Creating the Appearance of Science
The stem cell research of Hwang Woo Suk was surprising, but it also fit with many of the established discoveries of other stem cell scientists. It's important to remember that the connections to these other discoveries were a powerful factor in the acceptance of his fraudulent work. Thus you need to think about how a scientific discovery becomes acceptable.

Let's think about a scientific discovery as part of a puzzle . . . an odd kind of puzzle that doesn't have an outer edge. This "puzzle" is an infinitely expandable map that can be filled in at its edges, or it can have the empty spaces inside filled. Any new piece of research fills out the puzzle, but it has to connect to what's already been accepted as important to the "shape" of the knowledge that others in the field have put in place.

Your task in assignment three is to look at the "shape" of the piece of information published by Hwang Woo Suk, a South Korean stem cell scientist. You will explain how his work fit with the work of others, and you will also explain how he had all the other things that are expected of a legitimate researcher. Your research and skepticism will enable you to do the following:

1. Briefly describe the major claims of Hwang Suk's research.
   
   
2. Explain how did those claims fit with the other pieces of the stem cell "puzzle" that other stem cell scientists had put together.
   
   
3. Explain what previous work in the field of stem cell research had established Hwang Suk's credibility.
   
   
4. Explain what was surprising about Hwang Suk's discovery.
   
   
5. Hwang Suk validated himself and his research in a variety of ways: labs, grants, education, publications, university affiliations, etc. Describe this institutional network, and briefly explain how it contributed to the acceptance of his claims.
   
   
6. Briefly explain how the content of his claims and the institutional network combined to make his work appear valid.

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Note the following requirements:

1. The paper must be formatted as described at The Purdue OWL. Note the precise requirements for margins, spacing, headers, font size, etc.
   
   
2. Minimum 600 un-wordy words.
   
   
3. Writing that recognizes the criteria available at the Grading Criteria links.
   
   
4. Use of at least one (1) peer reviewed article accessed through the FLITE Library.
   • Post one of these items to the list serve. Use the requirements for such postings as described at the List Serve.
     
     
   • Use of at least one (1) popular resource.
   
   
   
5. Use of at least one (1) online web resource such as wikipedia.org

Due June 24
Points: 150