To the editor of Science:

Scientific Misconduct

In his Editorial on the CRI Report (12 July, p.163), Kenneth Ryan states that "the scientific community has been reluctant to discourage misconduct or sloppy research by developing guidelines for ... responsible authorship," and that "the current research environment seems to foster cynicism about simple virtues such as honesty and fairness, and it clearly fosters hostility toward anyone who makes claims about misconduct." He adds that the CRI "decided on truth and fairness as fundamental principles ... and believes that `research integrity is best fostered by developing clear standards of behavior in science'." I wish to cite a case in point.

I edit a journal serving the growing international community of researchers, mainly in the social sciences and humanities, who work on a wide range of problems and issues in the general field of `social studies of science and technology'. Many collaborate closely with scientists and engineers. Recently, this community has found itself under attack in a campaign initiated and orchestrated mainly by US scientists. Authors have found their work incompetently summarized and unfairly derided (1). Some have been personally insulted. Apparently, by innuendo and association, and largely on hearsay evidence and patently "sloppy research", the whole community's work is being dismissed as "arguments advanced by those who would reject reason and take up the cudgels against science" (2). This astonishing claim is made, ironically, in defence of scholarly standards and values (3). In one specific case (4), the work of my colleagues in Edinburgh is derisorily and damagingly misrepresented (without evidence or citation), and accompanied by two deeply offensive `jokes'.

I am British, and subject to UK libel law. My London publishers would prevent me from publishing such material (5). Here in Britain, we could ignore this kind of misconceived parody of scholarship, much as we are able to ignore the publications of creationists and their ilk (6). But where the latter can wield real power (and thus pose a `threat'), academic corruption is a live possibility. It must be resisted firmly. Scientists may well be tempted to feel that the threat justifies a crude riposte - and thus that they can disregard the injunctions of the CRI Report. All sensitivity to matters of trust and respect among academic colleagues is then abandoned. But this strategy is counter-productive; it demeans, devalues and renders impotent the very thing it claims to be defending. The behavior to which I am calling attention is clearly a breach of any guidelines for proper conduct among scientists. Without such "clear standards of behavior" the corporate pursuit of science, reason and truth, and of a just and fair society, is at risk. But, of course, the immediate casualty would be the academic credit and insight painstakingly acquired by our community over some 30 years, and now available to inform and guide our progress towards the fuller `science and reason' demanded by our increasingly complex modern society. To lose so carelessly what we have learned so patiently would be tragic.

I urge readers to join me in condemning this campaign as it clearly deserves. Like Kenneth Ryan (and for the same reason: "cynicism"), I expect this letter to be received with "hostility."

David O. Edge, FRSE Reader Emeritus, University of Edinburgh, and Editor, Social Studies of Science. 25 Gilmour Road, EDINBURGH EH16 5NS, Scotland, UK E-mail: d.edge@ed.ac.uk

References and Notes

1. See, especially, Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science (Baltimore, MD & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). M. Norton Wise has said that this book "employs a willful strategy of distortion and demonization against those who question the heroic myths of science in foavor of a more realistic evaluation of its great strengths": Isis, 87 (2), June 1996, 323-327, at 323.

2. This phrase has been used by the New York Academy of Sciences in the publicity for the Conference on `The Flight from Science and Reason' sponsored by the Academy on 31 May - 2 June 1995, for the publication of its Proceedings (Ann. NYAS, 775 [24 June 1996]), and for the WWW Forum on the topic from 16 September - 31 October 1996. Other blanket epithets routinely deployed include "a body of work founded on silly philosophy, sloppy history, anemic research, boundless ignorance, and just plain lousy scholarship", and exhibiting "a deeply disapproving stance towards science, sometimes combined with a profound ignorance of it" (Technoscience, 9 [2], Spring 1996, 29-30). (Incidentally, how can those who "reject reason" be held to be "advancing arguments"?)

3. The campaign is also supported by the US `National Association of Scholars'.

4. See Bull. Amer. Acad. Arts & Sciences, 49 (3), December 1995, 61, lines 3-21. This passage effectively implicates the whole University, since no person or group is named! To sample the actual quality of the work of the Edinburgh School, see Barry Barnes, David Bloor and John Henry, Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1996). The exacting academic standards clearly exemplified in this Edinburgh graduate textbook are not, of course, confined to Scotland: in this respect, the work of this one group, in one strand of one specialty within the entire field encompassed by our journal, is typical of the whole, worldwide. Some of us have devoted our lives to the task of ensuring that this is so. I am not a UK HEQC Quality Assurance Auditor for nothing! Perhaps I should offer my professional services as consultant to certain US campuses, learned societies and journals, and academic publishing houses?

5. In a routine briefing, my publishers have reminded me that, under British law, the category of `libellous' covers, inter alia, "making a false statement of fact which would cause injury to an individual's or a company's reputation", and "expressing a derogatory opinion or comment about an individual detrimental to their reputation." The concept of `company' would cover a university, or sub-group thereof. There is no convention in international law which extends this jurisdiction, and such behavior, whatever the CRI may wish, is apparently not held to be actionable under US law.

6. See, e.g., Nature, 368 (1994), 700-01.