Interesting Report

The Committee on Publishing Ethics (science and medical journals) reported on the fun things scientists do when trying to get their research into ink. For those of you who don't know, "publish or perish" is a very real thing for scientists trying to make careers for themselves in research. To make matters worse, the journals where you are published also factor into the way your career is perceived. There are tiers of journals: the excellent, the good, the so-so, and the jokes. If you've been published fifteen times, but only in the latter two of the four tiers, you ain't going anywhere. As the Nature Science article indicates, some scientists try to weasle their way around the system by getting one paper published in more than one journal. The numbers they toss out really are small. But it sounds more like this committee is focused on medical journals. I'd be curious to see the numbers on science journals and also read about what they deemed "unethical" and how they found their cases. There are a few subtle practices that aren't considered unethical, per se, but they certainly aren't above-board. I have no idea how some committee could ferret them out. And this report only studied cases where the editor of the medical journal in question smelled something fishy. It's great that people are looking into this and trying to find more ways to keep medical research honest.

Science ethics is a strange beast. And it's a bitch to study in your traditional lecture method. Case studies often evolve into an infinite series of "what-ifs" that drive even the most balanced person to strongly consider going postal in class. But if actually suffering through the class means we cut down on research misconduct, then I'm all for it. However, HD exists because of my own experiences with fellow students in a science ethics class. Some of the attitudes I heard expressed there truly terrified me - especially when we consider where science can take us in the next few years. Which brings me to the point of HD. Are we really taking the time and effort to ask the right questions of ourselves now?