The Stem Cell Fraud: Patriotic Passion and ‘Sublime’ Science

The (in)famous stem cell fraud in Korea. Strange as it may sound, many Koreans are still kind of obsessed with it… It is needless to say that the role journalism played in this whole mess was crucial. Without them, the whole fraud would have been just another scientific fraud like all others, and not some mass hysteria of blind nationalism as it has become. I’ve been writing a lot of posts ever since the first suspection arose last November, and was very critical on the utterly Hwang-friendly Korean journalism field that prohibited the search for journalistic truth itself. It was like living in late medieval ages of religous fanatics who simply wouldn’t tolerate any doubts.

Last week, the Institute for Communication Research at the Seoul National University held a international seminar on this subject, titled “Trust and Ethics in the Investigative TV Journalism” (click for PDF). I participated in the study Patriotic Passion and ‘Sublime’ Science: Un-searching for Journalistic Truth by prof Myungkoo Kang. My contribution was the parts on the journalistic practices, and built the analytical model for the “discursive rupture” part. Before I continue to work it into a full paper and send it to journals, here is the conference presentaiton.

Click here for the presentation file.

– Copylefted 2005 by the authors.-