Eve may be offspring of a long line of science hoaxes
SHARON BEGLEY, The Wall Street Journal
Friday, January 3, 2003
�2003 Associated Press
URL:
<<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/01/03/financial0838EST0022.DTL>>
(01-03) 05:38 PST (AP) --
When Clonaid announced this week that it was willing, even eager, for an
independent laboratory to test DNA from the 31-year-old mother and the
newborn who is supposedly her clone, a lot of skeptics shut up fast. After
all, why would the scientists at Clonaid, established by the Raelian
"humans-are-clones-of-ETs" cult, set themselves up for public exposure as
liars or dupes unless they were sure the DNA test would prove that baby
"Eve" was created from mom's skin cells?
Maybe all they care about is the media jackpot they've already hit. Maybe
they knew all along no such tests would ever be done. Indeed, Clonaid is
now hinting that the parents are resisting such a test. But the colorful
history of science hoaxes suggests some other explanations.
One is that Clonaid is deluding itself. "The human capacity for
self-deception is enormous," notes physicist Robert Park of the American
Physical Society in College Park, Md.
Self-delusion accounted for the initial claim of cold fusion. In early
1989, two chemists in Utah truly believed they had induced atomic nuclei to
fuse, produce helium and emit energy in a tabletop experiment at room
temperature. No matter that all the other fusion hunters were slaving away
on experiments at energies as great as the sun's.
But self-delusion segued into something worse. In June 1989, when
independent researchers failed to find evidence of fusion in the original
equipment, the chemists started backing and filling to explain away the
damning counterevidence.
"They realized they'd screwed up, but decided to push on anyway," says Mr.
Park.
The granddaddy of self-deception in science was Rene Blondlot's 1903 claim
to have discovered a new form of radiation. "N-rays" were supposedly
emitted by all substances (except, oddly, green wood and some metals).
Dozens of labs confirmed the existence of the invisible radiation before
physicist Robert Wood exposed the reports as self-induced hallucinations.
Clonaid may truly believe that Eve is a genetic duplicate. But since they
apparently didn't keep Mom under lock and key during a certain crucial
window nine months ago, they may well be fooling themselves.
Intentional hoaxes also have enlivened science over the years. Alchemists
in the Middle Ages packed bits of gold under the metal caps of their
stirring rods. When the caps dissolved, the gold was released into the
solution, making it look like a base metal had turned into a king's ransom.
Paleontology has long offered fertile strata for hoaxes. In 1912, someone
fiddled with human and orangutan bones to make them look like the remains
of Piltdown Man. In 2000, Archaeoraptor, a Chinese fossil of what looked
like a feathered flying dinosaur, was revealed to be a forgery: A slab
containing the fossil of a fish-eating bird was glued to one holding the
fossilized tail of a small carnivorous dinosaur. Grout helped.
Cloning itself inspired an earlier hoax. In 1978, a book by journalist
David Rorvik claimed that a baby boy had been cloned by a dumpy scientist
(Darwin) from a middle-aged millionaire (Max), and born to a 16-year-old
virgin in December 1976. (Christmas seems to bring out the virgin-birth
stories.) The publisher soon retracted the claim, though Mr. Rorvik never
has. The biologist whose work was cited to support it won an out-of-court
settlement and apology.
Maybe the Raelians know that Eve is not a clone, "but believe they can
deceive the world by executing a sample switch," says Mr. Park. "Stage
magicians do this for a living."
One of the best of those, James "The Amazing" Randi, says it would be
"ridiculously easy" to switch samples. "You can have a sample of the
mother's DNA in your hand or your pocket and switch it for the sample you
take from the baby," he says. "You can make the switch if they're laid down
for even a moment, or you can make the switch by splitting a single sample
in two."
The only way to guard against that is to establish an unbreakable chain of
custody. "You would have to put the swabs from the mother and baby into
containers with seals and labels that cannot be forged," Mr. Randi says
from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Someone independent of Clonaid would have to
collect the samples. A person schooled in the conjuring arts rather than in
science -- since magicians prey on the penchant for logical, linear
thinking typical of scientists -- should act as observer.
That rules out Clonaid's choice to lead the inquiry. Former ABC-TV science
reporter Michael Guillen is well-known for his on-air embrace of astrology,
psychokinesis and other pseudoscience, and reportedly is trying to drum up
financing for a film about Clonaid.
The third possibility, of course, is that Eve is indeed a clone. Biologists
who have cloned cows, mice, pigs and other mammals don't call that
impossible, you notice. But what's truly improbable is that Clonaid is
batting a perfect 1.000: Animal cloning has produced orders of magnitude
more miscarriages, stillbirths and deformed fetuses than normal offspring.
That's gruesome enough when the subjects are cows. With children, it's
horrific to think what Clonaid might have wrought before Eve.
�2003 Associated Press
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