There’s an interesting article in the Telegraph by Eugenie Samuel Reich looking back at the curious case of Jan Hendrik Schön. In the late ’90s and early ’00s, the Bell Labs physicist was producing a string of impressive discoveries — most of which, it turns out, were fabrications. Reich (who has published a book about Schön, Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World) considers how Schön’s frauds fooled his fellow physicists. Her recounting of the Schön saga suggests clues that should have triggered more careful scrutiny, if not alarm bells.
Of Schön’s early work at Bell Labs, Reich writes:
Category Archives: Tribe of Science
Cleaning up scientific competition: an interview with Sean Cutler (part 2).
Yesterday, I posted the first part of my interview with Sean Cutler, a biology professor on a mission to get the tribe of science to understand that good scientific competition is not antithetical to cooperation. Cutler argues that the problem scientists (and journal editors, and granting agencies) need to tackle is scientists who try to get an edge in the competition by unethical means. As Cutler put it (in a post at TierneyLab):
Scientists who violate these standards [e.g., not making use of information gained when reviewing manuscripts submitted for publication] are unethical – this is the proverbial no-brainer. But as my colleague and ethicist Coleen Macnamara says, “There is more to ethics than just following the rules- it’s also about helping people when assistance comes at little cost to oneself.” The “little experiment” I did was an exercise in this form of ethical competition. Yes, I could have rushed to the finish line as secretly and quickly as possible and scoop everyone, but I like to play out scenarios and live my life as an experimentalist. By bringing others on board, I turned my competitors turn into collaborators. The paper is better as a result and no one got scooped. A good ethical choice led to a more competitive product.
But how easy is it to change entrenched patterns of behavior? When scientists have been trained to take advantage of every competitive advantage to stay in the scientific game, what might it take to make ethical behavior seem like an advantage rather than an impediment to success?
My interview with Sean Cutler continues:
Cleaning up scientific competition: an interview with Sean Cutler (part 1).
Sean Cutler is an assistant professor of plant cell biology at the University of California, Riverside and the corresponding author of a paper in Science published online at the end of April. Beyond its scientific content, this paper is interesting because of the long list of authors, and the way it is they ended up as coauthors on this work. As described by John Tierney,
Letters to Our Daughters.
Dr. Isis asked me to write a letter for her most excellent Letters to Our Daughters project, which she describes as follows:
When I was a graduate student, I took a physiology class in which I was given the assignment to recreate my scientific family tree. When I did, I found that my family tree is composed some brilliant scientists. But, my family tree is also composed entirely of men, plus me. The same is true of the tree from my postdoc. I have scientific fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, but no aunts, grandmothers, or mothers. As I considered my career path in science, I found myself wanting and needing the perspective of more senior women scientists.
The inspiration for my Letters to Our Daughters Project comes from my hope that we can recreate our family tree here, creating a forum where the mothers and aunts in our fields (which I hope to not limit to physiology, but that’s where I’ll start because that’s who I know) can share their wisdom with us. I think there is a wealth of information among these successful women and I hope to use this forum to share it with young scientists who are yearning for that knowledge.
I’m actually in a somewhat weird position, in that my scientific pedigree (at least as I see it) includes quite a number of foremothers in college (and two in graduate school). And, I am blessed to have a mother whose own example inspired me as I looked toward advanced studies in chemistry.
Also, at least by the standard reckoning, I leaked out of the pipeline when I left chemistry to become a philosopher of science. So it’s possible you’ll want to take my advice with a grain of sodium chloride. However, philosopher or no, the fact remains that I love science.
Evaluating an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics.
At White Coat Underground, PalMD considers an article from the Journal of Medical Ethics. The article (L. Johnson, R. B. Stricker, “Attorney General forces Infectious Diseases Society of America to redo Lyme guidelines due to flawed development process,” Journal of Medical Ethics 2009; 35: 283-288. doi:10.1136/jme.2008.026526) is behind a paywall, but Pal was kind enough to send me a copy.
Pal writes:
I have a strong interest in medical ethics, although I’m not an ethicist myself. Still, I’m generally familiar with the jargon and the writing styles. This piece reads like no ethics article I’ve ever seen. It is basically an advocacy piece for the concept of chronic Lyme disease, and starts from an entire set of problematic assumptions.
I know very little about Lyme disease, and I have no horse in the race in the controversy about whether chronic Lyme disease exists, if so what it is, and how it might be treated.
I am, however, an ethicist with a strong interest in ethical issues connected to the building and use of scientific knowledge. So I told Pal I’d have a look at the article.
Here’s the abstract:
Researchers talking to journalists should assume the public might be listening.
In the wake of some recent deaths in Edmonton of teenagers who took Ecstasy, DrugMonkey gets irritated with a doctor who made some proclamation to the press:
Fake journals versus bad journals.
By email, following on the heels of my post about the Merck-commissioned, Elsevier-published fake journal Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, a reader asked whether the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPandS) also counts as a fake journal.
I have the distinct impression that folks around these parts do not hold JPandS in high esteem. However, it seems like there’s an important distinction between a fake journal and a bad one.
What to do when the boss says, ‘Keep your head down.’
One of the interesting developments within the tribe of science is the way that blogs, email lists, and things of that ilk have made public (or at least, more public) conversations within a field that used to happen only in private.
The discussions of Aetogate on the VRTPALEO list are just one notable example, but email lists and blogs also host discussions in the wake of retractions of journal papers, investigations of allegations of scientific misconduct, and other sorts of professional shenanigans. While some of the people in these conversations cloak their identities in pseudonyms, others use their real names.
How identifiable one is while participating in these discussions becomes an issue sometimes because there is pushback. We saw some examples of pushback in Aetogate. In one case, an “independent” member of an inquiry panel characterized the people who had raised the concerns which the inquiry was supposed to investigate as “mainly young, un- or under-employed workers (including both Park and Martz)” with an axe to grind. In another, a scientist posted to the VRTPALEO list (under his own name) to do some heavy-duty victim blaming, as well as to put some fear into the young upstarts raising a ruckus:
Will these actions result in outrage in the paleontological community, ruination of careers, civil proceedings, etc.? I hope not.
You better hope that the harm done doesn’t also include your own career.
Graduate student(s), do you honestly think that raising a lot of hell when you are looking for employment is really going to help your career? You must not work in the same niche of academia that I inhabit.
Some advisors, as you might well imagine, are concerned when their trainees get involved in highly visible discussions of controversial conduct. One of my correspondents received a cautionary email along these lines:
Another conundrum: whether to engage with the Huffington Post.
It occurs to me that there might be an interesting parallel to the conundrum we discussed about whether it’s better to engage with a scientist giving off a shady vibe or to back away with all due haste. It’s not a perfect parallel, but there are some similar issues at work.
Should scientists and physicians engage with the Huffington Post?
To engage (or not) with the seemingly shady scientist.
Yesterday, I shared a conundrum with you and asked you what you would do as a member of the tribe of science if you got a gut feeling that another member of the tribe with whom you had limited engagement was shady, either disengage ASAP or engage more closely.
Today, as promised, I share my thinking on the conundrum.
You’ll recall from my description of the situation that:
you are presented with a vibe or a gut feeling about this other person — you are not witnessing obvious misconduct, nor are you privy to evidence of same.