Selected

Cases for Scientific Integrity

Course
1. Conflict of interest
Case: The Chance Meeting

Lisa Jones is a graduate student in the lab of Dr. John Smith at State University, where she
studies the pathology of SMEL virus, a highly pathogenic virus that has experienced a recent
resurgence due to the appearance of drug-resistant strains. Lisa has set out to examine a
hypothesis posed by a competing lab headed by Dr. Shirley Frank. In vitro experiments by
members of Dr. Frank's lab have suggested that SMEL protease is able to cleave SMEL
protein X. It has been suggested that this reaction occurs in vivo and is essential for
activating SMEL protein X, which promotes viral DNA replication. Lisa plans to isolate SMEL
protein X early in the viral life cycle with the hope of capturing the uncleaved SMEL protein
X. Unfortunately, utilizing SMEL strain A, Lisa has been unable to purify SMEL protein X.
Upon switching to strain B, Lisa has generated preliminary data that suggest that she has
succeeded in isolating a larger, perhaps uncleaved, form of SMEL protein X.
Soon after Lisa conducted these preliminary experiments, a viral conference was held at a
nearby university. Prior to the conference, Dr. Smith told the lab that many competitors
would be attending and instructed them to say nothing about results generated by the lab. At
the poster session, Lisa ran into Steve Jones, an old friend she hasn't seen since high
school. Steve is a graduate student in Dr. Frank's group and was a participant in the lab's in
vitro experiments with SMEL protease and protein X. Lisa became nervous when she
discovered Steve's objectives were similar to her own. But she realized that he was
implementing a slightly different technique and utilizing strain A. So far, all Steve's attempts
have failed.
Lisa apprehensively approached Dr. Smith and informed him that Steve's plans were not
identical to hers and asked whether she should mention her experience with strain A to her
old friend. Dr. Smith emphatically answered, "No!" Lisa, feeling that any action contradictory
to Dr. Smith's instruction would jeopardize her relationship with her mentor, decided not to
mention her results to Steve.
Cite this page: "The Chance Meeting" Online Ethics Center for Engineering 3/29/2006 National Academy of
Engineering Accessed: Friday, February 17, 2012 <www.onlineethics.org/Resources/Cases/chancemeet.aspx>

2. Authorship

Case: The Co-Authorship Controversy

Peggy Platt, a graduate student in the biochemistry department at State University (SU), had
completed her third year and had established a dissertation committee consisting of SU
faculty. Following one of her data sessions, Dr. Michael McClair, a member of her
dissertation committee, suggested some experiments that could be included to strengthen
her project. McClair suggested that Platt should perform these studies at the institution of his
collaborator, Dr. Gary Gleeson, because Gleeson's facilities were already set up for these
experiments. Platt felt that this would be a beneficial experience for her and took the idea to
her adviser.
Dr. Jenny Jones, Platt's adviser, was not thrilled with this idea, especially since Gleeson's
institution was located in England. Jones did not discuss her objections to the trip with Platt
directly, but she expressed her reservations in subtle ways. However, recognizing that the
experiments would be beneficial, Jones allowed Platt to go. Jones warned Platt not to share
too much of her unpublished data with Gleeson's group because they were doing similar
studies on a parallel system. Although her work had not been published, Platt had presented
her data and techniques at regional and national meetings. Platt mentioned her adviser's
concerns to McClair, and both he and Gleeson assured her that her visit was a collaboration
and that she should definitely be willing to share her research. Platt was content with
McClair's response on the matter and went to England to perform her studies.

While conducting her studies at Gleeson's research institution, Platt also helped members of
that lab do preliminary experiments on their system. These experiments verified that they
needed to do some studies similar to the unpublished studies Platt had completed at SU.
She helped them set up the instrumentation necessary for doing these studies and made
sure that the instruments were working as expected.
Platt completed her work during her scheduled six-week stay in England and returned to the
United States. A couple of months after returning to SU, Platt received a preprint of a paper
from Gleeson's lab, which reported their findings on the studies they had begun while she
was there. Platt was neither asked for input on writing the article, nor was she included as a
co-author. Instead, the acknowledgments mentioned Platt and her "helpful discussions."
Platt felt that her contribution in establishing a need for the studies and providing a means of
achieving successful results entitled her to co-authorship. In fact, the studies performed in
Gleeson's lab utilized a protocol that Platt had established as part of her dissertation project.
Furthermore, she had been assured that her relationship with Gleeson's lab was to be a
collaboration.

When questioned by Platt, Gleeson had several reasons for excluding Platt's name on the
paper. First, Gleeson stated that Platt did not do the experiments and therefore did not
deserve to be included. Furthermore, Gleeson asserted that they had planned to conduct the
studies prior to Platt's arrival. Finally, it was revealed that a post-doc in Gleeson's lab was
applying for jobs; having Platt as a co-author on this piece would detract from his worth.

After receiving Gleeson's response, Platt took her case to McClair. Despite his initial role in
arranging this collaboration, McClair denied any responsibility at this point. He claimed that
this conflict was a matter between Platt and Gleeson. When Platt approached her adviser,
Jones refused to pursue the issue because she felt it would make her laboratory look bad.
Platt was not satisfied with her adviser's response, but quickly became aware that pushing
the issue would only result in a very difficult working situation.

Cite this page: "The Co-Authorship Controversy" Online Ethics Center for Engineering 2/16/2006 National
Academy of Engineering Accessed: Friday, February 17, 2012 www.onlineethics.org/Resources/Cases/co-
author_controversy.aspx

3. Research Conduct
Case: The Millikan Case - Discrimination Versus Manipulation of Data

Categories Illustrated by this Case

Categories of Ethics/Values Issues Illustrated by This Case
Issues related to the collection, treatment and presentation of scientific data.

Introduction
Of all the various types of temptations in science, the temptation to fudge, or even invent
data outright, is probably the one which high school science students will find most familiar.
It happens all the time: their instruments give one result -- but they know that everybody else
is getting some other result, or that something's wrong with the way they have done it, or
that the result that people got last year is different, or that the result in the book is different.
What makes this an ethical issue, rather than just an issue of laboratory practice, is that the
action that most promotes one's self-interest can be different from the right thing to do. The
Millikan case highlights a number of the important issues involved. But by itself, it is probably
too complicated to use in helping students to navigate this issue. One can, however, set up
simpler situations to illustrate the same points. As those historians who have analyzed the
record of Millikan's treatment of his experimental data, and other similar cases, have pointed
out, it is not always easy to distinguish between the "right" thing to do, inappropriate but
inadvertent manipulation, and intentional fudging. Scientists agree that there are
circumstances when some of the data collected in an experiment can be rejected or
disregarded. In some cases statistical rules can be used as guidance, but in many situations
it is left to the judgement of the experimental scientist to decide if a problem with the
equipment or some other consideration justifies discarding a datum or a set of data. An
acceptable practice, but one that is rarely followed, is to decide in advance what specific
observed circumstances in a particular experimental situation would justify data rejection.

Background
In the 1930s and 1940s, Robert A. Millikan was the most famous U.S. scientist of his time.
He had won the Nobel Prize in 1924, largely due to his important and innovative
measurement, carried out around 1910, of the charge on the electron -- one of the most
central physical constants that scientists of that era had been seeking to determine.
In 1897, British experimenter J. J. Thomson had discovered the electron and measured the
ratio of its charge to mass (the e/m ratio) -- an event which helped to usher in the electronic
age. The e/m ratio of the electron was related to a number of other important quantities of
interest to scientists. But without knowing either the charge e or the mass m of the electron,
all one had was a set of relative values; it would be like knowing a set of values in units of a
foreign currency -- that a house costs x times what a car costs, which in turn costs y times
what a newspaper costs -- without knowing the value in your own currency of any one.
Measuring the mass of an electron seemed out of the question; you couldn't put one on a
scale and read a dial. But neither, it seemed, could you isolate an electron and measure its
charge on an electrometer. Around the turn of the century, Thomson and several of his
students at the Cavendish Laboratory tried various means of indirect measurement, with
unconvincing results. Moreover, until one had a relatively direct way of measuring the charge
on the electron, one couldn't really be sure that the electron was indeed an atom of
electricity. It was still at least possible that electrons came in a spectrum of charges.
Millikan's method involved watching the behavior of oil droplets in an electrically charged
field. Tiny oil droplets are ionized by passage through an atomizer; they have an extra
electron or electrons riding on them. A droplet is allowed to fall between two plates, and then
an electric field is created which pulls the droplet upwards. The speed of the droplet depends
on the charge riding on it. Thus the basic measurement is the rise time; how long it takes a
particular drop to rise a certain distance. If electrons had a spectrum of charges, one would
expect a corresponding continuous spectrum of rise times. If, on the other hand, all electrons
had the same charge, the charge on each ion would be multiples of a single number, a fact
which would be reflected by rise times that would also be simple multiples of each other.
Millikan published tables of his measured drops and their rise times. What these tables
indicated was that the charges on the droplets were, indeed, multiples of the same number --
thus, the charge of the electron. He then wrote a series of papers on his experiments. He
would win the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work; he was only the second American to be
so honored. Millikan considered the experiment to be such a direct and irrefutable
demonstration of the atomicity of electric charge that he wrote in his autobiography that he
who has seen that experiment, and hundreds of observers have observed it, [has] in effect
SEEN the electron.
The Case
An examination of Millikan's own papers and notebooks reveals that he picked and chose
among his drops. That is, he exercised discrimination with respect to which drops he would
include in published accounts of the value of e, leaving many out. Sometimes he mentioned
this fact, and sometimes he did not. Of particular concern is the fact that in his 1913 paper,
presenting the most complete account of his measurements of the charge on the electron,
Millikan states It is to be remarked that this is not a selected group of drops but represents
all of the drops experimented upon during 60 consecutive days. However, Millikan's
notebook shows that of 189 observations during the period in question, only 140 are
presented in the paper.
Millikan's results were contested by Felix Ehrenhaft, of the University of Vienna, who claimed
to have found "subelectrons." Moreover, Ehrenhaft claimed that his finding was in fact
confirmed by some of Millikan's own data -- droplets that Millikan had mentioned but
discounted in his published writings. The result was a decades-long controversy, the "Battle
over the Electron," over whether or not there existed subelectrons, or electrons with charges
of different values. This controversy makes an excellent case study because we are
fortunate, thanks to Millikan's notebooks, to be able to see very specifically which drops he
included and which he did not.
In retrospect, we know that Millikan was right and Ehrenhaft wrong. Electrons, to the best of
our present experimental and theoretical knowledge, have a specific, discrete charge.
Those scientists and other scholars who have carefully reviewed this case have failed to
agree on whether Millikan was guilty of unethical behavior or "bad science" in the treatment
and presentation of his data. One of the expressed opinions condemns Millikan on the
simple basis of the fact that his published statement is at odds with what can be concluded
from an uncritical examination of his laboratory notebooks. Others exonerate Millikan on the
basis of a careful analysis and interpretation of comments on the data that appear in the
notebooks. In the opinion of these Millikan defenders, the assertion that all drops were
presented in the paper refers to all of the data taken under those conditions when the
apparatus was working properly. Some of the scientists who have commented on this case
appear to permit Millikan much discretion in the use of his "scientific intuition" to decide
which data to include or exclude. This latter view seems to be guided by the principle that
any scientist who consistently gets what turns out to be the correct answer is
doing good science.

Cite this page: "Case Study 2: The Millikan Case - Discrimination Versus Manipulation of Data" Online Ethics
Center for Engineering 7/20/2006 National Academy of Engineering Accessed: Thursday, February 16,
2012<www.onlineethics.org/Education/precollege/scienceclass/sectone/chapt4/cs2.aspx>

4. Duty to society
Case: Bridge Collapse and the Duty to Warn
This case is an excerpt from "The Structural Engineer's Standard of Care."
Another duty of an engineer is the duty to warn. California Attorney General's Opinion
Number 85-208 (1985) (Acret, 1991), states that a registered engineer hired to investigate
the integrity of a building has a duty to warn the building's occupants if the engineer
determines they face an imminent risk of serious injury due to a hazard the engineer
observes. The Opinion requires the engineer to warn the occupants even though the building
owner client of the engineer requires confidentiality on the part of the engineer.
The extent to which the duty to warn extends varies with location and circumstance, and the
standard of care in one locality may not be the standard of care in another. The following
case study is an example of this fact.
A 77-year old county-owned suspension bridge for pedestrian traffic, nicknamed Swinging
Bridge, collapsed into the Little Red River in Arkansas in 1989 ("Appeals ...", 1996). Forty
people were on the bridge at the time, engaged in the apparently popular activity of forcing
the bridge to swing from side to side. The bridge collapsed, five people were killed and
dozens were injured.
In 1982, seven years prior to the collapse, an engineering study evaluated and analyzed the
bridge, and came to the opinion that the bridge was sound, and that it could provide
adequate service for as long as an additional century. The engineer recommended further
study be carried out, and although the bridge cables were free of rust, he recommended a
protective coating be applied. The County did not follow the engineer's recommendations.
The victims and their relatives sued the County, charging it with failure to warn of the hazard
presented by the bridge. The court ruled against the plaintiffs, stating, "Mere knowledge of
danger to the individual does not create an affirmative duty to protect." The pedestrians
caused the collapse and the County had nothing to do with it. The court apparently decided
the defendants did not have to warn anyone, and the plaintiffs had to bear the consequences
of their actions themselves.
This finding may not have been the conclusion of a court in a different jurisdiction, one where
juries are more sympathetic to plaintiffs. If it were known the bridge could be damaged by
being forced to swing back and forth, or if that fact should have been known, and if it were
known that pedestrians regularly engaged in such activity, a more sympathetic court may
have found the engineer who evaluated Swinging Bridge negligent in his failure to warn of
the dangers. This tragedy could certainly have been prevented.

Cite this page: "Bridge Collapse and the Duty to Warn" Online Ethics Center for Engineering 11/24/2010 National
Academy of Engineering Accessed: Thursday, February 16,
2012 www.onlineethics.org/Resources/Cases/24355.aspx

Alternative Case: The Federal Scientist-Multiple Roles and Moral Issues

Alice Campbell is an environmental geologist employed by the Toxic Waste Disposal
Administration, a federal agency. She is responsible for making recommendations on
funding research and directing geologic investigations to determine the safety of sites for
toxic waste disposal. Because these materials remain toxic for extremely long periods of
time, geologic conditions at potential disposal sites must be known with sufficient certainty to
allow decisions to be made regarding siting and construction of disposal facilities. However,
because of the long time periods and the nature of the hazardous materials involved, many
decisions are made in spite of uncertainty about the performance of the sites and the
application of new, unproven technology.
Decisions to site waste facilities are extremely litigious and controversial. These decisions
are made in a politically sensitive environment and are scrutinized by the public and the
media. Scientists who work in this area are often called to testify in court proceedings and
must be able to defend their data collection methods, notes, methods, processes, and
decisions in an open court of law.
A Day in the Life of a Federal Scientist
10 a.m. - Funding Research One of Alice's responsibilities is to review technical reports and
recommend further agency action based on the results of the reports. Due to the nature of
the questions regarding the safety of the disposal site, traditional geologic methods do not
always provide decision makers with adequate information nor provide sufficient
demonstrations of compliance with regulations governing public health and safety. A new
method for determining the stability of geologic formations has been developed by Dr. von
Wegner, a world-renowned senior geochemist at a national laboratory. The method, Thermal
Oxygenation Xenolith (TOX) uses heat sensors suspended from helicopters to determine the
presence of active faults based on residual thermal characteristics from fault friction.
Von Wegner is an articulate and convincing salesman for his new method, and the national
laboratory where he works has an excellent reputation; he is able to convince the
management board of Toxic Waste Disposal Administration to use the new method. Federal
funding is provided to the geochemist for a report on the use of TOX at the proposed
disposal site to determine whether any faults exist that would make the site unsafe for waste
disposal. Von Wegners TOX report shows that no significant faults exist on or near the site
that could impact waste isolation.
During her review of the report, Alice discovers that TOX is not only new, but the validity of
its application to environmental problems is contested within the geochemical community,
due to calibration problems from biological contributions to the thermal signature of rocks.
After further investigation and discussion with her professional colleagues, Alice learns that a
professional rivalry exists between von Wegner and other experts in this area, who are
proponents of an alternative method for locating faults.

Noon - Public Perceptions of Risk At lunch, Alice reads an article in the local newspaper
about the latest in a series of minor tremors at the site. She recalls that reports on the
potential for seismic activity at the site determined a probability greater than 1 in 10,000 that
an earthquake of 7.0 or greater on the Richter scale would occur in the next 1000 years.
Therefore, the site met the established regulatory requirements for designation as a suitable
site for waste disposal. However, the newspaper quotes a "knowledgeable source" from an
environmental group, who asserts that the most recent tremor is evidence that the potential
for earthquakes in the vicinity of the waste disposal site make it unsafe. This group has been
a vocal opponent to the disposal program Alice is working on. As a geologist, Alice knows
that earthquakes occur almost everywhere, including the waste site, and that seismic
investigations have shown that the site is safe.

6 p.m. - Conflict of Interest In addition to her federal job, Alice has begun to take graduate
classes at Western Gambling State University, but she has not chosen a research topic or
an academic adviser. Early in the semester, the professor teaching Alice's class, Dr. Sharpo,
discusses a research proposal he has developed to use the microbe Toxiconsumus, which
may have the ability to chemically neutralize toxic waste. Alice is excited by the topic and
considers approaching Dr. Sharpo to discuss this topic as the subject of her dissertation
research.
8 a.m. The Next Day Alice is surprised to learn that Dr. Sharpo has submitted a proposal to
the federal agency where Alice works. He is applying for funding to assess the utility of using
the microbe on the toxic waste disposal program. Alice's supervisor asks her to serve on a
five-person team to review the university's proposal and provide a recommendation on
whether the research should be funded. If use of the microbe proves feasible, Alice could
use this topic for her dissertation.

Alternative case: The Incomplete Technical Presentation (selling analyzer that is

faulty in overlapping areas)

5. IP and Data
Case: Ownership of Knowledge and Graduate Education

Susan Moss is a third-year graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Jocelyn Abrams, a
successful and energetic researcher in a competitive field. Abrams has three post-doctoral
fellows working in her laboratory, whom she relies on to train and assist her four graduate
students. The laboratory holds weekly research meetings where people report their finished
data and work in progress. Abrams stresses that the reports must be concise and focused
primarily on finished work. Two days before Moss must deliver a research report, she tries to
develop a model that describes a set of data, but she has difficulty synthesizing the
information on her own. Because Abrams is often too busy to meet with Moss, she makes an
appointment with one of the post-doctoral fellows, Jim Reynolds. Reynolds is very eager and
helpful. Within an hour, Moss and Reynolds have worked out a reasonable model, and Moss
presents a successful report.
Two weeks after meeting with Reynolds, Moss is asked to review a portion of a grant
proposal written by Reynolds and Abrams. As she is reading, she realizes that several of the
proposed experiments are ones she had mentioned to Reynolds as the next steps in
completing her thesis research. Moss tells Reynolds that the proposed experiments are
directly related to her thesis, but he maintains that the ideas were his and that they will not
interfere with Moss's project. Moss believes that the ideas were hers and that they are vital
to her project, so she makes an appointment with Abrams. Abrams listens to Moss's side of
the story, but she says that she does not want to get involved in personal conflicts between
people in the lab and that Moss will have to work things out with Reynolds on her own.

After Moss confronts Reynolds about the proposal, Reynolds responds by saying, "Yes, I
agree that you helped generate the ideas in the proposal and we would love for you to work
on some of the experiments. If you complete them and include them in your thesis, then you
have contributed to the research goals of the lab. It doesn't really matter who thinks of the
experiments or who does the experiments, as long as they get done." Moss still feels that
her ideas have been taken from her, and she reports this response to Abrams. Abrams
replies, "I could have thought of those same ideas a year ago. Ideas are a dime a dozen; it's
the execution of the experiments that receives credit, and this you can certainly do."
Cite this page: "Ownership of Knowledge and Graduate Education" Online Ethics Center for
Engineering 2/16/2006 National Academy of EngineeringAccessed: Friday, February 17,
2012 <www.onlineethics.org/Resources/Cases/ownership.aspx>

Alternative case: Patent co-authorship

A civil engineer designs significant improvements to a sampling device used in a research
project. There is controversy regarding the patent of the new device.