Man, it just keeps geting worse.

Drudge links to an article in The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about a ripple effect of disgraced Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk's falsified stem cell experiments:

A University of Pittsburgh reproductive biologist relied on the now-discredited stem-cell findings of a disgraced Korean scientist to win a $16.1 million federal grant last fall, according to federal documents and letters obtained by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

[...] Because of Schatten's role in co-authoring the discredited work, Pitt officials should consider whether he remains eligible to lead research projects and receive grants, said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

[..] "It's hard for me to imagine it going forward the way it is, given the complete discrediting of a purported partner," Caplan said.

This whole thing is a nightmare. Letters to the editors at the major journals—along with the journals themselves—are positively shrieking about the virtues and pitfalls of peer review. Scientists are genuinely very bothered by this situation, both because it puts stem cell research in a bad light, and because it casts doubts about the overall worthiness of publically funded science.

Because science always takes place at the boundaries of the unknown, its practitioners have an easier time making things up as they go along. Luckily, science is also a profession in which its participants take great delight in disproving others' results. Nevertheless, let's hope we learn something about preventing falsified reports from reaching publication in the first place. Otherwise, the whole thing just gets ugly.