🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sun, 21 Jan 1996, Laurence Miller wrote:

> In the last while a number of cases of what seemed to ethical violations have 
> been coming to my attention.  This is not the kind of issue, I think, where 
> most people like to complain.  For one thing, there is a real risk of unfairly 
> damning an innocent person, by charging an ethical violation when in fact it 
> is far from clear that anything happened that was wrong.  Nevertheless the 
> numbers keep mounting and I have reached a point when I have come to feel that 
> there is a need at least to raise the issue in public to see if my experiences 
> are just isolated occurences or whether they are "the tip of the iceberg" 
> reflecting a broader social reality.

In the general journals, the topic of "scientific misconduct" has been 
getting increasing amounts of attention. Its a little bit in decline now, 
and the last 2-3 years, but it did build up since the mid 1980s. The 
journal _Science_ has had numerous articles on this. You can find some 
material on the NIH gopher, too. Scientific misconduct (SM) is usually 
confined to such things as fabricating data and lying. The NIH
investigates SM and publishes findings and DEBARs faculty from receiving 
funding for periods of several years. This is big time scientific prison 
and definitely blows up careers. So, don't do SM. 

In the last year or so, there have been articles in the newspaper "The 
Scientist" (hereafter refered to as TS) on uncollegial behavior but they 
only glossed the surface.

On the fringes of conventional SM (like what I described) are a variety 
of unethical behaviors which are more often debated (and played out in 
real life) in shaddows, and with whispers. Some articles in TS have 
covered a variety of uncollegial behavior ("backstabbing" in the 
vernacular). The "anti-dote" to this is "whistle-blowing."  There is a 
literature on this, and very often whistle blowers get backstabbed, 
themselves. Go to a big local public library and get help finding stories 
about this. 
 
> The specific issues seem quite varied.  Most involve problems such as money 
> owed to employees not being paid in full, people in vulnerable positions being 
> fired or denied tenure under dubious circumstances, articles being rejected by 
> academic journals for reason that had nothing to do with their intrinsic 
> merits, employees being given an unreasonable work-load.

Oh, yes. One of my more lively private emailers has described two classes 
of people in his department (at a respectable medical school) and he used 
the following words (so help me, God): i) "screwors," and ii) "screwees."

> The following is one example of the kind of behavior I have in mind.
> 
> i)  Ms. A is a graduate student in micro-biology at a major North
> American university
> working on her Ph.D. under the direction of Prof. B.  As part of some
> independent research she is conducting, she needs to make use of a
> special technique and Prof. B advises her to see Prof. C, a personal friend
> of his, and an expert on the technique.  She does so, and applies the
> technique herself as Prof. C. has directed her.  The technique represent a
> small but significant part of the entire research -- she estimates about 20%.
> She writes up the work totally on her own and then shows it to her advisor
> Prof. B, who advises her to include Prof. C as joint author.  She refuses, saying
> that she did all the work herself, and says that Prof. C should receive an
> acknowledgement but no more.  The university strikes a committee to review
> the issue and to the committee they appoint: Prof. B (her advisor),  Prof. D
> (who collaborates regularly with Prof C) and Prof. E, an authority in the field
> who has no personal connection to any of the protagonists.  The committee
> decides in a 2 to 1 vote that Prof. C should be listed as joint author.

This can be called the "old-boy-club-effect."  One factor which might 
deserve asking is if the "small but significant" technique used in her 
research has been published before by Prof. C.? If it has, especially 
some years ago, then Prof C is becoming what they now call an "honorary 
author." Profs need grants and they can't get them without publications. 
The more the better. Profs can "multiply" their publication lists if they 
agree to "help each other out" by trading favors like this. For all I 
know, Prof C might put (or let) Prof B's name on one of his papers as a 
return favor in the future. 
 
Where is the right answer? In theory, one can go back to the teachings of 
Socrates (eg. the "Portable Plato" that some of us read in high school - 
nice, but .... who was it? Protagoras? ... "Justice is the interest of the 
stronger". Socrates won the argument, but the guns and tanks will win the 
war).  

> In this case, Prof. C claiming authorship of a paper when he conducted none of 
> the work and did not in fact write the paper seems clearly to be plagiarism.  

I think not quite. If Prof C took the paper after it was published and 
republished it under only his own name without permission of the others, 
then yes that is plagiarism. 

The crux is: i) who is involved in the research, ii) how are these people 
ariving at a determination of HOW they are involved in that research. 
There have been a number of author disputes. A major author dispute 
appeared a few months ago in the letters to the editor column of the 
journal _science_ where the statements of all of the parties were 
published. Needless to say, there was little agreement among them and 
even outside parties who made subsequent evaluations and analyses of the 
situation were coming from positions that I'm not sure could be defended. 

These are major issues and it is unfortunate that a graduate student or 
postdoc getting in a tangle with a tenured faculty is more likely to lose 
even if the GS or the PD is right (might makes right). 

> Nevertheless my impression is that this kind of behavior is quite common, and 
> is accepted as normal by people who know about it.

Personally I would not use the word "normal" here. Rather the operative 
would be "the way things are done." Then you can argue if the way things 
_are_ done is they way things _should_ be done.

By the way, if any of you folks are upset by "the way things are done" in 
academia then you should look at what goes on out in the commercial-industrial 
world. For how many of you does the name Archer-Daniels mean anything? 
Or, how about Tobbacco-FDA? Pop quiz: how many state governments are 
suing the tobbacco companies now?  

> It seems as if there may be a need for some kind of "consciousness raising" at 
> the present time i.e. there may be quite a few people with stories like this 
> who would come forward if there were someplace where they could do so.  

What is wrong with here? But don't mention any names or places, or you 
could get sued!

> Public discussion surely is the first step toward change.

Try the open literature (eg. back issues of _Science_ and _TS_), get the 
literature from the NIH. 

> Sincerely,
> 
> 
> John Laurence Miller Ph.D.
> 
> 

Arthur E. Sowers, Ph.D.