Five hours after I decided to live blog Super Tuesday, I am much more comfortable in my decision to support Barack Obama this Saturday at Washington State's caucus. As I alluded to earlier, I could have gotten behind any of the three leading candidates on the blue side. While I was waiting for returns to come back, I considered in detail some differences between the Obama and Clinton health care plans, and I side with the senator from Illinois. Clinton is better prepared to keep the US on the scientific cutting edge. I bet in the end, the two will end up with really similar policy...
It is strange for me, but a lot of my decision here originates in my gut. I like Obama's approach better. I'd rather have a chat with him than Hillary (though both are in my current top ten!)
Am I glad I did this live blogging thing? Yes. I prefer knowing that I spent 5 hours watching politics than a football game. I did miss out on some quality time for studying topics like HIV disease, and I could have been touching up some comments for reviewers on that paper. But I made this choice. And I don't regret it. It will, however be a while before I live blog. And next time, perhaps I'll just re-edit the same post so that I don't back up my (5) loyal readers' site feeders!
And if for some reason, you missed it live and want to experience my unique perspectives on each state as various major media outlets called them, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page to read my reviews as the polls closed.
Showing posts with label history of science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history of science. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Scientific Integrity
I've been thinking about scientific integrity a lot recently, and want to put some of my ideas out there. It's almost summer, and this means that the Biomedical Research Integrity series at the University of Washington is about to start. The question I have for this post is:
When you teach ethics to scientists in training, how much do you talk about the history of science?
I think it's fair to say that most people enter science for altruistic motives, each of which could probably be categorized as 'improving society' or 'seeking the truth.' It's only along the way that we are introduced to financial gain, advancement requirements, prestige, funding pressures and the other incentives to lie, cheat and steal.
If we think about the development of empiricism and the scientific method, we can identify that the small number of men who were natural philosophers (there weren't even 'scientists' then) were in it for the altruistic reasons. Am I sugar-coating this to say that there was not motivation for scientific misconduct?
What I am getting at is that it might be useful to contrast the historical conditions surrounding the rise of the scientific tradition in relaying why integrity is such an issue today. We can all identify the pressures that lead to lapses of integrity, but fewer of us admit to temptations and I think fewer of us will (even anonymously) report actions of falsification or plagiarism. The last time I checked there is no Office of Research Integrity ethics topic on history of science.
Maybe it is altruistic to appeal to the traditions and foundations of science, but I think if more people held honesty as the scientist's prime directive, we would not see as many problems with scientific integrity.
When you teach ethics to scientists in training, how much do you talk about the history of science?
I think it's fair to say that most people enter science for altruistic motives, each of which could probably be categorized as 'improving society' or 'seeking the truth.' It's only along the way that we are introduced to financial gain, advancement requirements, prestige, funding pressures and the other incentives to lie, cheat and steal.
If we think about the development of empiricism and the scientific method, we can identify that the small number of men who were natural philosophers (there weren't even 'scientists' then) were in it for the altruistic reasons. Am I sugar-coating this to say that there was not motivation for scientific misconduct?
What I am getting at is that it might be useful to contrast the historical conditions surrounding the rise of the scientific tradition in relaying why integrity is such an issue today. We can all identify the pressures that lead to lapses of integrity, but fewer of us admit to temptations and I think fewer of us will (even anonymously) report actions of falsification or plagiarism. The last time I checked there is no Office of Research Integrity ethics topic on history of science.
Maybe it is altruistic to appeal to the traditions and foundations of science, but I think if more people held honesty as the scientist's prime directive, we would not see as many problems with scientific integrity.
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