Logical Biology 9 (2):87-88, 2009	EDITORIAL
http://im1.biz
© Truthfinding Cyberpress	SCIENCE AND ETHICS

A Top-Ranked Journal’s Low-Level Performance

(Received 2009-08-29; revised 2009-09-02; accepted 2009-09-03; published 2009-09-03)

HIGHLIGHT

Logical Biology stands by its solid publications and is fighting against Nature head-on to restore truthfulness over the issues relating iPSCs, induced pluripotent stem cells or rather incorrectly programmed stem cells.

ABSTRACT

As the first double-open scientific journal Logical Biology (LB) has led a revolution in scientific publishing by its wisdom and courage. Many of its pioneering publications broke hard ground frozen by ice-cold dogmas and were abused by “Monday morning quarterbacks” in the scientific community to unethically collect ripe fruits. Its unique position in speaking out truth no matter how strong the resistance is can be vividly seen from its high performance in publishing a series of insightful criticisms on flawed research of iPSCs, the so-called induced pluripotent stem cells which should actually be termed incorrectly programmed stem cells. Now, as many of the discoveries, contained in the critical publications of LB, have been verified and the nature of iPSCs as man-made cancer cells is being increasingly recognized, it is time to examine the practice of some “top” journals, especially Nature which has played the single most important role in promoting iPS research. In doing so, LB is no longer asking whether Nature is a “top” scientific journal as we know it has already lagged behind LB for a long time at least in the field of life science. The outstanding question here is if Nature is an ethical journal at all since a good scientific journal can only be made and sustained by ethical practice. But how moral is in fact Nature?

KEY WORDS

Logical, Ethical, Biology, Medicine, Science, Nature, Stem cell, ESC, iPSCs, Induction, Reprogramming, Therapy, Cancer, Medical, Discovery, Dogma, Open communication, Peer rejection, Neglect, Hype, Moral

Over the past two years, Nature has invested a huge effort in promoting iPSCs (best known as “induced pluripotent stem cells” but truly are “incorrectly programmed stem cells”) as ethical and safe replacements for embryonic stem cells (ESCs). In doing so, Nature has rejected criticisms that challenged many hyped claims such as iPSCs are “indistinguishable” from ESCs and some iPSCs are even “cancer-free”.

Now it has become very clear that these claims are invalid, just as previously criticized. However, Nature is still continuing its strong promotion for the ill-guided iPS research. It even increased the scale and speed of publishing “positive” spins on iPS research, while ruthlessly rejecting any criticisms and even stone-walling any penetration of outside criticisms. Moreover, Nature even engaged in supporting personal attacks and severe defamation on truth-seeking scientists (http://im1.biz/Truth.htm).

So far Nature’s evil acts have not been punished, largely because of its monopoly over scientific communication and its strong influence even over mass-media. In addition, its employment of some high-powered attorneys also helped its legal protection of some wrong-doings (http://www.chinastaronline.com/NewsPaper_Detail.asp?NewsPaperId=1540). Very interestingly, a very important argument made by Nature’s attorneys is that Nature should not subject to the law of an US state because it has not done any authorized business in that state. Nature’s lawyers also defended its “spammer” defamation on a truth-seeking scientist as an “opinion” and its sustained support for others’ personal attacks as its “immuned” activities.

However, all of these legal manipulations cannot hide a basic fact: Nature is cheating the whole world with its strong promotion of some flawed science or BS (bad science?), as a stem cell pioneer called.

Now, the submissions of two Communications Arising manuscripts from a professor in Peking University of China just revealed the severity and scope of this evil action of Nature in promoting flawed science and suppressing truth [see Open Letter entitled “A Revelation of Submission Manipulation and Neglect by Nature” published in this issue of Logical Biology (9: 82-86, 2009)].

These two submissions arose because this Chinese professor, who has over forty years of research experience on plant development and even published a well respected textbook book on plant developmental biology, saw very clearly some major flaws in the iPS research. He first tried to communicate his concerns to the corresponding authors of the Nature publications. But none of those “corresponding” authors replied him. Then he submitted his Communications to Nature However, Nature first “manipulated” his submission and then simply ignored his submissions, just as it has ignored many other submissions from Dr. Liu (http://im1.biz/iPS.htm) and perhaps others.

Now, many of the criticisms PUBLICLY issued for iPS research have been validated. But has Nature recognized these PUBLISHED criticism and pay respect to those true discoveries? No! Nature even allowed many episodes of “citation misconduct” and even credit robbery by publishing some CONFIRMATIONS of those discoveries contained in those criticisms as some kinds of “New discovery”.

So, while we may excuse Nature for its lack of scientific knowledge and thus consistently misjudging the right and wrong in cutting edge research, we should not tolerate its poor professionalism and even low morality. This is because, if we do that, then science will have no bright future as evil covers the sky.

What has Nature done over the iPS issue? Nature has basically committed a double violation of scientific ethics: it first rejected sound scientific criticisms and then grabbed credit from the original critics.

Thus, it is time for us to stand up and do some things to eliminate these misdeeds so that truth can be appreciated earlier and FS (flawed science) or BS (bad science) can be recognized earlier. Then true bright future for scientific research and communication can come.