Fraud in science.

Abstract

Fraud, institutions politics deceit, would that cheating be comprise unrecognizable and contemporary mendacity without are society. these phenomena. Advertising within all Parthe and institutions that comprise contemporary society. Advertising and p litics would be u recognizabl wi out t se phenomena. Parents lie to their children, bankers embezzle funds, 'lifetime guarantees are not honored by either retailers or manufacturers, witnesses perjure themselves on the stand and the atheistic priest celebrates mass. In the long run institutions are not devastated because the family, business, government, church and law are often judged more for their consequences than for the truth of what they proclaim officially. Such values as love, profit, order or justice are standards, sometimes antithetical to truth, by which institutions are evaluated. The one institution that has the pursuit of truth as its dominant value is science. In recent years there has been a spate of disclosures of fraud committed by scientists and some believe that the known cases represent but the tip of an iceberg. Of the more current examples, probably best known is the so-called painted mice affair, in which a scientist at SloanKettering Institute, William Summerlin, whipped out his felt tip pen and painted the skin of the two mice on top. During the meeting he showed them to Good (his supervisor) as evidence of a successful graft (Culliton, 1974:1155). It is significant that an investigation at SloanKettering found Summerlin guilty of misrepresentation.' They never used the word 'fraudnot in print anyway, or in official statements (Culliton, 1974:1156). Unlike Summerlin, who confessed to some of his fraudulent acts, Cyril had died before his results aroused sufficient skepticism to question them seriously. Burt is accused by his critics of having doctored or even invented his extensive and partly unique collection of I.Q. test data in order to support his theory that intelligence is determined primarily by heredity (Wade, 1976:916). Less publicized cases than these have been described in journals such as Science, Science News, New Scientist and Scientific American. Some scientific leaders suspect the number of dishonest scientists is growing, as a result of the increasingly fierce competition for grant money, which tends to go to researchers who can produce or assert they can produce, the most impressive new findings in the shortest time (Rensberger, 1977:44). Because fraud is antithetical to the very aims of science, it is of par-

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