The scientific method is highly cyclic and can be simply defined as having an idea, testing it, and letting the test inform your new idea. At some point, ideally, your idea will have evidence backing it up and you have found something new that will change the face of the field, medicine, or the world. At this point you write a paper, file a patent, and continue interrogating the finding to show it is accurate, useful, and reproducible. Of course, in practice this cycle has lots of branches, some dead ends, and suffers from a lack of funding. What happens when scientists skip to the patenting, publishing, and human subjects without subjecting their findings to rigorous testing? At minimum this is less than ideal scientific and scholarly conduct and sometimes is much worse causing bodily harm to individuals or a group. These instances, though not the norm, erode public trust in science as an institution which hurts everyone. There are some cases of scientific misconduct that have become well known, but as soon as I started looked more and more keep appearing.
I plan to use this blog to examine some of these cases and what we, as scientists, can do to prevent their repetition and allow the public to benefit from scientific advances that come from good science. I was inspired to look into more of these cases by the Ethics Forum that takes place for the REU students in Pittsburgh!
It seems I would be remised to not talk about a current case, that of Dr. Sapan Desai.
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