Recent revelations of scientific misconduct and fraud have brought into question the claim of the science community to self-regulation. Treatises on research fraud and problems in "peer review" proliferate, and even the United States Secret Service reportedly has been enlisted in the search for fraud in scientific notebooks (Science, 251:1168-72, 1991). The old assumption that fraud inevitably will be revealed seems unacceptable. The stakes have become too high to rely on traditional mechanism

As a physiologist and a Christian, I have followed with some interest the series of exchanges appearing in the “Letters” section of The Scientist. At one time I, too, thought— like some of your correspondents —that natural science had all the worthwhile answers, since only natural science seemed to have the most foolproof way of finding out what was really provable. But in due course, I have come to a different understanding, primarily because so many questions come up t