Breakthrough
of the Year
LAST YEAR, EVOLUTION
WAS THE BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR; WE FOUND IT FULL OF NEW
developments
in understanding how new species originate. But we did get a complaint
or two
that perhaps
we were just paying extra attention to the lively political/religious
debate that was
taking place
over the issue, particularly in the United States.
Perish the thought!
Our readers can relax this year: Religion and politics are off the
table, and
n-dimensional
geometry is on instead. This year’s Breakthrough salutes the work
of a lone,
publicity-shy
Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman, who was at the Steklov
Institute
of Mathematics
of the Russian Academy of Sciences until 2005. The work is very
technical but
has received
unusual public attention because Perelman appears to have proven
the Poincaré
Conjecture,
a problem in topology whose solution will earn a $1 million prize
from the Clay
Mathematics
Institute. That’s only if Perelman survives what’s left of a 2-year
gauntlet of critical
attack required
by the Clay rules, but most mathematicians think he will.
The analysis
supplied by Dana Mackenzie on p. 1848 struck me as a
fascinating
exploration, full of metaphors suggesting a multidisciplinary
dimension in
Perelman’s analysis. He first got interested in Ricci flow, a
process by which
topological regions of high curvature flow into regions of
lower curvature.
He also identified a quantity, which he called “entropy,”
that increased
during the flow, providing a gradient. Tight spots in spatial
connections
block the application of these rules to dimensions higher than
two, so Perelman
dealt with these through “surgical intervention.” This story
is rich with
borrowings: from fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and even
surgery! It’s
hard to deal with a three-dimensional object in four-dimensional
space. Perelman’s
solution is a stunning triumph of intellect. Alas, it has led
to bitter controversy,
involving others but not Perelman.
Of course, in
any Breakthrough year we are obliged to have a Breakdown.
This time around,
we had to blow the whistle on ourselves. In recognizing this as
a year in which
scientific fraud
took center stage, it was clear that we had to lead with the story
involving the
retraction of
two of our own papers, an event that drew worldwide press attention
and required
us to ask for
an outside evaluation of how we had handled the papers. That brought
us some
tough news about
how competitive the scientific enterprise has become, and the consequential
incentive to
push (or shred) the ethical envelope.
On the positive
side, it was a rich year for important experimental studies. My
favorites
include some
new explanations for how species originate, one of the daunting
post-Darwinian
puzzles. Among
other examples, there is a clear case for speciation through hybridization,
an exception
to the more general rule that hybrids either don’t make it or are
reproductively
incompetent.
Because I like coastlines, when I see new evidence about sea-level
rise, I pay
attention. This
year we got new measures of rates of glacial melting at both ends
of the globe: in
Greenland, where
rates are in hundreds of gigatons a year, and in Antarctica, where
drainage by
ice streams
is accelerating. I also follow the Neanderthal story, because it’s
interesting to ponder
how different
human species—now thought from archaeological evidence to have overlapped
for perhaps
10,000 years—might have interacted. New sequencing of the Neanderthal
genome
indicates that
the point of divergence is nearly half a million years old and opens
up a wealth of
comparisons
with the human genome sequence. The question everyone asks—“Did
they have
sex?”—is still
open, though barely.
All in all,
it’s not been a bad year. The predictions we made in 2005 of “Areas
to Watch” turned
out pretty well.
We said RNA interference would be an active sector—good call. Cosmic-ray
capture didn’t
work out, but there was the predicted level of activity on the “small
worlds” of
microbial communities.
We predicted lots of activity on high-temperature superconductivity,
and there were
more applications, although less new theory. The worst miss was
the prediction
that the ivory-billed
woodpecker would be re-found. Come on, birders, give us some help
out
there; a good
photo, please, not the skin.
– Donald Kennedy
10.1126/science.1138510
Donald Kennedy
is the
Editor-in-Chief
of Science.
Published by
AAAS
Breakdown
of the Year: Scientific Fraud
Jennifer Couzin
One year ago, as Science was assembling its 2005 Breakthrough of
the Year issue, the need for a last-minute change became uncomfortably
clear. A shadow was creeping across one of this journal's landmark
papers, in which a team of South Korean and American researchers,
led by Woo Suk Hwang at Seoul National University, claimed to have
created the first-ever human embryonic stem cell lines that matched
the DNA of patients. After anonymous allegations of irregularities
in that paper appeared on a Korean Web site, South Korean authorities
launched an investigation. As the story unfolded, Science's news
editors hastily pulled an item about the Hwang achievements from
the issue's roster of runners-up.
Today, the fallout
from the Hwang case is plain. Multiple inquiries discredited two papers
Hwang published in Science in 2004 and 2005, which claimed some of
the greatest accomplishments to date with human embryonic stem cells.
The papers were retracted. But the scientific fraud, one of the most
audacious ever committed, shattered the trust of many researchers
and members of the public in scientific journals' ability to catch
instances of deliberate deception.
As it turned out,
the Hwang debacle marked the beginning of a bad year for honest science.
Incidents of publication fraud, if not on the rise, are garnering
more attention, and the review process is under scrutiny. In June,
European investigators reported that the bulk of papers by Jon Sudbø,
formerly a cancer researcher at the Norwegian Radium Hospital in Oslo,
contained bogus data. Those included two articles in The New England
Journal of Medicine that described a new way of identifying people
at high risk of oral cancer, a strategy that many clinicians were
keen to apply to patients.
Eric Poehlman, formerly a menopause and obesity researcher at the
University of Vermont in Burlington, garnered perhaps the most dubious
distinction of all: He became the first researcher in the United States
to go to jail for scientific misconduct unrelated to patient deaths.
The Hwang case,
however, was unique for its combustible mix of startling achievements
in a high-profile field and publication in a high-visibility journal.
Manipulated images, purportedly of distinct stem cells matched to
patients but in fact showing cells drawn from fertilized embryos,
handily fooled outside reviewers and Science's own editors. "The
reporting of scientific results is based on trust," wrote Editor-in-Chief
Donald Kennedy in a January 2006 editorial explaining why journals
are not designed to catch fraud. It's a comment echoed often by
journal editors facing the nightmare of faked data in their own
pages.
But the shock
of the Hwang deception, along with other recent fraud cases, is
jolting journals into a new reality. Five scientists and a top editor
of Nature examined Science's handling of the Hwang papers, at the
journal's request. Their report, published on Science's Web site
earlier this month (www.sciencemag.org/sciext/hwang2005), concluded
that operating in an atmosphere of trust is no longer sufficient.
"Science must institutionalize a healthy level of concern in
dealing with papers," the group wrote. It recommended "substantially
stricter" requirements for reporting primary data and a risk
assessment for accepted papers. Science and some other journals
are also beginning to scrutinize images in certain papers, in an
effort to catch any that have been manipulated.
Stem cell researchers,
meanwhile, endured deep disappointment as a remarkable scientific
advance evaporated before their eyes. Cloning early-stage human
embryos, and crafting customized stem cell lines, is not the cakewalk
some scientists hoped Hwang's papers had shown it to be. Stem cell
researchers are backpedaling to more modest goals, just as Science
and other journals consider how to prevent a breakdown of this magnitude
from striking again.
Areas
to Watch in 2007
World-weary?
Hardly. Four fledgling spacecraft will give planetary scientists
plenty to ponder in 2007. Europe's COROT orbiting exoplanet hunter,
scheduled for launch 27 December, should detect dozens of new "hot
Jupiters" around other stars and may even bag its big quarry:
signs of rocky planets just a few times the size of Earth. Closer
to home, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will take the sharpest-ever
pictures of the martian surface and will use radar to look for rock
layers--and ice--as much as 1 kilometer deep. The Venus Express
orbiter will be going full tilt, and in February, New Horizons will
send back snapshots of Jupiter en route to its 2015 rendezvous with
Pluto.
Skulls and bones.
In recent years, paleoanthropologists have uncovered new skulls,
teeth, and lower limbs of the earliest members of our genus Homo
at sites in the Republic of Georgia, China, and Kenya. In 2007,
the first descriptions of these fossils should give clues to the
identity of the first human ancestors to leave Africa about 1.8
million years ago--such as whether the bones all belong to one species
(Homo erectus) or to two or more. Meanwhile, the long-awaited partial
skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, an early human ancestor that lived
in Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago, promises to shed light on how
upright walking evolved in early hominids.
Loads
of new primate genes.
With the human and chimpanzee genomes sequenced, genetic research
into our evolutionary past is scrambling up other branches of the
primate family tree. Lowresolution maps of gorilla, rhesus macaque,
orangutan, marmoset, and gibbon genomes are already available, and
refined, error-free versions should be ready in 2007. In addition,
look forward to rough drafts of the genomes of the galago, tree
shrew, and mouse lemur. If things go as planned, a comparative analysis
of all these genomes might finally begin to explain what sets humans
apart.
A
climate of change?
The case for human-induced warming will grow even more ironclad
as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its report
in February. Meanwhile, the International Polar Year, opening in
March, will feature climate research on Earth's coldest climes.
And the world is watching the U.S. Congress, which, under Democratic
control, is expected to pass some sort of mandatory emission regime,
and President George W. Bush, whose response will be sure to shape
the debate.
Whole-genome
association studies. The trickle of studies comparing
the genomes of healthy people to those of the sick is fast becoming
a flood. Already, scientists have applied this strategy to macular
degeneration, memory, and inflammatory bowel disease, and new projects
on schizophrenia, psoriasis, diabetes, and more are heating up.
But will the wave of data and new gene possibilities offer real
insight into how diseases germinate? And will the genetic associations
hold up better than those found the old-fashioned way?
Light
crystals. Ultracold atoms continue to be one of the hottest
areas in physics. Now researchers are loading the atoms into corrugated
patterns of laser light known as optical lattices. The lattices
work like artificial crystals, with the spots of light serving as
the ions in the crystal lattice and the atoms playing the role of
electrons moving through it. Optical lattices could help crack problems
such as high-temperature superconductivity and seem sure to produce
interesting new physics. Look for rapid progress in this burgeoning
effort.