tribe of science

In response to my earlier post on the allegations of ethical lapses among a group of paleontologists studying aetosaurs, a reader sent me a message posted to a public mailing list of vertebrate paleontologists. The message gives a glimpse of an attitude toward others in one's professional community that, frankly, I find appalling, so I'm going to give you my dissection of it. Please note that the quoted passages below comprise the entire post to the mailing list, save for the poster's (presumably real) name, which I'm excising because I'm not sure I want Google to link him in perpetuity with…
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 New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science were taking advantage of an in-house publishing organ (the NMMNHS Bulletin) to beat other paleontologists to the punch in announcing research findings -- and whether they did so with knowledge of the other researchers' efforts and findings. From the article: The disputed articles name and describe different…
Since much of what I write about the responsible conduct of research takes them for granted, it's time that I wrote a basic concepts post explaining the norms of science famously described by sociologist Robert K. Merton in 1942. [1] Before diving in, here's Merton's description: The ethos of science is that affectively toned complex of values and norms which is held to be binding on the man of science. The norms are expressed in the form of prescriptions, proscriptions, preferences, and permissions. They are legitimatized in terms of institutional values. These imperatives, transmitted…
Regular readers of this blog know that I teach an ethics class aimed at science majors, in which I have a whole semester to set out ethical considerations that matter when you're doing science. There's a lot to cover, so the pace is usually more breakneck than leisurely. Still, it's rather more time for detail and reflection than I get in the four 50 minute lectures of the ethics module in the introduction to engineering class. In that context, my main goal is to persuade the students that ethical considerations aren't completely disconnected from the professional community of engineers…
In light of the ongoing flap about Iowa State University's decision to deny tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, I thought it might be worth looking at an actual university policy on tenure -- the policy in place at my university -- and considering the sorts of judgments required by policies like this. The take-home message is that tenure can't be taken as a "sure thing" if only you produce a certain number of publications. First, it's worth pointing out that each college and university has its own policy on tenure, and my sense is that the policy at my university is rather more explicit than most…
The November 5, 2007 issue of Chemical & Engineering News has an editorial by Rudy M. Baum [UPDATE: notbehind a paywall; apparently all the editorials are freely accessible online] looking at the "Google model" for disseminating information. Baum writes: I did a Yahoo search on "information wants to be free." The first hit returned was for Wikipedia, the free, collaborative online encyclopedia; according to it, the phrase was first pronounced by Stewart Brand at the first Hackers' Conference in 1984. Brand was quoted as saying: "On the one hand, information wants to be expensive, because…
With just over 10 hours left in our ScienceBlogs/Donors Choose Blogger Challenge 2007, it's time to think about what happens next. Supporting classroom teachers with your funds is a noble gesture, but it's just a start. To really get math and science literacy (and enthusiasm) to the levels we'd like to see, your time and personal involvement can do an awful lot. In this post you'll find ideas from ScienceBloggers about how to turn your good intentions into action. From Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority: There are a lot of children in this country who don't have much in the way of…
Like Revere and the folks at The Scientist, I received the series of emails from "ACS insider" questioning the way the American Chemical Society is running its many publications -- and in particular, how compensation of ACS executives (and close ties to the chemical industry) might influence editorial policies at ACS publications. The ACS disputes the details of the anonymous emails, so I won't have much to say about those. But as an ACS member (who is, at present, participating in an ACS regional meeting), I'd like to ask the Society for some clarity. Does each member matter to the ACS?…
This is a question that occurred to me earlier this month when I had occasion to observe an undergraduate laboratory course: If something goes wrong in the lab, do you tell the lab instructor? The "something wrong" could range from breaking a piece of glassware, to getting a stick with a syringe (of non-biohazardous material), to getting a stick with a syringe (of biohazardous or radioactive material), to spilling a nasty reagent. Of course, it could include other mishaps not enumerated here. I'm not as interested in hearing when students should tell the lab instructor about a mishap, but…
While discussing poop with a bunch of life scientists -- in particular, we were discussing its utility in a wide variety of research projects -- one of the scientists at the table related a rousing cheer which I simply must share: Starts with an S and it ends with a T. It comes out of you and it comes out of me. I know what you're thinking, but don't call it that! Let's be scientific and call it SCAT! I'm told this has them in stitches at sixth grade camp.
At least, for scientists in the UK. The BBC reports that the chief scientific advisor to the British government, Professor Sir David King, has set out an ethics code of "seven principles aimed at building trust between scientists and society". The seven principles: Act with skill and care, keep skills up to date Prevent corrupt practice and declare conflicts of interest Respect and acknowledge the work of other scientists Ensure that research is justified and lawful Minimise impacts on people, animals and the environment Discuss issues science raises for society Do not mislead; present…
On Stranger Fruit, there's a response by historian of science Naomi Oreskes to recent criticisms of her 2004 paper in Science discussing the consensus position regarding anthropogenic climate change. While the whole trajectory of these sorts of "engagements" is interesting in its way -- attacks on claims that weren't made, critiques of methodologies that weren't used, and so forth -- the part of Oreskes' response that jumped out at me had to do with the kinds of issues on which scientists focus when they're talking to each other in the peer-reviewed literature: In the original AAAS talk on…
This is a follow-up, of a sort, to the previous post on why serious discussions (as opposed to shouting matches or PR campaigns) about the use of animals in research seem to be so difficult to have. One of the contentious issues that keeps coming up in the comments is how (if at all) such discussions ought to deal with prior bad acts that may not be representative of what's happened since, or even of the actions of most of the scientific community at the time of those prior bad acts. My sense, however, is that the real issue is who we think we can engage in a serious reasoned dialogue with…
Perhaps you've heard the news that Leona Helmsley died yesterday. Her obituaries have noted the the "Queen of Mean" came to be viewed as the embodiment of the greed of the 1980s (at least as it played out in the world of Manhattan real estate). The public didn't like her much. I have no real basis for making a judgment about whether she was a nice person deep down, whether she became a nicer person after doing jail time for tax evasion, or whether she was kind to animals. But I would like to have a look at something she was widely reported to have said (but denied saying): "Only the little…
Today, Inside Higher Ed has an article about the recent decline of peer reviewed papers authored by professors in top five economics departments in high profile economics journals. A paper by MIT economics professor Glenn Ellison, "Is Peer Review in Decline?," considers possible explanations for this decline, and the Inside Higher ed article looks at the possible impacts of this shift. The alternative threatening the peer reviewed journals here is the web, since scholars can post their papers directly to their websites (or blogs) rather than letting them languish with pokey referees. But I…
In the July 16 issue of Chemical & Engineering News (secure behind a paywall), the article "FBI Reaches Out to Campuses" [1] caught my attention. The gist of it is that academic scientists are increasingly the targets of foreign espionage, where the stakes have less to do with national security than potentially huge economic losses. The FBI would like to help academic scientists avoid being dupes and giving scientists in other countries an unfair advantage. From the article: [FBI chief of counterintelligence strategy Thomas J.] Mahlik notes that classified research usually starts off…
When I was growing up in New Jersey, hurricanes were "on the radar" for us, one of many possible (if infrequent) weather patterns during summer and fall. Later, in my first semester of college in Massachusetts, the morning of my first broadcast on the college radio station was made memorable by the landfall of Hurricane Gloria; I remember the name of the storm because I closed my show by playing the U2 song "Gloria" before signing off the air at 7 am. (The governor of the Massachusetts had just declared a state of emergency, although it wasn't until some 30 minutes later that the trustees…
In my last post, I allowed as how the questions which occupy philosophers of science might be of limited interest or practical use to the working scientist.* At least one commenter was of the opinion that this is a good reason to dismantle the whole discipline: [T]he question becomes: what are the philosophers good for? And if they don't practice science, why should we care what they think? And, I pretty much said in the post that scientists don't need to care about what the philosophers of science think. Then why should anyone else? Scientists don't need to care what historians,…
Prompted by my discussion of Medawar and recalling that once in the past I called him a gadfly (although obviously I meant it in the good way), Bill Hooker drops another Medawar quotation on me and asks if I'll bite: If the purpose of scientific methodology is to prescribe or expound a system of enquiry or even a code of practice for scientific behavior, then scientists seem to be able to get on very well without it. Most scientists receive no tuition in scientific method, but those who have been instructed perform no better as scientists than those who have not. Of what other branch of…
Following up on the earlier discussions of intentional unclarity and bad writing in scientific papers, I thought this might be a good opportunity to consider an oft-cited article on scientific papers, P.B. Medawar's "Is the Scientific Paper Fraudulent?" [1] He answers that question in the affirmative only three paragraphs in: The scientific paper in its orthodox form does embody a totally mistaken conception, even a travesty, of the nature of scientific thought. Medawar's major complaint has to do with the "orthodox form" and the story it tells about how scientific knowledge is produced.…