Cornell medical dean, Robert Michels responded to the question by voicing his school's official policy. But in his talk he also supplied a few addenda: He reminded the student, for instance, that whistle-blowers don't get treated well by our society, and that it's not generally accepted to rat on your friends.
But he also added the overriding message: The greater moral imperative is to tell the truth--even at the risk of personal disadvantage.
These days, such pronouncements on misconduct, whistle-blowing, moral imperatives, and the like are being heard not only in the lecture halls of the three prestigious New York institutions, but in nearly 150 other universities and research facilities nationwide. Most of these institutions are staging seminars, lecture series, and courses on ethics as their way of meeting a 1989 National Institutes of Health requirement, now being enforced, that postdoctoral fellows and graduate students supported by a particular type ...
