/miracles/etc, or at least that’s what they claim.
I remember reading that some people feel that their health is really out of their control anyway, and want to let nature run its course, even when their clinicians are doing everything they can to keep them alive, which is another reason why they don’t ask.
Posted on 12-Mar-08 at 3:54 pm | Permalink