A Hippocratic oath for scientists. Has it come to this?

Recent news in Nature of widespread misconduct and fraud in science and reports of prominent Harvard researchers' unreported conflicts of interest seems to be weighing heavy on the scientific community's collective mind. Today in Science, graduate students at the University of Toronto's Institute of Medical Science write that they have started taking something similar to the age-old Hippocratic oath to which burgeoning medical doctors swear at the beginning of their careers.

The University of Toronto oath reads: "I promise never to allow financial gain, competitiveness or ambition cloud my judgment in the conduct of ethical research and scholarship. I will pursue knowledge and create knowledge for the greater good, but never to the detriment of colleagues, supervisors, research subjects or the international community of scholars of which I am now a member." Students at the institute recited the oath for the first time last September, and the authors of the letter argue that recitation of such an oath should be part of every life science graduate program.

Has it come to this? Has misconduct in science become so rampant that we need young scientists to formally declare a promise of ethical fortitude?

Oaths are only as good as the people who swear by them. Politicians all take oaths, and we know how well that works. Washington is more corrupt than it has ever been.

As long as scientists work for large corporations, profit will also be the key topic. Somehow CEOs and presidents of corporations manage to put profits ahead of ethics. Since I don't see greed disappearing in my lifetime, I think there will alsways be fraud and misconduct at all levels. It starts with greed from shareholders and presidents, and trickles down to a poor scientist trying to succeed at all costs to avoid the unemployment line. Welcome to the new American way!

While this video is definitely one sided against big pharma - the facts still remain. Big Pharma will ignore ethics to increase the bottom line. In this case, Merck/Schering-Plough Pharmaceuticals is accused of changing the results of a study to gain FDA approval for VYTORIN. Enjoy!

How can I email this important post, comment, video
to others?

BarbaraTS934736 wrote:How can I email this important post, comment, video
to others?

The best way to let others know about an important post, comment or video is to email them the link to the community.

http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/71.page#185

Let them know why this topic is important, and I'm sure they will visit and join the conversation.

ScottICN000308650 wrote:Oaths are only as good as the people who swear by them. Politicians all take oaths, and we know how well that works. Washington is more corrupt than it has ever been.

Rules can be used for consequences. The major problem of politics is that breaking the rules is taken too much for granted ...

The advantage of an oath, or any other set of mutually agreed rules, would be that people disobeying unambigously written rules, could be (temporarily) expelled from the right of publication, grant request and approval.

Thus fair rules are needed for science to work good. And consequences are required for the rules to be effective.

John

people disobeying unambigously written rules, could be (temporarily) expelled from the right of publication, grant request and approval.

Expelled from what, and enforced by who.

Is there a mandatory body that life scientists need to join up to conduct research in the US. I know there are a number of voluntary bodies and collective associations, but being a scientist does not require a state-authorised licence in the same way as an MD does.

Many of these bodies already have ethics guidelines they expect their members to adhere to. Wouldn't an oath just be another one of those. (I suppose it could standardise the whole thing).

MichaelTS863182 wrote:

people disobeying unambigously written rules, could be (temporarily) expelled from the right of publication, grant request and approval.

Expelled from what, and enforced by who.

Is there a mandatory body that life scientists need to join up to conduct research in the US. I know there are a number of voluntary bodies and collective associations, but being a scientist does not require a state-authorised licence in the same way as an MD does.

Many of these bodies already have ethics guidelines they expect their members to adhere to. Wouldn't an oath just be another one of those. (I suppose it could standardise the whole thing).

You are exactly asking the right questions

although I would not limit science the international proces of science to any neighbourhood.

One of the current problems in controlling fraud in experimental sciences is that there is indeed no controlling regulation on the framework of what is ethical science.

There are some regulation regarding patents, clinical experiments or animal experiments, but not for the science per se.

Thus a hypothetical fraudulent scientist could make up data and publish it, next use it for his/her resume, to be awarded, to collect grants and to apply for or keep a scientific position.

It merely come down to self-regulation, which may not be so hard as it seems, within the current open research system.

For publication the standard could be upgraded from peer-reviewed journals to those also adhering to the ethical guidelines - most journals have already some of this. A central registration could be included to list scientist who have tress-passed regulation.

Of course, such a regulation does not formally exclude other type of publications from existing - anyone can publish anything in a flyer or on their personal website, but it does diminish the scientific value of uncontrolled publications.

Scientific credits and grants should only given on the bases of research published in peer-reviewed and ethical-approved journals.
Such a practice exists currently in part, as peer-reviewed is indeed mandatory. So it may not be impossible to improve science in this way.

John