Research, Ownership, Misconduct—Readers Respond

Robert Laughlin’s article is incisive and well worth reading. The conflict of interest he described exists in other institutions too. It isn’t only high-status scientists who may find themselves making inappropriate choices. A customer support engineer may have to choose between revealing valuable technical secrets to help the customer and revealing aspects of company policy that management would prefer to keep hidden. For example, it might be in the customer’s interest to say, “Don’t buy that product; it has problems, and we are bringing out a better model next month.” But that would be disastrous for the company, because it would leave a pile of unsold merchandise in the warehouse.

Scientists sometimes exaggerate the difference between research work and jobs in other fields. They think they alone are devoted to finding the truth and that they represent some kind of “gold standard” in truth-seeking. Actually, a farmer or programmer must also learn the truth. An airplane pilot or factory worker who ignores the truth may be killed in an accident. As Rudyard Kipling wrote in “The Secret of the Machines,”