Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Earth is starting to crumble due to global warming !

October 15, 2010

 

The Peteroa (burning bushes) volcano lies at t...

Planchón-Peteroa: Image via Wikipedia

 

Alarmism is alive and well at ENTRIX and at the New Scientist.

When in doubt it seems you can always get a paper published if you put it down to global warming. The key finding in this new paper seems to be that “large-scale glacial melting, including at the end of the Pleistocene, caused a significant increase in the incidence of large volcanic sector collapse and debris flows on then-active volcanoes”.

The Pleistocene is the period from  2.588 million to 12000 years ago. But since there is no explanation for the above finding there is no hesitation in jumping to the conclusion about the present “With current accelerated rates of glacial melting, glaciated active volcanoes are at an increasing risk of sector collapse, debris flow and landslide. These catastrophic events are Earth’s most damaging erosion phenomenon, causing extensive property damage and loss of life”.

The New Scientist then chips in with the headline “EARTH is starting to crumble under the strain of climate change”.

Daniel Tormey of ENTRIX, an environmental consultancy based in Los Angeles, studied a huge landslide that occurred 11,000 years ago on Planchón-Peteroa. He focused on this glaciated volcano in Chile because its altitude and latitude make it likely to feel the effects of climate change before others.

“Around one-third of the volcanic cone collapsed,” Tormey says. Ten billion cubic metres of rock crashed down the mountain and smothered 370 square kilometres of land, travelling 95 kilometres in total (Global and Planetary Change, DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2010.08.003). Studies have suggested that intense rain cannot provide the lubrication needed for this to happen, so Tormey concludes that glacier melt must have been to blame. With global temperatures on a steady rise, Tormey is concerned that history will repeat itself on volcanoes all over the world.

He thinks that many volcanoes in temperate zones could be at risk, including in the Ring of Fire – the horseshoe of volcanoes that surrounds the Pacific Ocean . “There are far more human settlements and activities near the slopes of glaciated active volcanoes today than there were 10,000 years ago, so the effects could be catastrophic,” he says.

Maybe I am just a little cynical but I suspect that the author’s environmental consultancy business would be advantaged by getting a few more studies funded and that would be more likely if catastrophes were imminent. A clear case of a conflict of interest I would think.


Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Environment, Ethics | 3 Comments »

Prof. Hal Lewis resigns from the American Physical Society

October 10, 2010

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety, Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara

To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

(more…)

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Ethics, Physics, Science | 2 Comments »

Survey and review of integrity at Indian Research Institutions

October 10, 2010

Cases of plagiarism and other scientific misconduct is thought to be increasing in India. The rapid growth in the country in recent years has been mirrored by a growth in the number of research institutions, science publications and number of published papers. The pursuit of advancement of institutional reputations in newly established Universities and the development of personal careers has led to an increased pressure to publish. Scientific funding has not kept pace with the growth of institutions and numbers of people involved in research and this has led to increased competition in the seeking of limited funds. Quality assurance and oversight processes have not kept pace and in many young institutions may even be totally absent. There is little emphasis given to training for scientists or administrators regarding scientific rigour or ethics or integrity.

Indian graduates and scientists are generally highly regarded. There is an increasing focus from outside the country for establishing research and engineering centres in India and for commissioning research at Indian Research Institutions. But there is growing concern about standards and the proper selection and use of Indian scientists and Indian Research Institutions. A need has been expressed for an independent review of the level of integrity at various Institutions.

This need has only been emphasised by the recent high profile cases of plagiarism regarding GM crops where the Minister rejected a report by the 6 top Indian science academies including the Indian National Science Academy and the apparent, wide-spread plagiarism which has, for example, led to the retraction of 3 papers in the Journal Biotechnology Advances.

A survey and review to assess and rank Integrity at Indian Research Institutions has therefore been privately commissioned. The study is to be completed by 1st May 2011 and the first phase of information gathering is expected to continue through February 2011.

Institutions to be included in the survey will be requested individually to make a formal submission.

Institutions or individuals wishing to participate by making unsolicited submissions are invited to do so as detailed in the separate page established here.


Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Ethics, India, Science | Comments Off on Survey and review of integrity at Indian Research Institutions

Biotechnology Advances retracts 3 papers from India for plagiarism

October 5, 2010

Biotechnology Advances

 

 

Update 3: 7th August 2011 Kalasalingam University sacks Sangiliyandi Gurunathan

Update 2: 27th June 2011: Yet another

Sangiliyandi retraction  h/t JV Prasath


Update:

Links to the retraction notices have been added – 31st January 2011 and the links have been updated 22nd February 2011.

Biotechnology Advances has retracted 3 papers from India (2 from IIT Kanpur and1 from Kalasalingam University), all at the request of the editors and all for plagiarism.

A matter of some shame for Indian science and especially for the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. It remains to be seen if the Institutions take any action. The plagiarism seems to have been particularly inept since it included blatant copying even from Wikipedia and Encyclopedias.

The 3 retraction notices are given below:

1. Retraction notice to “Microbial production of dihydroxyacetone” [Biotech Adv. 26 (2008) 293–303] by Ruchi Mishra, Seema Rani Jain and Ashok Kumar

Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, 208016-Kanpur, India

Available online 22 August 2010.

Retraction Notice

Reason: This article has been retracted at the request of the editor as the authors have plagiarised part of several papers that had already appeared in several journals. One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that their work is original and has not appeared in a publication elsewhere. Re-use of any data should be appropriately cited. As such this article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and we apologise to the readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.

From a limited, non-exhaustive check of the text, several elements of the text had been plagiarised from the following list of sources:

(more…)

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Biotechnology, Ethics, India, Science, Scientific Fraud | 24 Comments »

Sony disassociate themselves from 10:10

October 4, 2010

I just received the following email from Nick Sharples, Sony Europe’s Director of Communications:

Dear Mr. Pillai,

Thank you for your email concerning the video released by the 10:10 climate change campaign group. Sony has supported the 10:10 climate change campaign because we share its objective to reduce carbon emissions. However, we strongly condemn the “No Pressure” video which was conceived, produced and released by 10:10 entirely without the knowledge or involvement of Sony. The company considers the video to be ill-conceived and in extremely bad taste. We also believe the video risks undermining the work of the many thousands of members of the public, schools and universities, local authorities and many businesses, of which Sony is one, who support the long-term aims of the 10:10 movement and who are actively working towards the reduction of carbon emissions.

As a result we have taken the decision to disassociate ourselves from 10:10 at this time.

In our press statement we will be posting tomorrow morning we reaffirm our ongoing commitment to the reduction of global carbon emissions as part of our ‘Road to Zero’ environmental plan.

Yours sincerely,

Nick

Nick Sharples

Director of Corporate Communications

Sony Europe

The Heights, Weybridge

Surrey, KT13 0XW

nick.sharples@eu.sony.com

+44 (0)7786 114 870 (Mobile)

+44(0)1932 816 828 (Office)

Tags:, ,
Posted in Behaviour, Environment, Ethics | 17 Comments »

Is Greenpeace fabricating data?

September 28, 2010

In July this year Greenpeace trumpeted

rain forest

“A new investigative report from Greenpeace, ‘How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet’, shows how major brands like Walmart, Auchan and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) are fueling climate change and pushing Sumatran tigers and orang-utans towards the brink of extinction. These companies are using or selling paper made from Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), part of the notorious Sinar Mas group that is destroying Indonesia’s rainforests and carbon-rich peatlands.”

The Jakarta Globe reports

Sinar Mas commissioned an independent audit which has now accused Greenpeace of “false and misleading information to attack a company’s credibility”. International Trade Strategies Global (ITS) conducted a peer-review on Greenpeace’s report, “How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet.”

“The evidence shows that Greenpeace provided quotes that don’t exist, maps that show concessions that don’t exist, and used source material with high margins of error that was cited as absolute fact,” said Alan Oxley, chief executive office of the Melbourne-based ITS Global on the press release.

Oxley said the Greenpeace report was highly misleading and indefensible. In addition, the audit stated that a map in the Greenpeace report shows four concessions which don’t exist. “Sadly this is not an isolated incident. Greenpeace has exaggerated claims in the past.  When we see reports like this with such obvious factual inaccuracies it makes us call into question the real Greenpeace agenda, risking the greater good to achieve its own political ends.”

However, Bustar Maitar, lead forest campaigner for Greenpeace Indonesia, dismissed ITS’s report, saying it was biased. “If they claim it’s an independent report, it’s a joke because Alan Oxley is speaking as an APP representative,” he said.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Development, Environment, Ethics | 2 Comments »

Horror! Science cuts

September 25, 2010

science and funding

It is perfectly understandable, predictable and expected that the Science Establishment should find the idea of budget cuts unpalatable. Through the various recent financial crises Universities and Scientific establishments globally have come through relatively unscathed. But like all bubbles that have burst and are bursting it is perhaps time that the protected science funding bubbles took their share of the hit. It is also perhaps time for a return to the quest for scientific knowledge rather than the quest for science funding.

They cannot, on the one hand, use the excuse of “consensus science” to pour money down rotten drains and on the other demand a privileged position protected from the ills being suffered by the majority of society.

Democracy in Science to determine priorities and funding for paths of investigation is both inevitable and correct. But the science itself is indifferent to what the majority vote might think it should be.

In business and management it is almost a cliche that the greatest strides in productivity and effectiveness come at the time of budget and manpower cuts. I see no reason why this should not also apply to science and scientists. The weeping and the tearing of hair would be a little more convincing if it came from third parties and not the Scientific Establishment.

Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society and all University Vice Chancellors are most perturbed at the spending cuts that might be implemented by the new UK government.

The New Scientist’s Roger Highfield bemoans the damage that could be done to SCIENCE.

Rees was speaking with five university vice chancellors as scientists steel themselves for deep cuts at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

The gory details will be laid bare in October’s Comprehensive Spending Review, in which all government departments have been asked to prepare for budgets to fall by up to 25 per cent, perhaps even more.

In their submission to the Treasury, the Royal Society has described the potential effects of the cuts, where “an X per cent cut would lead to a much more than X per cent decrease in output, because we would lose the most talented people”. They outline three scenarios:

  • 20 per cent cuts are the “game over” scenario, which would cause irreversible destruction and be “very tragic”, said Rees.
  • 10 per cent is the “slash and burn” option with “serious consequences”.
  • Constant cash, a reduction in real terms, “could be accommodated”.

At the Royal Institution, during an event organised by the Campaign for Science and Engineering and the Science Media Centre, Rees also made the point that the UK will be less attractive to mobile talent and young people as other countries invest more in research.

Just to make sure that the Treasury gets the point, the Vice Chancellors also weighed in:

  • Glynis Breakwell of the University of Bath warned about “short termism” and the perils of stop-go funding, which would be “fatal”.
  • Malcolm Grant of University College London described how the cuts will damage research that “touches people’s lives”, squander the investment of the past two decades and damage an asset of great national importance.
  • Andy Haines of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine outlined how the cuts would harm health research as competitors, such as the US and China, are investing more in these areas.
  • Rick Trainor of King’s College London talked of the damage to long-term research capacity, and Simon Gaskell of Queen Mary, University of London once again underlined the harm to the pool of national talent.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Ethics, Science | Comments Off on Horror! Science cuts

Harvard President says Hauser could lose tenure

September 22, 2010
Statue of John Harvard, founder of Harvard Uni...

John Harvard: Wikipedia

The Boston Globe reports on an interview of Harvard’s President Drew Gilpin Faust by former ABC correspondent Charlie Gibson.

The discussion, billed as a start-of-the-school year address, was held at Sanders Theatre and broadcast over the Internet. In response to Gibson’s question about why Marc Hauser remained on the faculty even after the university found him guilty of eight instances of scientific misconduct, Faust said Harvard is addressing the issue. “Integrity is absolutely fundamental in everything we do,’’ Faust said. “We have a process we have undertaken, and that process still has some part to continue because it involves federal funds.’’ Cases of scientific misconduct could result in a loss of tenure, Faust said.

Gibson said the silence from the university has been “somewhat deafening,’’ and raised the possibility that the lack of response could call into question Harvard’s research integrity and have financial implications. But Faust replied that Harvard has moved to depart somewhat from its normally confidential proceedings, in order to correct the scientific record, though it remains mindful of ongoing federal investigations. “Announcing that there were indeed findings, that was unprecedented,’’ she said.

Whether the Harvard President is actually trying to maintain and protect integrity or merely engaging in damage control is unclear. The second part of the Boston Globe article is about the honouring of Martin Peretz and how Harvard is swallowing its principles and seems to show that there is a price at which Harvard is prepared to compromise integrity.

But meanwhile the wagons continue to circle.

Bert Vaux who is a former Professor of Linguistics at Harvard University and Jeffrey Watumull who is a PhD student in Linguistics and a member of Hauser’s lab have rushed to his defence in The Harvard Crimson.

“In our experience, Marc Hauser is the consummate scientist—the most disinterested, the most rational, the most ethical. We are proud to be his colleagues. However, we are less than proud of those in the cognitive sciences reacting publicly to Hauser’s case with irresponsible impatience (disrespect for due process), unjustified slurs, and half-baked conjectures. All are interested in the truth, but as scientists we ought to consider the case reasonably and measuredly, with objectivity and fairness”.

But they forget that his nonsense started at least as long ago as 1995. One wonders whether Hauser’s defenders are part of a concerted damage control exercise. Methinks they do protest too much.

The onus of proof has shifted.

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Ethics, Science, Scientific Fraud | 1 Comment »

After Harvard’s Hausergate, now misconduct at Mount Sinai

September 21, 2010
Mount Sinai School of Medicine logo.png

Image via Wikipedia

Earlier this week, the blog Retraction Watch called attention to four recent paper retractions by noted gene therapy researcher Savio Woo of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Today, the school said in a statement that two of Woo’s postdoctoral fellows have been fired for research misconduct and that an internal investigation has cleared Woo of any wrongdoing.

Two of Woo’s post-doctoral fellows at Mount Sinai School of Medicine were dismissed for “research misconduct,” said Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the institution. According to Michaels:

When Dr. Savio L C Woo came to suspect that two post-doctoral fellows in his laboratory may have engaged in research misconduct he notified the Mount Sinai Research Integrity Office. Mount Sinai immediately initiated institutional reviews that resulted in both post-doctoral fellows being dismissed for research misconduct. At no time were there allegations that Dr. Woo had engaged in research misconduct. As part of its review, the investigation committee looked into this possibility and confirmed that no research misconduct could be attributed to Dr. Woo, who voluntarily retracted the papers regarding the research in question. Mount Sinai reported the results of its investigations to the appropriate government agencies and continues to cooperate with them as part of its commitment to adhere to the highest standards for research integrity.

File:HippocraticOath.jpg

Wikipedia: A twelfth-century Byzantine manuscript of the Hippocratic Oath.

According to ScienceInsider, the names of postdocs Li Chen and Zhiyu Li were recently removed from Mount Sinai’s directory. Chen and Li were listed as first authors on the retracted papers. Three  major journals — Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Human Gene Therapy, and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute — recently retracted papers authored by Woo and others.

In a retraction notice issued this month, Woo wrote that:

It was discovered that some of the micrographs in two papers we published [figure 4 in J Natl Cancer Inst 2008;100:1389-1400 (1), and figure 3 in Hum Gene Ther 2009;20:751-758 (2)] are apparently duplicated. This has been reported to the institutional research integrity committee by the authors and while the outcome of an investigation is pending, the undersigned co-authors respectfully request a retraction of both papers and sincerely apologize to our colleagues.

The four papers in question focus on two different areas of gene therapy research. One pair, published in 2008 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and in 2009 in Human Gene Therapy, investigate genetically engineered bacteria as a weapon against cancer. The other two papers describe a method for using bacterial enzymes to introduce therapeutic genes. A 2005 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports experiments in which mice with the metabolic disorder phenylketonuria appeared to be cured using this method. As a demonstration of the promise of gene therapy, that work garnered some media coverage, includingthis article in Science. A 2008 paper in Human Gene Therapy described the use of the technique in human cells.

Source: http://blog.the-scientist.com/2010/09/20/new-in-a-nutshell/

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Medicine, Science, Scientific Fraud | 2 Comments »

Researchers show that peer review is easily corrupted

September 18, 2010
PhysicsWorld reports on a new paper:
Peer-review in a world with rational scientists: Toward selection of the average
by Stefan Thurner and Rudolf Hanel
1Section of Science of Complex Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Spitalgasse 23, A-1090, Austria
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1008/1008.4324v1.pdf

Just a small number of bad referees can significantly undermine the ability of the peer-review system to select the best scientific papers… Scholarly peer review is the commonly accepted procedure for assessing the quality of research before it is published in academic journals. It relies on a community of experts within a narrow field of expertise to have both the knowledge and the time to provide comprehensive reviews of academic manuscripts.Stefan Thurner and Rudolf Hanel at the Medical University of Vienna created a model of a generic specialist field where referees, selected at random, can fall into one of five categories. There are the “correct” who accept the good papers and reject the bad. There are the “altruists” and the “misanthropists”, who accept or reject all papers respectively. Then there are the “rational”, who reject papers that might draw attention away from their own work. And finally, there are the “random” who are not qualified to judge the quality of a paper because of incompetence or lack of time.Within this model community, the quality of scientists is assumed to follow a Gaussian distribution where each scientist produces one new paper every two time-units, the quality reflecting an author’s ability. At every step in the model, each new paper is passed to two referees chosen at random from the community, with self-review excluded, with a reviewer being allowed to either accept or reject the paper. The paper is published if both reviewers approve the paper, and rejected if they both do not like it. If the reviewers are divided, the paper gets accepted with a probability of 0.5.

Peer review gauntlet

Thurner and Hanel find that even a small presence of rational or random referees can significantly reduce the quality of published papers. Daniel Kennefick, a cosmologist at the University of Arkansas with a special interest in sociology, believes that the study exposes the vulnerability of peer review when referees are not accountable for their decisions.

Kennefick feels that the current system also encourages scientists to publish findings that may not offer much of an advance. “Many authors are nowadays determined to achieve publication for publication’s sake, in an effort to secure an academic position and are not particularly swayed by the argument that it is in their own interests not to publish an incorrect article.”

(This could have been written about Marc Hauser — https://ktwop.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/harvard-reviews-hausers-work-but-is-the-purpose-investigation-or-vindication/)

But Tim Smith, senior publisher for New Journal of Physics feels that the study overlooks the role of journal editors. “Peer-review is certainly not flawless and alternatives to the current process will continue to be proposed. In relation to this study however, one shouldn’t ignore the role played by journal editors and Boards in accounting for potential conflicts of interest, and preserving the integrity of the referee selection and decision-making processes,” he says.

In fact Journal Editors have much to answer for in the perversion of the peer review process which was revealed by Climategate. (The Hockey Stick Illusion by Andrew Montford— reviewed here)

Thurner argues that science would benefit from the creation of a “market for scientific work”. He envisages a situation where journal editors and their “scouts” search preprint servers for the most innovative papers before approaching authors with an offer of publication. The best papers, he believes, would naturally be picked up by a number of editors leaving it up to authors to choose their journal. “Papers that no-one wants to publish remain on the server and are open to everyone – but without the ‘prestigious’ quality stamp of a journal,” Thurner explains.

When reviewers show bias (in acceptance or in rejection) or misuse and hide behind the cloak of anonymity and are not required to be accountable then Hausergate and Climategate become inevitable.

Oliver Manuel comments: The most basic problem with ANONYMOUS peer-review is this: “That methodology is flawed and those flaws have been gradually undermining, corrupting, and trivializing American science for decades.” Anonymous peer review of papers and proposals has been steadily “undermining, corrupting, and trivializing American science” since I started my research career in 1960.

The evolution of peer review with the use of open servers in now overdue but is beginning.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Ethics, Peer review, Science | Comments Off on Researchers show that peer review is easily corrupted

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »