The American Spectator

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Mormonism Spelled Out

12.19.05 @ 12:01AM

(Page 6 of 6)

He says "The basic scientific question that must now be discussed is: Can these laboratory demonstrations or claims be repeated by others? This is the most basic feature of the scientific method... they have not been able to do so yet."

Since the paper in question has not in fact as yet been withdrawn, it would seem obvious that nobody has yet had the time to try -- Bethell wants to hang Hwang high before trying him, let alone seeing if he can be exonerated by experiment -- rather the way in which some Texan prosecutors would like to lynch Tom DeLay.

Bethell's closing argument, that 1,000 laboratory-grown embryos "led to the birth of just two cloned puppies -- one of which died after three weeks," makes one wonder how vigorously Ethicist Tom Bethell denounced the demise of an equally dismal proportion of human heart transplant recipients in that controversial procedure's first decades.

Producing a warm puppy with a host of skeptics looking on, and an assortment of frogs and sheep already in the cloned menagerie, suggests Bethell should return to his metier -- calling for further investigation of that icon of tabloid science the face on Mars, and that Wlady, and the readers, should look at the evidence themselves on Nature's website, where they will find a more, well, scientific account of this matter. Don't ask me for the details -- my humble superstition is physics.
-- Russell Seitz

Tom Bethell replies:
The author has confused me with someone else when he says that my metier is calling for further investigation of "the face on Mars."

The author shows himself to be unfamiliar with the procedures of science -- odd for a physicist. He implies that scientists don't try to replicate a result until the first claim to have achieved a given result is repudiated by its withdrawal. This is nonsense. The repeatability of experiments is the essence of science and scientists do not wait for admissions of error before they try to repeat the experiments of others. They do not accept findings on authority because science is not an authoritarian field. They try to repeat the experiment whether or not it has been withdrawn.

Markers indicating that stem cells are likely to indicate their "foreignness" and therefore be rejected if transplanted became apparent in 2002. (See "Stem Cells Not So Stealthy After All," Science, July 12, 2002.) Meanwhile, embryologists have indeed been trying for 100 years to understand how the cells of the developing body become specialized in the course of normal development -- which is what THIS referred to in my article. He has erroneously conflated two separate allusions.

More bluntly, he doesn't know what he is talking about. He should stick to physics.

LIBERAL LULLABYE
Re: J. Peter Freire's An Astonishing Lack of Coulter:

As a conservative I love listening to liberals speak, like Sheehan. They prove just how ignorant they are, whereas liberals feel threatened by a conservative, so they try to prevent them from speaking. In the liberal's own sick way of thinking it might even be a compliment.
-- Sharon Cookson

DORGAN'S FOLLY
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.'s Who Is Byron Dorgan?:

Why don't we get the report classified Top Secret codeword and give it to the CIA for safekeeping. It will soon appear in the New York Times/Washington Post for all to read.

Problem solved!
-- Tom O'Reilly
South Portland, Maine

Letter to the Editor

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