Whistleblower Exposes Soo-kyung's Stem Cell Research

Korean scientists will need more than a stiff drink to recover their joie de vivre after stem cell researcher at Seoul National University admitted that she manipulated data for articles published in an international journal.

Veterinary researcher Kang Soo-kyung was pinged by an anonymous whistleblower who sent the editors of ten journals a 70-slide Powerpoint report on her irregularities. On May 19 Antioxidants & Redox Signaling announced that four of her papers were being retracted, including two in the latest issue. Kang ‘fessed up immediately. “In response to allegations brought forth by a reader of this Journal, I take full responsibility as corresponding author and accept that some of the data presented is not accurate. I retract the publication in its entirety from scientific literature,” she said in a statement.

However, she also insinuated that the whistleblower was driven by malice. “About 80 percent of the evidence used against me is false,” she said. There could be more unsettling revelations, as the whistleblower claims that Kang has been cheating since 2006. “If we don’t stop this author now, no one can prove fabrication later on,” he wrote. A cloud now hangs over more than a dozen of her studies.

Poor oversight may have contributed to the problem. Kang was hauled before a university committee two years ago after “mistakes” surfaced in a paper for the International Journal of Cancer. Some Korean scientists blame intense pressure and competition. “The school and the government demand their scholars show visible progress in their projects on yearly basis. They are all stressed. What she did is unacceptable but I can see where her deeds came from,” one scientist commented on a Korean university blog.

The latest incident is a painful reminder that one of the worst scientific frauds of the past century happened in the same field at the same university by another veterinary researcher. In 2005, after being feted as a national treasure for being the first in the world to clone human embryos and create embryonic stem cells, Hwang Woo Suk turned out to be a fraud. The incident severely tarnished Korea’s scientific reputation. This new imbroglio will do nothing to shine it up. ~ Korea Times, May 29; Korean Herald, May 31

Related reading:  South Korea Ramps Up Stem Cell Research

For Greater Glory's Relevance to America

For Greater Glory is a stirring story of faith and heroism in 1920s Mexico that has an unsettling relevance to contemporary America.

Michael Cook,
Editor, MercatorNet 

A film about the Cristero War opened last weekend, For Greater Glory. Most Americans will be at a loss to know where or when this took place. But it was on their doorstep, in Mexico, not so long ago, from 1926 to 1929, and it lingered on for years. An estimated 90,000 people died – far too many to be forgotten.

Mexico is a complex country steeped in deep Catholic piety, fierce anti-clericalism, a history of ghastly violence, and weak democratic traditions. So its wars are bound to be complex as well. But the spark for this conflict was simple: a harsh persecution of the Catholic Church by the government of Plutarch Elias Calles. Churches were closed, priests were shot, property was seized.

Much of this was justified by referring to the Mexican Constitution of 1917, whose third article stated: “educational services shall be secular and, therefore, free of any religious orientation [and] … educational services shall be based on scientific progress and shall fight against ignorance, ignorance's effects, servitudes, fanaticism and prejudice.”

Of course, it was Calles who determined what constituted “fanaticism and prejudice”. He and his myrmidons punished them with death.

What struck me in reading some brief sketches (relatively little has been published in English, or in Spanish, for that matter) of the war was how uncannily similar those articles from the Mexican constitution are to rants on blogs and in newspapers nowadays.

It is no longer uncommon in the US, the UK or Canada to encounter petty persecution of Christian “fanaticism”. How will it end? Violence and martyrdom seem preposterous, even unthinkable. But along with many other people, I do wonder how our increasingly bitter conflicts over abortion and same-sex marriage will eventually be resolved. From that perspective alone, For Greater Glory is a thought-provoking film.

Related reading:  Review of For Greater Glory by Patrick Fagan

Boko Haram Killing Nigerian Christians

Suspected Islamic extremist suicide bomber kills at least 10, injures more than 30.

BAUCHI, Nigeria, June 3 (CDN) — A suicide bomber crashed the gate of a church compound in this northern Nigerian city this morning, killing himself and at least 10 others and leaving more than 30 injured, according to eyewitnesses and officials.

The Islamic extremist Boko Haram group was suspected of detonating the bomb at the gate of Living Faith church as members were leaving an early morning worship service; the explosion also brought down a wall of the adjacent Harvest Field church, an eyewitness told Compass.

“Security agents who were within the vicinity of the two churches tried to force the suicide bomber to stop at a security checkpoint, but the bomber crashed his car into the gates of one of the two churches, the Living Faith church, killing many people and injuring many others,” said Kyemme Nzarmo, a student at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University in Bauchi.

Nzarmo told Compass he saw 12 corpses, other eyewitnesses reported 10 deaths, and at press time Bauchi State Police Commissioner Mohammed Ladan said eight church members and the bomber had been killed in the blast. A Nigerian Red Cross official told Compass it had brought at least 30 people to the Teaching Hospital of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University for treatment of wounds and burns.

The university student, who lives in the Yelwa Tudun area of Bauchi, said the injured have been taken to various hospitals in the city. 

Nigerian Christians targeted by suicide bomber

“There were human body parts and flesh all around as a result of the impact from the blast,” he said, adding that security personnel from the military have condoned off the area and have been shooting to keep people away.

Police Commissioner Ladan said the bomber rammed through a checkpoint.

“We had mounted a road-block manned by our men, and they tried to prevent the bomber, but he refused to stop at the checking point and instead hit the security gate,” Ladan said. “The bomb exploded and killed the people there.”

Spokesmen for Boko Haram, which has carried out similar attacks in Nigeria, have been comparatively quiet since an April 26 bombing of an Abuja newspaper and have not taken responsibility for this explosion. With its Hausa-language name literally meaning “Forbidden Book” and translated as “Western education is forbidden,” Boko Haram has targeted churches, state offices, law enforcement sites and some moderate mosques in its effort to destabilize the government and impose a strict version of sharia (Islamic law) on all of Nigeria.

The Islamic extremist sect has killed at least 530 people this year alone, according to The Associated Press.

Nigeria’s population of more than 158.2 million is divided between Christians, who make up 51.3 percent of the population and live mainly in the south, and Muslims, who account for 45 percent and live mainly in the north. The percentages may be less, however, as those practicing indigenous religions may be as high as 10 percent of the total population, according to Operation World.

Source: Compass Direct News

Utah Mormons Support LGBT Pride

More than 300 Mormons marched in the Utah Gay Pride Parade on Sunday.

Indicating that some Mormons may want to change the LDS church's reputation for intolerance towards LGBT people and issues, a group called Mormons Building Bridges led the parade this weekend, prompting emotional responses from organizers and spectators. The parade's grand marshal, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, summed up the scene in a tweet, writing: "In tears. Over 300 straight, active Mormons showed up to march with me at the Utah Pride parade in support of LGBT people."

Read it all here.

Where does Romney stand on homosex?  For those opposed to this lifestyle being pushed in our faces at every turn, will the next presidential election offer a real choice?

Gendercide Coming to America

On Thursday, May 31, the House fell short in an effort to ban abortions based on the sex of the fetus as Republicans and Democrats made an election-year appeal for women's votes.

Representative Marsha Blackburn said: "A vote against ending sex-selection abortion is a vote in favor of gender bias and female gendercide."

My friend Father Rick Lobs has written, "If governmental approval of abortion for sex selection, does not drive collective America to its knees begging God for mercy, probably nothing will. Think of all the females that will be deprived of life by the action of government."

Given the American woman's fixation on frilly and pink, I fear more for the boys.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ5WyCnUr6g&feature=youtu.be

Quote of the Week - Brenna Henn

“I like the fact that the linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence all line up. When you see lines of evidence converge on a single model, it means that’s probably something that actually happened.” -- Brenna Henn, Anthropologist

Social Media Changing African Societies

By André-Michel Essoungou © afrol News / Africa Renewal Lost in the excitement about Africans' enthusiastic embrace of mobile phones is the growing use of those phones to access the Internet - particularly YouTube, Facebook and other social media sites. Lost in the excitement about Africans' enthusiastic embrace of mobile phones is the growing use of those phones to access the Internet - particularly YouTube, Facebook and other social media sites. In the mid-1990s, as the use of mobile phones spread in much of the developed world, few thought of Africa as a potential market. Now, with more than 400 million subscribers, its market is larger than North America's and is growing faster than in any other region. A similar story now seems again to be unfolding as Africans use their cell phones to connect to "social media" - Internet services like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube - that allow people to interact with each other directly. In the process, they are joining what may be the next global trend: a shift to mobile Internet use, with social media as its main driver. According to Mary Meeker, an influential Internet analyst, mobile Internet and social media are the fastest growing areas of the technology industry worldwide, and she predicts that wireless telephones use will soon overtake computers as the primary Internet device. Africa is pushing both developments. Studies suggest that when Africans go online - predominantly with their mobile phones - they spend much of their time on social media sites. In recent months, Facebook - the major social media platform worldwide and currently the most visited website in most of Africa - has seen a massive growth on the continent. The number of Facebook users now stands at over 17 million, up from just 10 million in 2009. More than 15 percent of people online in Africa are currently using the platform, compare to 11 percent in Asia. Read the full report here.