Research, Ownership, Misconduct—Readers Respond

I could not disagree more with Robert Laughlin’s analysis of recent fraud in experimental physics and the cure for what ails the profession. For science to be “relevant,” it must produce something—which may be beauty or insight or patent royalties—that has real value to someone. Our best response to economic pressure is to create things with real value.

Laughlin claims that we scientists have an “obsession with fundamentals and truth” but that present economic “pressure can turn otherwise excellent and honest scientists into willing deceivers.” Scientists as a group have moral frailties similar to other professional groups, but most of us understand two basic parameters. First, science is based on repeatable experiments and calculations, so it will not advance one’s career to publish results that others will not repeat. And second, products and processes based on faulty parameters and theories do not work well. So truth is valuable in science because it enhances the value of intellectual property. A sane scientist would not assert a false answer to a question that has economic importance, but might be tempted to assert a self-serving falsehood that is “academic.” Major hard-science frauds are generally committed by people who think that they know what the “right result” is and are frustrated in their attempts to get that result honestly.

To suppress fraud in physics, we can test our students for fraud in labs and assigned problems and punish where it is found. An instructor can set up a lab class to expect a fallacious result and then give a zero score to those who report it and praise those who report properly. Students often are given the correct answers before they begin to work assigned problems, especially those in which issues of sign or factors of 2 are tricky. The instructor can check that the student obtained the correct sign or factor at the correct point, rather than changed it at some arbitrary step, and thus grade accordingly. Substantial partial credit should be given for a calculation presented honestly with the wrong sign or factor and a 0 for the correct answer presented dishonestly. In addition to teaching our students physics, it is also valuable to teach them to correct those misunderstandings about what is proven and what is speculated that arise from different personality types.

Laughlin asserts that the recent frauds at Bell Labs “are noteworthy only because of Bell’s special stature in American science and its reputation, both partly attributable to Bell’s having been shielded from [economic] pressures by the old AT&T monopoly.” I assert that it is noteworthy that, despite its immediate economic stress, the present Bell Labs did the right thing. That benefits Bell’s long-term economic interest.

The private companies that hire Oregon State University students report that OSU’s most important lesson is ethics.