Scientists are People Too

Monday, December 17. 2012

In our culture, we idolize scientists. Often John Q. Public fails to question what scientists are doing or the money they ask for because there is the assumption that scientists are altruistic. Even more often, anyone who does question the ethics of the research or the public policy that provides money to ethically-suspect research is labeled "anti-science."

We have no problem believing that CEOs or bankers would commit fraud, but put on a white coat and that becomes a difficult sell. Venerating scientists like they are rock stars, doesn't help.

And yet fraud in the scientific community is a problem. The Scientist outlines the "Top Science Scandals of 2012." A fascinating read filled with made-up data and fictional patients. One Japanese scientist fabricated data in 172 papers over his career. A particularly clever fraud perpetrated by scientists, was to refer journal editors back to themselves for reviews of their papers:

Rather than falsify data in order to get published, researchers have taken a new tack this year by writing glowing expert reviews for their own papers. When asked by journal editors to suggest names of experts in their field who were not involved in their research, at least four submitting authors suggested names and emails that then forwarded back to their own inboxes. The trend, first reported by Retraction Watch, was caught by one journal editor when author Hyung-In Moon, assistant professor at Dong-A University in Busan, South Korea, offered up names of reviewers with Google and Yahoo rather than university email accounts.

Are all scientists unethical? Absolutely not. But we cannot continue to treat all scientists with kid gloves. Scientists are people too. They are just as subject to the temptations of ethically-suspect behaviors as bankers and CEOs.

Which is why I have always said scientists are scientists, not philosophers, not ethicists, and certainly not lawmakers. To suggest that we should leave the decision about what is moral scientific research up to the just the scientists is like suggesting we should leave what constitutes ethical business practices up to corporate CEOs.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Science and Ethics at 10:45 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

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What I find fascinating is that after the studies demonstrating that peer-review is easier on research that supports the reviewers' own opinion (which is admittedly about as surprising as "mothers think their own babies are the cutest"), we still have people who believe in the superhuman virtue of scientists.

A big part of it is that most modern states are technocracies, ruled by experts—which is different from plutocracy, because in one it's being ruled by wealthy highly-educated people, and in the other it's being ruled by highly-educated wealthy people. And technocracies, like every other ruling class, have paid propagandists to sing their praises; think of all the nonsense poured out on the idea of the "gentleman" (i.e. a member of Britain's ruling class, it doesn't just mean "proper citizen" like in America) in 19th century English literature.

Scientists are People Too

Mary Meets Dolly

Monday, December 17. 2012

Scientists are People Too

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