Chemical Ethics

Introduction to Field

The Public Health Service regulation (42 C.F.R. Part 50, Subpart A) defines scientific misconduct as "fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or other practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the scientific community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research. It does not include honest error or honest differences in interpretation or judgments of data."  Each branch of the sciences has different major ethical issues, including fraud, misconduct, the mentor/mentee relationship, selection of test subjects, and the purpose of research itself..  Research ethics has recently sprung to national attention with highly publicized cases of fraud, plagiarism, and other instances of professional misconduct.  These cases do not just involve crack scientists creating cold fusion in their garage; one of the most famous controversies involved the revelation that Dr. David Baltimore, a Nobel winner then at MIT, and his research assistant may have fabricated data in a published paper.

The last few years have also seen interest in teaching chemical ethics rise.  The federal government now requires many graduate students receiving NIH and NSF grant monies to pass a seminar or other course on research ethics.  Many institutions now offer ethics instruction either as part of introductory classes or as a course unto itself.  If students do not learn ethics in school, and if they are not taught to apply ethics to their coursework as well as their research, how can we expect them to be ethical researchers once they are on their own?  The problem, of course, is that many of the professors and other instructors expected to teach these issues have never had formal education in the field themselves.  There are many resources available for teaching ethics; this guide is designed to help the beginning lecturer or student identify starting points in the field.