Finding good in the bad and vice versa.

DONALD KENNEDY’S EDITORIAL “GOOD NEWS—AND BAD” (13 JAN., P. 145) on the intelligent design Dover, Pennsylvania, court decision and the South Korean stem cell scandal overlooks some of the bad news in the good and the good news in the bad. The fraud perpetrated by at least some members of Hwang’s research group is indeed bad news. But the good news is that the fraud was caught very soon after publication, and it is being dealt with. This is an example of science working, largely by reason of its openness and institutionalized commitment to testing and debate. Compare this scandal to deception in the business and political realms. Enron’s fraud was hidden for years. Abramoff and DeLay similarly operated for years before indictment. Indeed, even supposedly democratic governments classify their fraudulent or other illegal actions, using the cloak of national security, and crimes can remain buried for decades. There is good reason to resist efforts to increase secrecy in any realm of human endeavor. With secrecy, the tail ends up wagging the dog and corruption becomes a way of life. There is no question that the court decision in the Dover case was a good one. The opinion written by Judge Jones is rigorous and thorough— and yes, quite elegant. There is a substantial dark side to this decision, however, that reflects poorly on the scientific community. How did it come to this court fight? How, in a country as “developed” as the United States, have the school system, the media, and the scientific community failed so miserably to educate the majority of Americans about the nature of science in general and evolution in particular? Too often, scientists do not take their public role seriously enough. If scientists do not respond aggressively to the need to bring the rest of society along and confine themselves to talking to each other, the scientific enterprise will likely find itself uncomfortably out on a limb. Should the United States continue to drift closer to the world’s theocracies and away from the preferable if very flawed secular democracies, science and scientists will suffer.