During our faculty University Seminar in Research Ethics we found that nearly every issue engendered
lively debate. Nearly every point discussed became a point of contention. As an exercise at one of the
University Seminars, we had participants evaluate a series of case vignettes. Scenarios included funding,
collaboration, publication, sexual relationships between mentors and students, fabrication, and
maintaining lab notebooks. The responses made clear that there was little agreement between scientists
on some fundamental issues. There was no agreement, for example, on who should keep lab notebooks
and on how long they should be kept. There was little agreement on who should be first author on a
paper from a collaborative project. Faculty differed widely on perceived appropriateness of studentmentor
sexual relationships and on what constituted an appropriate response to reports of data
fabrication.