Introduc)on: Why is ethics important for science? Lecture 01 January 20, 2015 “Ethical issues in astronomy educa9on, research and enterprise” Astro 250, Sec. 2, CCN 06830 10:30– 12:30, Tuesdays, Rm. 131B, Campbell Hall Instructor: Paul Kalas Office: 501M Contact: 6428285, [email protected]Course web site: hQp://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/ethics/index.html Requirements: Reading, class par9cipa9on, wri9ng assignments Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
Transcript
Introduc)on: Why is ethics important for science? Lecture 01
January 20, 2015 “Ethical issues in astronomy educa9on, research and
enterprise” Astro 250, Sec. 2, CCN 06830
10:30– 12:30, Tuesdays, Rm. 131B, Campbell Hall Instructor: Paul Kalas
Course web site: hQp://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/ethics/index.html Requirements: Reading, class par9cipa9on, wri9ng assignments
Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
Research ethics? Training?
Paul Kalas, Bill Sinton, Susan Ridgway, Klaus Hodapp, Richard Wainscoat (February, 1990, Hale Pohaku, Mauna Kea)
Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
Are ethical problems due to a few problem individuals, or is it a natural part of the scien9fic landscape?
Astronomer Fritz Zwicky demonstra9ng the SB gesture
Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
Tuskegee Syphilis Study: 1932 -‐ 1972
• 600 low-‐income African American men recruited, 399 previously infected with syphilis • Ini9al goal was to understand the progress of the disease and find the best treatment. • Aeer a year, they study morphed into simple observa9on of the disease, untreated. • Penicillin as a treatment established by 1947, but doctors prevented treatment. • 28 died of syphilis, 100 more from complica9ons, 40 spouses and 19 children infected.
Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
Willowbrook School: 1963 -‐ 1966
• Healthy, mentally handicapped children inoculated with hepa9tes in a medical experiment, with parental consent (admission to school required consent).
• Experiment stopped due to public protest. • Researchers argued that kids would have been infected
anyway. • Goal was to understand the progress of the disease and
find the best treatment.
Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
Do ethical problems con9nue today?
NYT, June 08, 2008 NYT, April 15, 2008 Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
How about physics & astronomy?
Scien9fic American, March 6, 2008 Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 321 25 JULY 2008 473
FOCUS Will solar telescopesee the light?
478
Pioneers of thescience earmark era
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The third time was no charm for RusiTaleyarkhan, the “bubble fusion” pioneer atPurdue University in West Lafayette, Indi-ana. After two previous investigationslooked into alleged scientific misconduct byTaleyarkhan, a third panel has now citedTaleyarkhan for two cases of misconduct.Both cases centered on efforts by Taleyarkhanto make experiments carried out by mem-bers of his lab appear as independent verifi-cation of his previous work.
Taleyarkhan first sparked controversyafter he and colleagues reported in Sciencein 2002 that they had generated nuclearfusion with a simple tabletop setup. Fusion,the process that powers the sun, normallytakes place at pressures and temperaturesintense enough to cause atomic nuclei tocombine and give off energy in the process.Decades’ worth of efforts to harvest energyfrom that process in reactors on Earth havefailed. In their original Science paper,Taleyarkhan, who was then at Oak RidgeNational Laboratory in Tennessee, and hiscolleagues reported that firing a pulse ofultrasound and neutrons at a cylinder of ace-tone in which the hydrogen atoms had beenreplaced by deuterium atoms caused bub-bles to form, swell, and collapse. The heatand pressure at the center of the collapsingbubbles reportedly fused deuteriumstogether, liberating nuclear byproducts andexcess energy.
The work raised the promise of limitlessenergy and spurred numerous early attempts toreplicate it, all of which failed. Taleyarkhanmoved to Purdue in 2004 and set aboutreproducing the original bubble fusionresults. That winter and spring, according tothe panel’s report, Taleyarkhan’s post-doctoral assistant Yiban Xu conducted bubblefusion experiments and wrote up the results,which were submitted to Science. The paperwas rejected and later resubmitted to Physi-cal Review Letters. PRL too rejected thepaper; according to the panel’s report, areviewer commented that it was “unusual”that the experiment was done by one person“so that needed crosschecks and witnessingof results seem lacking.”
In early 2005, Taleyarkhan asked Adam
Butt, a master’s degree candidate in his lab,to proofread the paper and check some ofits numbers. After Butt did so, the panelsays his name was added as an author of thepaper, which was then submitted to NuclearEngineering and Design (NED) andquickly accepted. “In this context, it is plainthat the intent was to create the appearanceof a joint author who participated in theexperimentation itself,” the panel’s reportconcludes. “This is research misconduct.”The panel flagged Taleyarkhan for a second
count of misconduct for a 2006 PRL paperin which Taleyarkhan and colleagues citedthe NED paper as proof of independentconfirmation of bubble fusion. Althoughthe panel concluded that several other alle-gations did not constitute scientif ic mis-conduct, the report was still deeply criticalof Taleyarkhan’s behavior and in somecases his scientific procedures.
In an e-mail to Science, Taleyarkhan saysthat the new report “is flawed from variousperspectives and incorporates factual errors,”though he does not spell them out. He adds:“The current state of matters represents amajor setback for university faculty mem-bers in general—this sort of selective victim-ization to meet political-funding priorities ofa huge institution (with relatively incompara-ble resources vs the sole individual) couldhappen to any other faculty member.”
Kenneth Suslick, a chemist at the Uni-versity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,and a longtime critic of bubble fusion,calls the report “some kind of vindica-tion.” Suslick says he was disappointed thereport didn’t more squarely address ques-tions of possible scientific fraud that havebeen raised about the research (Science,17 March 2006, p. 1532). The report statesthat although such allegations were madeto a previous panel investigating Tale-yarkhan’s work, they were not forwarded
to be made part ofthe current panel’sinvestigation—but itdoes not explainwhy. The cur rentreport also did notattempt to evaluatethe original scien-tif ic results behind“bubble fusion.”
The latest panelwas set up in March2007 following com-plaints to the InspectorGeneral of the Officeof Naval Research(ONR), which helpedfund some of Taleyar-khan’s experiments.
The panel was chaired by Purdue biochemistMark Hermodson, and four of its six mem-bers came from outside Purdue University.Although the current panel submitted itsreport to ONR in April, it was formallyaccepted and made public only on 18 July.
Taleyarkhan’s lawyer, John Lewis ofLewis and Wilkins LLP in Indianapolis, saysTaleyarkhan plans to appeal the report’sfindings. However, he adds that he is “notoptimistic” the appeal will succeed, giventhat it will be conducted by the university.Purdue spokesperson Joseph Bennett saysthat Purdue officials will not comment onthe report until after any appeal is completenext month. The ONR letter states that thefunding agency will keep the case open untilPurdue takes corrective action to preventsimilar occurrences in the future.
–ROBERT F. SERVICE
New Purdue Panel Faults Bubble Fusion Pioneer
SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT
Bubble bursts. A newinvestigation finds
that Rusi Taleyarkhanmisrepresented work
from his lab as independent
confirmation of his prior results.
Published by AAAS
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29, 2008
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Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
Astronomy Ethics Course
• Class discussion & par9cipa9on
• Reading – see web site lecture schedule for pdfs:
• Rules for Research – Respect for primary data – Adherence to verifiable research methods – Repor9ng nega9ve findings – Other?
Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
Origins of science ethics codes Nuremberg Code (1946)
Josef Mengele
• 1st document in contemporary society addressing ethical issues of using human subjects for scien9fic research
• WriQen during the Nuremberg war crimes trials – doctors & scien9sts prosecuted for their leadership roles in Nazi human experiments
• Doctors argued there no interna9onal laws existed regarding human experiments
• Ten Principles in the Nuremberg Code, including:
• Introduced concept of informed consent (#1)
• Do the greatest good for society (#2)
• Avoid uneccessary human suffering.
• Risk/Benefit analysis (#6): “The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.”
Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
Origins of science ethics codes Declara9on of Geneva (1948) Declara9on of Helsinki (1964)
• Adopted by the World Medical Associa9on
• Guidelines for the prac9ce of medicine and medical research involving human subjects
• “It is incredible to think that although the founders of medical ethics, such as Hippocrates, published their works more than 2000 years ago, the medical profession, up un9l now, has not had a basic, universally used, curriculum for the teaching of medical ethics.” WMA Medical Ethics Manual (sponsored by Johnson & Johnson).
Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
• Three “Basic Ethical Principles” for medical research in the U.S. – “those general judgements that serve as a basic jus9fica9on for the many par9cular
ethical prescrip9ons and evalua9ons of human ac9ons.”
1. Respect for Persons – Human dignity (autonomy) – Honor a person’s rights to opinion, freedom (choices) and privacy. – Protec9on of those with diminished autonomy – Example in astronomy?
2. Beneficence (an obliga/on to act kindly or with charity) – Human welfare: Ac9on to help others and/or prevent harm. – Benefits may need to be foregone because of the risks. – Example in astronomy?
3. Jus9ce (Fairness) – Distribute the benefits & burdens of research fairly – Example in astronomy?
Origins of science ethics codes Belmont Report (1979)
Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
Case study: “Compe99on and the TAC” (C-‐AQac)
• Keck Observatory has commissioned a new instrument, and Tom, a new postdoc at UC Berkeley, wishes to submit a proposal to the NASA Time Alloca9on CommiQee to pursue a cuong edge science topic. His target list derives from one year of previous work analyzing of the 2MASS catalog, but he is concerned when he finds out that a compe9tor is a member of the NASA TAC. The compe9tor has a reputa9on for opportunism, and according to the Keck schedules, the compe9tor has 3-‐4 nights of observa9ons scheduled per year through her own university that manages its own TAC for the telescope. Tom submits the proposal and three months later he is no9fied that it is rejected. Six months aeer that the compe9tor publishes a ground-‐breaking paper on exactly the same targets, based on data taken three months earlier, with exactly the same instrumental setup. Tom is furious, claiming that the idea from his proposal had been stolen.
1. What are the facts of the case? Does Tom have all the facts that he needs to make a case for unethical conduct? If not, what is missing?
2. Which par9es may have acted unethically? Why (i.e. what principles, impera9ves, standards or codes are possibly violated)?
3. What should Tom do? How might the other par9es respond? 4. Is the scien9fic method damaged in cases like this?
Paul Kalas (UC Berkeley 2015)
Homework for Lecture 2
• Read NAS “On Being a Scien9st” (pg. 3-‐26 in the pdf) and “Ethics and Values” from the American Physical Society.
• Make sure to read through the case studies in “On being a scien9st”. Which ones can be converted into an astronomy case study?
• Write down one or more key ques9ons that you would like to ask in class.
• Are these documents useful? If you had to improve on these document, what would you do?
• If you see a research ethics example in the news, please share it with the class.
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