SMU imposed a new requirement on faculty starting this year. We are now required to take and pass a multi-hour web class on research practices and ethics. Over several months, in short shots, I took the class. The first half of the material focused on things like pressure, plagiarism, gift authorship, and other such topics. As I mentioned in a previous post [1], many of the “case studies” or short films in the class featured women in positions of subservience to male researchers and put in uncomfortable professional situations.
The timing of this class, given the recent so-called “Climate-gate,” [2] was fortuitous. This is for several reasons. The first is that “Climate-gate” lifted the veil protecting the public (and the field) from unpleasant behind-the-scenes discourse in science. The second is that “Climate-gate” contained several interesting ethical topics not covered in the class: disclosure of private e-mail regarding the research, choices made in the analysis of the data, and public access to data.
Let’s first discuss the veil. The veil is that thin veneer of social structure and technology that lets scientists engage in free discourse; at the same time, the thinness of that veil serves as a reminder that our actions, recorded in logbooks, emails, news groups, or other services can (at any time) suddenly become public. The veil is provided by institutions as a means to shield the scientists from the real-time public scrutiny that might stifle creativity and innovation. Let me flesh this out somewhat more.
It is important to feel like you can have ideas without fear of reprisal. Not all of these ideas will be any good – in fact, most of them will be complete crap. But the freedom to propose ideas and risk failure, protected by the veil, is critical to the advancement of science. Freedom, however, is not the only aspect of academic inquiry; responsibility is just as important. While we must be free to think and to propose, we must also accept that with that freedom comes the expectation of responsibility in one’s actions. When these two fail to meet, and the veil is lifted, it must necessarily lead to public mis-trust of the outcome of the science. Science is about process, and that process will appear dubious. Behind the veil, it is incumbent upon the scientist to think and speak freely but act responsibly.
In my own field, the veil has been lifted many times. “Beamtimes and Lifetimes,” by Sharon Traweek, is an exploration of the social structure of particle physics in the 1970s and 1980s. It leaves the casual reader wondering whether the field is any good, given the unreasonable expectations placed on its members (keeping in mind, of course, that corporate expectations are far worse). “Nobel Dreams,” by Gary Taubes, is a peek behind the curtain of experimental deliberation and competition. To the casual reader, it would suggest that in the most important physics experiments, ethics are cast aside. Wrong results seem barely prevented only by a few actors choosing to behave responsibly in the face of overwhelming leadership pressure to choose otherwise.
Yet particle physics is right enough, often enough, to lead us in the right direction. This, as in any enterprise, is despite the intentions of the glory-seekers who may over-interpret, manipulate, or manufacture data to meet their goals. The reason particle physics makes progress at all may, in fact, be because most particle physicists act ethically, even under pressure to do so irresponsibly; they doubt the findings of their peers, they find ways to do the work correctly, they skirt the scorn of their leaders or peers, and they make the facts public. In a sense, there are more whistle-blowers in science than manipulators; students turn against their mentors to make a point about which they feel passionate, multiple lines of independent evidence rule out a hyped conclusion, review panels find inconsistencies that lead to cross-checks and invalidate original conclusions.
Climate science is no different than particle physics, nor any other branch of science. As with any large field, it contains many researchers not all acting together. There are multiple lines of evidence. There are good and bad players. The contents of released e-mails sent between climate scientists are no different than the quotes of Dr. Rubbia in “Nobel Dreams.” Rubbia’s behavior is almost normal in the field for the most ambitious; yet, his methods, when written down on paper, make you wonder if we ever actually discovered the weak bosons! Of course, we did; subsequent experiments after those first results (including more data from Rubbia’s own experiment) confirmed the original claims. In climate science, the lifting of some of the veil has cast equal aspersion on the quality of the science in climate research. One wonders if UA-1 would have been just as controversial (“Boson-gate?”) if economies were affected by the existence or non-existence of weak bosons (forgetting that the weak force makes the sun possible, of course).
In the next part of this essay, I’ll discuss my thoughts on these other issues involved in “Climate-gate”: the release of private e-mails and the choices scientists make with data.
[1] http://steve.cooleysekula.net/blog/2009/09/02/the-message-women-in-science-prepare-to-be-mistreated/
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/science/earth/28hack.html
