Antti on Dr. Hwang’s Evil Buddies

So Antti’s got a post up on the PD Memo team’s having received prssure from the government not to out the fact that Dr. Hwang was a lying bullshitting son of a —–. Because, what, it might be embarrassing to Korea? Yeah, covering this kind of thing up is even more embarrassing, because the truth often comes out. So if politics can interfere even in what science news gets published, what discipline is safe? It’s hard to trust academia in a country where the government is censoring the very mechanisms by which bad, fake, dishonest science is outed and discredited. …

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Flandersland

To those Canadians and other Commonwealthers among you, you might remember that today is Remembrance Day. I was explaining this to a Korean friend I met today, and I said, “You know, when they commemorate all the young men being shipped off to Europe and the Pacific and North Africa to die. There are gymnasiums full of Canadian kids right now, listening to speeches and explanations of the War.” And I wondered, to myself, whether some of the kids are thinking that the teachers and old guys are talking about Iraq. I certainly had no real idea which war was …

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