They Hippocratic Oath has ensured that there have never been any bad doctors in history.
Similarly, the oath all lawyers have to take to swear to uphold the principles of justice and to be servants of the court have ensured that no laywer has ever perverted the course of justice, or knowingly defended a guilty person and hidden proof of their guilt. And no prosecutor has ever failed to disclose exculpatory evidence. All because of the oaths they swear.
So, of course having a global ethical science oath will ensure that only "good" science will be done.
It's a brave new world...
Or you could just have fun with it...
I'll get my coat...
Why I oughta...
That did make me laugh though, and if I don't get more Boneyard contributions, I might be relying on that one!
Is this "ethical code" designed to actually enforce ethical practice and make scientists better people, or to make the public feel that scientists are somehow more ethical? I mean, does he actually see it altering behaviour, or is a PR thing?
Sounds like pure manager-ese to me. No different from when a multinational corporation spends half a million dollars developing a "mission statement", when really they don't need anything more than "We will provide a product that people want and make lots of cash doing so".
If any company does want that statement, offhand, I'm perfectly willing to let you have it for as little as quarter of a million dollars.
I'm pretty sure almost all universities have some kind of academic integrity policy that by accepting a studentship or job at that university you automatically agree to abide by.
And that policy (which actually has disciplinary action built in to it - a PI falsifying data can be fired for gross misconduct) doesn't stop those who want to break the "code". So unless the Chief Scientist is thinking of making it against the law to falsify data or copy research I don't see any more deterrent.
I think you're all right - I think it's PR. Perhaps done with the best of intentions (after all, if scientists are seen to be Good People then businesses are more likely to want to fund scientific endeavours, and Flying Spaghetti Monster knows we need more funding in science), but a PR stunt nonetheless.
At LSE we had to sign up to the Ethics Committee code at the university. Granted, this wasn't a science field, but yeah, I'd say most respectable institutions will have their own code of conduct that employees and reaserchers have to abide by.
So yeah, definitely sounds like a PR stunt.
Commenting by HaloScan
