Conventions may differ significantly from one field of science to another. The order of authorship in
one field may reflect the level of involvement in the experimental protocols, while in another field it may
reflect an alphabetical listing. Practices for replication of experiments may also differ. Large populationbased
psychology experiments may not be expected to be repeated prior to publication, while assay
results of a physiology experiment may be expected to be repeated several times. Though conventions
themselves may differ, certain consistent themes can be clarified by these interactions. For example, no
matter what the research practice is regarding replication in a particular field, it is ethically unacceptable
for scientists to lie about what they are doing. If they report that they are showing a “representative
experiment” when they only did the experiment once, they are misrepresenting the experiment. An
additional advantage to discussion of conventions is that they help to delineate expectations within a
particular field. They also aid in alleviating confusion when scientists from one field collaborate with
those of another field.
It is also important that scientists discuss their responsibilities vis-à-vis colleagues, students, and
professional institutions. There is a good deal of conflict and confusion among graduate students about
what they can and should expect from their mentors. There is probably also some confusion on the part
of mentors as to what they can and should ask from their students. Responsibilities for sharing
information, for ensuring honesty of one’s co-authors, and for pursuing accusations of whistleblowing
are often at issue for professionals. Which responsibilities should be shouldered by the institution and
which by the individual researcher are valuable to discuss. Professor R from the second case scenario in
Section 1 did benefit from discussion of responsibilities. It was clear from the comments around the table
in the University Seminar that few of his colleagues agreed, as he had assumed, that he had a
responsibility to ensure that his student be an author on a publication. And few believed, as he thought,
that his behavior was an example of moral excellence. He didn’t promise to change his practice, but he
did promise to think more about it.
One aspect of responsibility that is important to note is that all scientists have some responsibility
for their actions. The tool that we used to evaluate student learning the first time we ran our graduate
course pointed out to us that many students responded as though students in the test scenarios were
victims who had little or no responsibility for their own actions. The students analyzed a case in which a
postdoctoral fellow had misrepresented his data on a published graph. The students were able to identify
the part played in the misadventure by a failure of responsibility on the part of the faculty advisor and
the journal editors. Few held the postdoc primarily responsible for the misrepresentation, a point that
had seemed clear to the faculty members who chose the case for analysis. The students preferred to
blame shoddy training and poor mentoring for the postdoc’s misdeed. Each person in a laboratory, on a
publication, and at a research institution has responsibilities to maintain the ethical integrity of the field,
and it is important that these responsibilities be discussed and acknowledged by all practitioners in the
lab: faculty, students, and technicians.
Examples of conventions and responsibilities point up a central advantage to discussions of ethics and
research among scientists. Discussions of ethics force individuals to verbalize their positions on the
issues. Verbalizing one’s position removes the opportunity for the sort of excuse used by Dr. Z in the
first scenario in Section 1. Had Dr. Z been provided a forum to verbalize the fact that knowing the
conventions of the field is central to making ethical decisions, then it would have been much more
difficult for him to have claimed ignorance of such conventions. Allowing one’s positions to remain
unstated makes it far easier to overlook obvious flaws in one’s own arguments.