Adventures in Ethics and Science

How to discourage scientific fraud.

Category: Institutional ethics

In my last post, I mentioned Richard Gallagher's piece in The Scientist, Fairness for Fraudsters, wherein Gallagher argues that online archived publications ought to be scrubbed of the names of scientists sanctioned by the ORI for misconduct so that they...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 1:32 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Cleaning up scientific competition: an interview with Sean Cutler (part 2).

Category: Ethical research

Incentivizing ethical behavior, navigating power dynamics, and a miraculous plan involving three buttons.

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 8:43 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Cleaning up scientific competition: an interview with Sean Cutler (part 1).

Category: Ethical research

Meet Sean Cutler, a biology professor who argues that scientific competition doesn't have to get down and dirty.

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 5:03 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Impediments to dialogue about animal research (part 3).

Category: Communication

Are the existing regulations on animal use too loose, or too strict? (Can we answer the question without knowing what the regulations actually require?)

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 6:54 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Freelance chemistry for fun and (illegal) profit.

You know how graduate students are always complaining that their stipends are small compared to the cost of living? It seems that some graduate students find ways to supplement that income ... ways that aren't always legal. For example, from...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 4:36 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Standards for industry-funded research.

In the August 25, 2008 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, there's an interview with Carol Henry (behind a paywall). Henry is a consultant who used to be vice president for industry performance programs at the American Chemistry Council (ACC)....

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 12:18 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

The system as it currently exists.

Over at DrugMonkey, PhysioProf delivers a mission statement: Our purpose here at DrugMonkey is to try to help people identify and cultivate the tools required to succeed within the system of academic science as it currently exists. We did not...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 4:20 PM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

How committed are paleontologists to objectivity (in questions of ethical conduct)?

Objectively judging facts? Objectively judging friends?

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 4:03 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Paleontologists behaving badly.

A recent news item by Rex Dalton in Nature [1] caught my attention. From the title ("Fossil reptiles mired in controversy") you might think that the aetosaurs were misbehaving. Rather, the issue at hand is whether senior scientists at the...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 12:51 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks

Is a fake university a step up or down from a diploma mill?

Saying you've seen everything is just asking the universe to do you one better. So I won't. Still, this story nearly required grubbing around the floor on my hands and knees to find the location to which my jaw had...

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Posted by Janet D. Stemwedel at 2:10 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks