Memes

from July/Aug 2008 issue of Skeptical Inquirer

... Although Kim, Ji, and Hwang were Korean educated, because they earned their PhDs at prestigious universities in the United States, their scientific indiscretions cannot be attributed to academic inbreeding. What, therefore, can be the cause of this spate of unethical scientific behavior?

Richard Dawkins, in his article "Viruses of the Mind" (Free Inquiry, Summer 1993), explains the incredible vulnerability of young minds to "infection" by cultural information packets, termed "memes." Bu definition, memes are paradigms uncritically accepted as "truth," which are then amalgamated into a person's developing personality. Once installed, they act like a computer virus, contaminating the "infected" individual's clarity of reason throughout adulthood. If the meme concept is accepted, it may partly explain why some highly educated scientists' faith in their own hypotheses could be so unshakable that they would guiltlessly cook the data to make it match their conclusions. Korea's Ministry of Science might better meet its goal of elevating research ethics by investigating Korea's early childhood education than by disturbing booklets to lab directors.

Frank Reiser
Department of Biology at Nassau Community College, Garden City, New York

Although his claim of having cloned human stem cells using nuclei from epithelial cells is fabricated, Hwang's dog Snuppy is a real clone. Picture taken by amos_w.