Trends is an informal newsletter for persons involved in "Teaching Research Ethics" (TRE), a workshop at Indiana University-Bloomington; it is edited by Kenneth D. Pimple, TRE project director, and is published at his whim.
News items, questions, and suggestions are welcome. Get in touch with us at: The Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics and American Institutions, 410 North Park Avenue, Indiana University; Bloomington, Indiana 47405; Telephone: (812) 855-0261, FAX: (812) 855-3315; pimple@indiana.edu.
The key feature of TRE is, of course, the workshop, but we intend to continue our support of the faculty members who participate in the workshop long after the event itself. For one thing, we will encourage 1994 workshop participants to return to Bloomington in 1995 for the one-day conference that will wrap up the 1995 workshop. Part of the 1995 conference will be set aside for a few TRE participants to talk about their experiences in implementing what they learned in the workshop this year.
Another major vehicle for continued support and networking will be this newsletter. Trends will be used to publish notes and queries, syllabi, bibliographies, teaching strategies, news, and anything else that comes our way that will be useful and of interest to our readers, including occasional essays on topics of interest (a humble example can be found below). This newsletter s success will depend largely on contributions and involvement by its readers.
To make contributing easier, this newsletter will maintain an informal, friendly style; you need not think of submitting to Trends as being comparable to submitting something for a real publication. Send me news, questions, or ideas, and I ll worry about formatting and polishing. Feel free to send contributions via e-mail (you can find our address on page 2).
Trends will not have a rigid publication schedule, which means we will not have a copy deadline, so feel free to send contributions at any time. My guess is that Trends will come out no more than once a month.
I hope you find this worth your while! If not, please let me know why not, and I ll do what I can to remedy the situation.
The article is about John O M (sic) Bockris, a distinguished professor of chemistry at Texas A&M University, and the controversy surrounding one of his recent research projects. The article does not carry many details about the project, characterizing it in the first paragraph as "a project to turn mercury into gold," and later stating that Bockris "has said that in a few experiments his research team was able to produce tiny amounts of gold from base metals."
The article raises two questions. One is whether the research itself is legitimate; the other is about Bockris's funding. As the article states
The furor over Mr. Bockris's work deepened when it became known that his research had been financed by a California businessman who was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The businessman, William Telander, has been charged with fraud in connection with an international finance scam.
The university is investigating Bockris, but not on the first issue. According to Nancy Sawtelle, a spokeswoman for Robert A. Kennedy, vice-president for research and associate provost for research and graduate studies,
We're not looking at whether the research was foolish. . . . The issue is whether there was any impropriety in accepting funding, and whether he misrepresented what he was doing to these investors.
Funding does not seem to be the issue of most interest to Bockris's colleagues, however.
Eleven members of the chemistry department have sent Mr. Bockris a letter urging him to resign. In a letter to the provost, 24 of the university's 32 distinguished professors have asked that he be stripped of his title of distinguished professor.
The letter is quoted as saying,
We believe that Bockris's recent activities have made the terms "Texas A&M" and "Aggie" objects of derisive laughter throughout the world among scientists and engineers, not to mention a large segment of the lay public. . . . The "Alchemy" caper is, everywhere, a sure trigger for sniggering at our university. And so it should be. For a trained scientist to claim, or support anyone else's claim, to have transmuted elements is difficult for us to believe and is no more acceptable than to claim to have invented a gravity shield, revived the dead, or to be mining green cheese on the moon.
Part of Bockris's colleagues animosity might stem from the fact that "five years ago, [he] claimed to have produced results in his laboratory that supported the theory of cold fusion."
The two issues raised - funding and foolishness - are clearly separable. The article does not give enough details on either issue to draw any conclusions. Clearly, with regard to funding, if Bockris acted improperly, he should be dealt with appropriately. But what should be done about his allegedly foolish research? The most interesting question raised is this: Should outlandish or foolish research be censured?
Once that question is raised, a second begs for attention: What about innovative, creative, beyond-the-cutting-edge research?
There has been considerable controversy over whether the definition of misconduct in science should include, along with "fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism," a clause like "other serious deviations from accepted research practices." An obvious argument for including such a phrase is that it seems unlikely that fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism are really the only three possible kinds of scientific misconduct. The "other serious deviations" clause saves us from a legalistic, exhaustive listing of all possible kinds of misconduct, leaving the issue to common sense. Does it look like a serious deviation from accepted research practices? Then it's misconduct.
The objection to the "other serious deviations" phrase is also obvious. Common sense is not all that common. The phrase is obviously not intended to discourage innovative and creative science, but it will be put into effect by bureaucrats, and how can we possibly trust them to understand what is and what is not a "serious deviation" in the intended sense? (See Responsible Science, pp. 27ff and 180-181 for some objections to this phrase.)
Any ethical or moral objection to Bockris's "alchemical" research would have to fall under something like the "other serious deviations" phrase (assuming, of course, that he was acting foolishly at worst, not fraudulently). Is such an objection legitimate? Does the idea of academic freedom cover what any reasonable scientist would identify as foolishness? And should a fool be demoted?
I do not mean to suggest that I take Bockris to be a fool, nor the opposite - I do not have enough information to draw a conclusion on that question. I do not think that fools should be promoted, but it is not clear to me how quick we should be to demote them.
One thing does seem clear from this episode: Academic freedom is not simply a matter of doing good research, nor is it simply a moral or ethical issue. The chemists and other professors who object to Bockris's work act as if academic freedom is an important political issue, whether they would admit to that characterization or not. This is not really surprising, since ethics, politics, and life in academe are often intricately intertwined.
Mangan, Katherine S. 1994. "A&M's 'Alchemy Caper': Texas professors say chemist's effort to turn mercury into gold is embarrassing." The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 19, p. A19.
Panel on Scientific Responsibility and the Conduct of Research. Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy. National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine. 1992. Responsible Science: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process, Volume 1. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Responses to this essay, positive or negative, are welcome, as are similar essays aimed at stimulating thought and discussion.
Last updated: 22 January 1996
URL: http://www.indiana.edu/~poynter/tre1-1.html
Comments: pimple@indiana.edu
Copyright 1996, The Trustees of Indiana University