Ethics 101

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/21/science/21ETHI.html?th

 

Ethics 101: A Course About the PitfallsBy GINA KOLATA

 

Published: October 21, 2003

 

 

RICHMOND, Va. — To the uninitiated, ethics in science can sound as

straightforward as the West Point honor code: a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal

or tolerate those who do. Just substitute " scientist " for " cadet, " and that

should be it.

 

But the 50 or so graduate students taking Dr. Francis L. Macrina's ethics course

at Virginia Commonwealth University are getting quite a different view of

research ethics, one that asks troubling questions about professional

relationships and how to draw moral lines in the sand if their own careers are

at stake.

 

It is a view that reflects a growing realization among researchers that the real

ethics issues in science are not so much the scandals that rock the field

periodically — charges of outright fabrications, invented data, theft of

another's research. Instead, they say, they worry about more insidious problems

that can corrupt science from within and push promising researchers who are

uninformed about the rules out the door.

 

And so, increasingly, scientists, like Dr. Macrina, who is a microbiologist, are

formally teaching students the manners and mores of research today.

 

His syllabus reflects the issues, which include tricky questions of data

manipulation and conflicts of interest.

 

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, the subject was the delicate relationship between

graduate students and the professors who act as their mentors. What about the

mentor who encourages students to compete with one another? Or one who insists

on being the lead author on a published article that was based on a student's

ideas and a student's work?

 

Every year, scientists say, more is at risk. With increasing corporate funding,

there are questions of who owns data and what constitutes a conflict of

interest. With data sharing on the Internet, there are questions of what is

being revealed, and to whom, prior to publication. With larger and larger

collaborations, there are questions of who is an author.

 

" This is a new discipline, " said Dr. Michael Kalichman, who teaches a similar

course at the University of California at San Diego. " All of us are in many ways

floundering. What should we be teaching about, and how should we teach it so it

is effective? "

 

The scientists say that there is a reason why they, not professional ethicists,

are doing the teaching.

 

" We may not know as much as we would like to about ethics, but by and large

people who are ethicists are not going to know much about the practical issues

of doing science, " said Dr. Michael Zigmond, a neurology researcher at the

University of Pittsburgh. " They may end up providing advice that will not work,

and they may have a hard time relating to our students. They are coming from a

different place. "

 

He and other scientists said they were largely self-taught in scientific ethics,

by necessity. " The truth is that somebody like me, who runs a lab, we deal with

ethical issues several times a day, " Dr. Zigmond said. And they have watched

graduate students falter. " Usually, these kids are good at evaluating research

questions, " Dr. Zigmond said. " But when they step outside their field into

ethics, it's as though they think their capacity to logically analyze a

situation is suspended. "

 

It is a discipline born, in large part, from a federal mandate. In 1989, the

National Institutes of Health began requiring that graduate students supported

by its grants have training in the responsible conduct of research. No money was

provided for such training, and none is provided now, and many schools took care

of it with half-day seminars or Web sites. But more and more, universities are

instituting real courses, like the one Dr. Macrina teaches, and requiring

students to take them.

 

There are no national data on the number of courses being offered, but

scientists, like Dr. Zigmond, who teaches a seminar on how to teach them, and

Dr. Macrina and Dr. Kalichman, who advise universities that are setting up

courses, say their services are increasingly in demand.

 

 

Continued

 

 

 

 

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