Time to act say COPE Chair, Liz Wager, and BMJ editor in chief, Fiona Godlee, who discuss the lack of systems in place to investigate research misconduct in the UK. The editorial is published in the BMJ and is also available here; excerpt: The meeting will hear that research misconduct is alive and well in [...]
Archive for the ‘Science and ethics’ Category
Research misconduct in the UK
Posted in Science and ethics on January 12, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Is our sytem broken?
Posted in Public understanding of science, Science and ethics on May 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Our system, in this post title, refers to the way “we”, i.e. the scientific community in its wider definition, make science and interact with the public/industries/governments etc. That our system is failing is what Darrel Ince suggests in this Times Higher Education article. The article focuses on one particular story where clinical trials were started [...]
Border control delays scientific collaboration
Posted in Immigration rules, Science and ethics on November 13, 2010 | 1 Comment »
I was supposed to welcome a scientist originally from India and currently working in Switzerland. He had travelled to the UK in the past and obtained his visa in a couple of days. However, as of 01.09.2010, the visa applications are sent to Paris and the sticker Visa is issued from there (earlier they used [...]
Nanoparticles: not magic after all
Posted in Science and ethics on May 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Science has retracted a 2005 paper about a technique called “MAGIC” which used magnetic nanoparticles to look at biomolecular interactions in real time in life cells. To look at the interaction between two proteins, one was to be fluorescently labelled, e.g. a GFP construct, and its potential binding partner was to be attached on a [...]
A not so warm welcome…
Posted in Science and ethics on March 27, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Our new immigration rules will have to be revised if we do not want to endanger our collaborative research culture, warns Mathias Brust: “Owing to a couple of early childhood experiences of travelling from one side of the divided Germany to the other, I must have developed an intuitive knack for border crossings. This may [...]
Speak up, scientists
Posted in Public understanding of science, Science and ethics on March 5, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Frank Gannon editorial in Embo reports describes all these things which have been happening “on our watch: the ruin of the environment, humanitarian disasters, dwindling resources and the financial crash“. He asks hard questions about our responsibilities as scientists and concludes with a call for engagement: “There are major challenges ahead and business as usual [...]
Forgery, fakery & fraud in science
Posted in Science and ethics on December 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The December edition of the Biochemist has several excellent articles about science and ethics. Unfortunately, these articles are not freely available for download. John Sulston (Manchester) discusses personal integrity, from plagiarism to straightforward falsification, collective integrity, i.e. self-policing of science through criticism, and institutional integrity, i.e. safeguarding the independence of scientists from the pressures of [...]
