Can we hook one of these up for politicians?
Ethics 101: A Course About the Pitfalls
By GINA KOLATA
RICHMOND, Va. -- To the uninitiated, ethics in science can sound as straightforward as the West Point honor code: a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do. Just substitute "scientist" for "cadet," and that should be it.
But the 50 or so graduate students taking Dr. Francis L. Macrina's ethics course at Virginia Commonwealth University are getting quite a different view of research ethics, one that asks troubling questions about professional relationships and how to draw moral lines in the sand if their own careers are at stake.
It is a view that reflects a growing realization among researchers that the real ethics issues in science are not so much the scandals that rock the field periodically -- charges of outright fabrications, invented data, theft of another's research. Instead, they say, they worry about more insidious problems that can corrupt science from within and push promising researchers who are uninformed about the rules out the door.
