Heroes and Villains

It's nice to see all of the recent positive press coverage on Charles Darwin. It is refreshing because it often seems that the scientific press is more interested in publicizing the bad behavior of scientists rather than our accomplishments. In part, I am offended by the public airing of our "dirty laundry," but I also find myself drawn to stories about scientists behaving badly. I am not so interested in the miscreants themselves. Rather, I am fascinated by our reaction to them.

Although we fear that the public airing of science's dirty laundry will damage the public perception of scientists, surveys do not support that. Nearly 90% of respondents of a National Science Foundation survey in 2001 agreed that "scientific researchers are dedicated people who work for the good of humanity." All fields of human endeavor, including science, have aberrant individuals, and the general public seems to accept this. However, it is scientists who are most vocal in their condemnation of scientific misbehavior. I think this is because these public instances of misbehavior give us a chance to reinforce our shared sense of morality.

Unlike most professional fields, science doesn't have a formalized authority structure, and we scientists don't need a license to ply our trade. Instead, science is a field that depends almost completely on the honor and integrity of its individuals. The community's reaction to instances of misbehavior serves to reinforce this social compact, helping to keep everyone in line, so to speak.

I know of many examples of important lessons taught by the public disgrace of my fellow scientists. A notable one was the "cold fusion" fiasco that unfolded while I was a faculty member at the University of Utah. The unforgivable mistake made by Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann was not the fact that they postulated a new type of nuclear process, but rather that they chose to announce their ideas at a public press conference, bypassing the normal channels of scientific communication. This publicity gave their idea an authority that it did not deserve, resulting in the wasted time and effort of hundreds of scientists, not to mention millions of dollars of research funding. This incident demonstrated to me the value of the peer review process (see this month's editorial, "Citation Violations") and also showed that overselling your research cannot only hurt your reputation, but that of your institutional colleagues. (I was ribbed by non-Utah colleagues about this incident for years.)

I also learned positive lessons from many other publicized stories of scientific misbehavior. These include the story of David Baltimore's colleague Thereza Imanishi-Kari, who was accused of fabricating data by a disgruntled postdoc. Called "The Fraud Case That Evaporated" by the New York Times, this incident showed that sloppy recordkeeping can sometimes be indistinguishable from fraud, and that whistleblowers are not always right. It served to put a brake on the efforts of self-appointed guardians of scientific morality, and also demonstrated the necessity of presuming innocence of those accused of scientific misconduct.

Positive scientific accomplishments seem to serve a distinctly different purpose. They show us the accomplishments we should strive for, rather than the behavior we should emulate. It is easy to admire the accomplishments of James Watson, but do we really want to emulate his behavior? Personally, you can be as virtuous as Mother Theresa, but unless you are reporting some breakthrough, the scientific press is unlikely to care.

Despite the constructive lessons that might arise from seeing what happens to badly behaving scientists, positive role models are still essential in our personal development. And here's where good behavior is important. There are many different scientists that I consider my personal heroes, but they attained that status mostly by their personal virtues, rather than their accomplishments. Although Stanley Cohen won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of growth factors, he is one of my heroes because of his honesty, scientific integrity, and the way he treated his colleagues and students. And you don't have to look in the hallowed halls of science for positive role models—think of your first adviser, or a favorite teacher.

The best role models are those scientists that we have some chance of actually emulating. Scientific discoveries require hard work, but also a good deal of luck. Being a good person, however, is mostly a matter of choice. Personally, I reserve most of my admiration for people's choices rather than their luck.

Steven Wiley is a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Fellow and director of PNNL's Biomolecular Systems Initiative.

We usually think of unethical conduct as referring to

falsifying data, exaggeration of importance, improper

referencing, being influenced by, or conforming our results to, our
funders, mishandling human (or animal) subjects

and such. This misconduct is usually done by junior

scientists resulting from their insecurity. But misconduct can be far
more serious, and dangerous, and reach to the
highest levels. And it can hurt science, and society, very badly.

Why does this matter? The credibility of science, every

science, is crucial. If people distrust one science, if they

believe scientists, any scientists, lie, can't be trusted, they

will not distinguish, they will trust none.

Consider the large amount of quackery that people believe, some that
can be quite harmful. But most people accept

that it is quackery because scientists say so.

Consider the difficulty in getting evolution accepted (in part

because it has been so badly mishandled by the science

community). Then there is the distrust of vaccines. If people lost
confidence in scientists it could lead to a

medical catastrophe. Too many would like to believe global warming is a fake.

If people lost faith in scientists that could lead to several catastrophe's.

The credibility of science is crucial. Does anyone care? It seems not.

Consider physics. Look at the last appendix of the book


Our Almost Impossible Universe:
Why the laws of nature make the existence of humans extraordinarily unlikely


and the blog
impunv.wordpress.com
or
impunv.blogspot.com.

As strange as it is, that is what fills the pages of the leading
physics journals.

Here we consider only one topic. There is in "physics" a

very popular theory, string theory. This has no rationale

except that it violently disagrees with reality, which seems

to make it very attractive. Among other problems it

requires the dimension of space to be 10 or 11, quite

different from the actual dimension of 3+1. Aside from the

slight problem of violently disagreeing with experiment there

is a rigorous mathematical proof that reality must be

correct. A universe is possible only in dimension 3+1. See

book and for a summary the blog. String theory must be, as

it so obviously is, nonsense and not only for this reason.

Physicists are wasting much government money and their

careers, on this nonsense, and lying to the public. And this

is widely known, but no one cares.

However weird this seems everything here can be

documented. Why does everyone ignore this misconduct,

which is quite widely known? If anyone really is

interested in understanding ethics and its violation it is essential that this

be looked into. There are some fascinating research questions --- of
great importance.

Who knows about this and just ignores it, just doesn't care?
. One officer of
the APS
checked the proof and despite his best efforts was unable to find any
weaknesses or counterexamples. He did react. He said I will face legal
action if I said he verified the proof, which he did. Rather than
informing his

members that what they were doing is wrong, and that they were wasting
their careers, he tried to cover this up. And this is widely known.

Who else knows about this? Not merely physicists. Many leaders of the science

community (mostly life scientists),What will this do to the

credibility of science. And no one cares, no one cares, not about
science, not about their colleagues. Certainly not about the public
interest. Why?

This must be looked at, it is a major, very important, research topic
in ethics.

This has to be looked at, it is a major research in ethics. is
What so striking about this is the contempt these people have, not only for

truth, not only for science, not only for the public welfare, the taxpayer,

but for their own colleagues. That they are wasting their careers on work that

is known wrong, is of no concern to them. What selfishness!

Scientists as a whole are inherently no more moral than the general public. What needs to really to make scientists act more ethically is the improvement or revision of the check and balance system to discourage or penalize them from professional misconducts. Leaving them to their own vice to self-monitor and self- restrain is like leaving the drivers to drive safely and courteously with no traffic signs and lights.

The work of Mr. Grassley should continue. He has fought against the corruption now present even in the most hallowed halls of academia.
"In less than two years, his committee?s push to reveal ties between such medical stars as Joseph Biederman of Harvard and Charles Nemeroff of Emory and others with industry have provoked major upheavals in university policies around the nation limiting the amount of outside money their researchers can take directly from drug makers, and restricting roles on company speakers bureaus and as consultants. Universities dread getting calls from Grassley?s staff about money trails involving researchers, a medical expert at one very large southern university said."

Link
LINK

To safeguard public health and safety, rigorous scrutiny - how research was conducted and reported and who was paid by whom - should happen often, on a random basis, everywhere.

On the contrary! We need all scientists, without a single exception, to completely avoid scientific misbehavior!

Unfortunately, this is an unachievable ideal. We, therefore, need to keep vigilant, and expose and publicly publicize, any case of scientific misbehavior, when it is detected. The only reason this needs to be done is to discard any claims that are based on scientific misconduct.

By the same token, we need to expose and publicize, all detected scientific errors, even if they were quite innocently, or unintentionally, made.

As for going to the public news-media, as the "discoverers" of "co;d fusion" did, they should certainly have gone to the refereed science journals first. Moreover, they never intended, and never did, completely ignore such journals. My intelligent guess is that they innocently believed they had made a great discovery, and simply could not did not withstand any possible delay in bringing it to public attention.

However, circumventing refereed scientific journals does not always qualify as scientific misconduct. A situation may arise where a scientist may have no choice; especially when forced to face the very tough opposition that justified scientific revolutions must often face. And this brings me to my favorite issue, i.e. the fully justified opposition to the sensational "discovery" of the honeybee "dance language", first announced by v. Frisch in a scientific journal in 1946. The issue concerns the very foundations of the whole field of Animal (including human) Behavior, and the very foundations of Biology. The way in which the ensuing controversy has progressed, concerns the very foundations of Science itself.

The opposition to the honeybee "dance language" story was first launched by Wenner and his team, in 1967, in Science, i.e. in a very prestigious refereed journal; even though by then the "discovery" had already become a revered ruling paradigm. The publication resulted in an open, fair debate, also published in Science of the same year, between them and v. Frisch.It was followed by another challenge to the "dance language" story, published by Wenner and his team, in Science of 1969. This publication met with a scathing, but utterly silly letter by Dawkins, also published in Science of 1969. The biology editor of the journal was, however, unduly awed by that silly letter, to the point of unjustifiably denying the team the right to self defence. In 1973 the team was still able to publish another anti-"dance language" article, this time in the famous refereed journal Nature. Later in 1973, v. Frisch was awarded a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the non-existent honeybee "dance language"!

Such tough resistance hardly left "dance language" opponents no choice, except to give up, or circumvent refereed scientific journals in any way possible. You can try to publish in non-refereed journals, (if you are fortunate enough to find an open-minded editor who will publish your submissions), "publish" on various websites on the Internet, go to the general news-media... I can tell you that all these means are not terribly effective, when you are fighting against a science-fiction story that won a Nobel Prize. But the "dance language" controversy is still going on, more than forty years after it began, among others, because the more recalcitrant "dance language" supporters are, the deeper opponents dig into that story, and the deeper they dig, the more they realize how utterly stupid this story is.

There is nothing new about a situation that may leave a scientist no choice but to try and circumvent recognized authority. Galilei tried it, in the last book he published, where he attempted to create the impression he was abiding by the order of the Vatican, not to publish anything more about his "heresy". We know that his attempt to outwit the Vatican, failed!

Do not, however, misjudge scientists who are left with no choice, but to quit, or circumvent the refereed scientific journals!

It is necessary to temper our thinking on this morality bit. It has been wisely remarked that he who thinks only in terms of the obvious will never understand why men are also mammals! The discussion is more related to ethics and not morality. The point is that ethics keeps the question open as to why one should be good, while morality goes for the obvious, convenient, apparent and immediate. What we understand morality as a white Anglo-Saxon protestant (practicing or otherwise) will not be the same if you are trying to survive in Somalia or Burundi. It is equally fallacious to think that the two cannot share the same values based on anthropological theories because you could be sued for writing wrong texts and interpretations of tribal behavior. It is really a major source of confusion that we cross the lines between convention and expediency. I know of one instance of a medical doctor who got worried about rising levels of arsenic in ground waters with consequent virtual epidemic of arsenic poisoning and went from pillar to post to advertise this fact. He also came to us in a grant seeking operation to study the extent of the problem. The reaction of the committee, I was appalled to note, was an objection to he going to press and not sending in scholarly publications! I failed in making a case for him since these patriarchs were very keen on propriety and not the social problem!
Look at the paltry reasons on which we wish to judge and moralize science and its administration. One bandwagon is that money would be wasted in infructuous approaches. I wonder how one would have reacted to the prediction of a fullerene, say some 50 years ago, by which time the other forms of carbon were all well known. Alchemy with the detestable and sole purpose of making gold from other elements occupied all the time though without it, the chemistry, as we know, would not have evolved. On the other hand, I can count many urban legends in science though I will reserve my judgment on them in any open forum. Urban legends are a funny thing. You try to comment on them?the editorial world will crack down upon you and you will have a poor chance of publishing anything anywhere. It is so near true and verification so evasive with the current methods that the legend endures. There must be an isolable gene for every biological manifestation and there must be neuroendocrine basis why you don?t buy the same shirt all the time but will smoke the same brand of cigarette for a long time. Since we presume that connectivities and causal chains are a must, we also presume that these arise from what we have ready in hand. We go for the obvious!
So, is there a way to describe ourselves in more human and humane terms rather than as guardians of wisdom and embodiments of human perfection? Perhaps pack behavior comes closest. After all, there are good dogs and bad dogs. We are not really as free as we think we are since we belong to a structure that has its own pecking orders, preferences and dynamics. We simply obey them. Some times we have to examine whether we also would have shot a few people simply because we have been given an order. Was not that statement made in every war? Do we call defense scientists who make napalm and nerve gas social deviants? Simply because we are not placed in compromising situations, do we judge others by criteria over and above what our own capacities really are but we do not know because we have not faced the music? Or do we reject a paper, simply because it does not agree with my views or we don?t see much future in that line of inquiry?
There was an excellent comparison in method of science by Feyerabend (I think) attacking Popperian na￯ve view of falsification. He compared scientists with burglars. Both have a professional approach, a peer structure, latest technology, and tested methods and so on. If facts alone matter (interestingly, a fact is a fact only post facto!) where is the difference?

One only has to look at one agricultural journal and several letters to the editor in which a person clearly testifies that the data reported in the journal are incorrect - but no one has the courage to do what is right.
People who come forward are slandered and "public relations " games are played -without ever a real investigation being made.

Scientific misconduct is obvious - public and apparent to all - without any resolution.

Last I checked, the Navy was still funding research on cold fusion. And there have been articles on it from time to time. For example, there is a thread that is trying to figure out if the effect seen was a result of a specific kind of crystalline imperfection resulting in nano-scale cracks that narrowed from the size of a water molecule down to that of a hydrogen atom and then smaller.

There are quite a few ways to make table-top fusion besides the infamous cold method. The problem is not making fusion happen, its getting more energy out than went in. :-)

Quite right. I usually disagree with this particular author, but I agree on this, with an exception. He speaks as if scientific misconduct were uncommon and liars, theives and cut-throats were hard to find. They are not hard to find, they are extremely common, and science, particularly bioscience related to medicine, has a huge housecleaning to do.

But we don't have the guts for it, as exemplified by this article that suggests that it is a rare event and that most scientists criticize it. The fact is that most of us stick our heads in the sand.

That is why Congress is stepping in. Grassley's committee has been holding hearings for over a year now, and his staff has too much to get on schedule.

What this means is that we are going to see legislation. Our gutless head-in-the-sand approach to the massive problem of fraud, chicanery and lies in science is biting us.

I disagree with the author that it is so very good to see how scientists react to the few bad actors. The general public always remembers and always will remember the sensational, and not so much the reaction to it; hence the author's yearly ribbing on "cold fusion." Besides, simply for the marketing aspect, every sector of society, manufacturing, politics, etc., has taken on that intensive surprised/apologetic reactionary element, so the shine that we have always placed on ourselves has worn off.

Frankly, I would rather see solid science in the news today and every day. Maybe then that percentage will grow to 100.

All too often in daily scientific life, I encounter examples of harsh criticism that are not balanced out by positive reinforcement of "good behavior" that is either an example of scientific integrity or simply a personal attribute that make for a good work environment. Our hero worship seems to be confined to those who are already big names with plenty of awards, and not to those who do darn good work in the trenches. How many compliments does one hear at research group seminars? Compare that to the number of negative comments, and you get my point.

Considering the latest research (e.g., Triple tracks in CR-39 as the result of Pd?D Co-deposition: evidence of energetic neutrons), I wonder who the true "villains" of that particular example may just turn out to be? While this may be close to your heart, I would think that there are more appropriate examples to use in order to prove your point. In fact, there are many examples of the scientific community being the villain and the up-start scientist(s) being the hero. Those are much more fun to read about and brings humility back to a group that all too often takes itself much too seriously.