Category Archives: Current events

Free ethics advice for the Pope.

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When, speaking to journalists about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, you make a claim that the epidemic is:

a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem

those listening who assume you are committed to honesty (because of that commandment about not bearing false witness) and that you are well-informed about the current state of our epidemiological knowledge (because, as the Pope, you have many advisors, and owing to your importance as the head of the Roman Catholic Church, leading scientists will take the time to help you understand scientific findings) may draw the conclusion that the distribution and use of condoms can make the spread of HIV worse.

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Is drug research on humans who are addicted to drugs ethical?

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DrugMonkey responds to the outgoing Drug Czar’s deep concerns about research with illegal drugs conducted with subjects who are addicted to those drugs, those concerns reported in an article in the Washington Examiner. From that article:

The federal government is giving crack and powder cocaine, morphine, and other hard-core drugs to taxpayer-funded researchers for testing on addicts, The Examiner has learned.
For decades, the government has authorized, funded and lobbied for studies in which otherwise illegal drugs were given to addicts in cities such as Washington, Bethesda, Baltimore, New York, Minneapolis and San Antonio. The studies continue today and have an array of aims, from documenting the ways cocaine warps the brain to the intensity of pain from morphine withdrawal. …
John Walters, drug czar during both terms of George W. Bush’s administration, said he learned about the studies near the end of Bush’s term. “It’s not only questionable ethically, but probably — given the science — it may not be able to be defended at all,” Walters told The Examiner recently. …
“Most people see the things that people will do to themselves when they’re addicted — what they’ll do to themselves, to their families, to their loved ones,” Walters told The Examiner. “I think that when you bring someone in and say, ‘Well, they’re not seeking treatment yet and therefore it’s OK to use them as an experimental subject’ — that’s not the understanding that the current science gives us about this disease.” …
“The question is whether the results justify using these individuals as disposable subjects,” Walters said.

Walters seems to be saying that the use of people who are addicted to drug in research on those drugs cannot be ethical under any circumstances. (His claim that “it may not be able to be defended at all” at least strongly suggests that this is his position.) Is he right?

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A big pain for biomedicine: anesthesiologist commits massive research fraud.

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The headlines bring news of another scientist (this time a physician-scientist) caught committing fraud, rather than science. This story is of interest in part because of the scale of the deception — not a paper or two, but perhaps dozens — and in part because the scientist’s area of research, the treatment of pain, strikes a nerve with many non-scientists whose medical treatment may have been (mis-)informed by the fraudulent results.
From Anesthesiology News:

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More commentary on animal rights extremists.

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In an op-ed by Tim Rutten in today’s Los Angeles Times:

No sensible person dismisses the humane treatment of animals as inconsequential, but what the fanatics propose is not an advance in social ethics. To the contrary, it is an irrational intrusion into civil society, a tantrum masquerading as a movement. It is a kind of ethical pornography in which assertion stands in for ideas, and willfulness for argument, all for the sake of self-gratification. At the end of the day, there is no moral equivalence between the lives of humans and those of animals.

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Things could get worse before they get better (starving student edition).

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Times are tough all around these days. However, at schools like mine, a large public university with a population that includes a significant number of students who are older than traditional college age, are the first in their families to go to college, and/or were in economically precarious situations before the current economic crisis, the situation feels especially dire.

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Honorifics, credentials, and respect.

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There’s a lively discussion raging at the pad of Dr. Isis (here and here) about whether there isn’t something inherently obnoxious and snooty about identifying oneself as having earned an advanced degree of any sort. Commenter Becca makes the case thusly:

“Why are people threatened by the idea that a profession ought to have professional standards, anyway?”
1) It gives the gatekeepers even more power than they already have. Given a world where professional credentials are denied to certain groups, it can get a bit ugly. I think the worst part is that people who are traditionally trodden upon, because they fought so hard to get the darn credential, end up being the ones most viciously fighting against respect for people without the credentials.
2) I’m not horribly opposed to professional standards in general, I just don’t think they should necesarily apply to researchers. If an MD doesn’t know what she’s doing, she kills people. If a scientist doesn’t know what she’s doing, she can change the status quo by doing something incredibly novel that others couldn’t imagine (not that it’s the most likely scenario; the most likely scenario is she will fall flat on her face… but there is an important distinction nonetheless). Heck, a kid in a science fair can discover something new (ocassionally, at the highest levels like Westinghouse, even something that academics should recognize- something publishable).
Ultimately, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if we didn’t take “Dr.” as a proxy for respect. No one will ever earn my respect by spending X years in school. Plenty of people without PhDs will earn it.
I’ve met very few PhDs who have unearned my respect for their hard work and intelligence that got them that degree (note the distinction between symbol = degree and reality = character). But there have been a few. I feel no obligation to call them “Dr.”.
“Seriously, what is the problem with recognizing expertise, hardwork, perseverence, and yes, intelligence? Why is that not progressive?”
There’s nothing wrong with it, and a great deal right!
But the relationship between schooling, expertise, hardwork, perserverence and intelligence and the number of letters displayed after your name is not a one to one function. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something (most likely a diploma).
“Ms. Manners would suggest that the polite thing to do would be to inquire of Dr. Biden which she would prefer, and (so long as the preference is for an honorific she has earned) use that.”
Did you mean Miss Manners? On the original discussion I posted her commentary on this. It can be summed up as: if someone wants to use a title, give it to them. If you are thinking of your own title, however, it’s a tad crude to draw excessive attention to your need for status.

I’m sympathetic to Becca’s points here, so I want to explore why it is I find myself leaning in the other direction on the appropriateness of “Dr.” as an honorific.

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Office of Research Integrity takes ‘final action’ in Luk Van Parijs case.

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You may recall the case of Luk Van Parijs, the promising young associate professor of biology at MIT who was fired in October of 2005 for fabrication and falsification of data. (I wrote about the case here and here.)

Making stuff up in one’s communications with other scientists, whether in manuscripts submitted for publication, grant applications, scientific presentation, or even personal communications, is a very bad thing. It undermines the knowledge-building project in which the community of science is engaged. As an institution serious about its role in this knowledge-building enterprise, MIT did well to identify Van Parijs as a bad actor, to take him out of play, and to correct the scientific record impacted by Van Parijs’s lies.

MIT wasn’t the only institution with a horse in this race, though. Given that many of Van Parijs’s misrepresentations occurred in work supported by federal grants, or in application for federal grant money, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI), an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, launched a thorough investigation of the case. As reported in the Federal Register, ORI has now taken final action in the Van Parijs case:

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Good intentions, bad effects: the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.

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Remember the scares around December 2007 about lead in children’s toys manufactured in China? Back then, people cried out for better testing to ensure that products intended for children were actually safe for children. Partly in response to this outcry, a new law, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, was passed. The intent of the law is to protect kids from harm from lead (and other substances) in children’s products. However, the effect of the law may be something else altogether.
I’ve been meaning to post on this for awhile, but I’ve finally been spurred into action by my friend Heddi at the Educational Resource Center of Santa Cruz. Here’s how Heddi explained the situation in an email to me:

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