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Public Science and Norms of Truthfulness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Louis M. Guenin
Louis M. Guenin
Affiliation:
A member of the Division of Medical Ethics of Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
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Extract

The phenomenon of misconduct in scientific research illustrates how great can be the social damage of not knowing the incidence of a malady. Many urgings about such phenomenon have predicated views about the extent of institutional and governmental vigilance on observers' differing surmises about how frequently misconduct occurs. Such is the measurement error of extant data about incidence1 that one can venture little more than the deliberately imprecise conclusion that “misconduct is neither common nor rare.”

Type
Special Section: Rejuvenating Research Ethics
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , Summer 1996 , pp. 325 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

Notes

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6. 45 C.F.R. § 689.1(a) and 42 C.F.R. § 50.102.

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8. National Academy of Sciences, pp. 25–27.Google Scholar

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16. An account of this is provided by Jonsen, AR, Toulmin, S. The Abuse of Casuistry. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1988, pp. 203–213.Google Scholar

17. The case is discussed in Guenin, LM, Davis, BD. Scientific reasoning and due process. Science and Engineering Ethics 1996;2:47–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

18. The “misleading” standard appears in the most robust current version of misrepresentation, the antifraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.

19. American Historical Association. Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct. Washington, D. C., 1993.Google ScholarPubMed See also American Association of University Professors. Statement on Plagiarism. Washington, DC, 1989.Google ScholarPubMed

20. In re Dr. James Freisheim, Office of Research Integrity Case No. 92–07 (April, 1992).Google Scholar

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23. Wheeler, DL. A bitter feud over authorship. The Chronicle of Higher Education 1995;06 2:A8.Google Scholar