Teaching Ethics to Basic Scientists: Suggestions for Greater Curricular Clarity

Arri Eisen and Roberta M. Berry's (2002) lament about teaching research ethics to scientists is shared, I venture, by all ethicists who try to teach, advise, or cope with the ethical challenges of basic science. Their suggestions and basic plea for more ethical training are laudable. I would like to suggest, however, that the situation they portray is not unique to bioscience, and that the aspects that are in fact unique to that population need more explication. In addition, I think Chakrabarty's (2002) series of questions misses the essential role of bioethics training, which is different than bioethics scholarship.

To begin, it is not only the biosciences that have difficulty with ethics training. Ethicists in many fields struggle to convince graduates and faculty of the need for ethics training. It is difficult in almost any research training program to find the time for ethics in crowded class schedules, to formulate effective pedagogical strategies, and to cope with the fact that, as pointed out by Sears (2002), Richman (2002), and Fryer-Edwards (2002), the best didactic courses in the world cannot counteract poor modeling by mentors outside of the classroom setting. Many of the problems Eisen and Berry describe are endemic to graduate training in general and have been equally lamented, for example, in social science training programs such as sociology (Sweet 1999; Platt 2000) and psychology (Welfel 1992; Piercy and Fontes 2001).

I believe it is crucial to differentiate three basic topic areas in bioscience research ethics, each of which may require a distinct pedagogical approach.

1. Ethical issues dealing with potential harm to subjects (animals or human)

Gordon and Parsi (2002) question the fitness of bioethicists to deal with the ethical issues of basic scientists, suggesting that bioethics' strengths lie in human subjects protections. It may be that the field of bioethics is most closely associated with issues of human subjects protections. However, even if a relatively small percentage of bioscience deals directly with human subjects, a large number of bioscientists do research on animals and need to be sensitized to the ethical standards and the regulations that guide animal research. Many others experiment on human tissues or human genetic material, which has the potential for harm for identifiable donating subjects. It is wholly appropriate for bioethicists to participate in such training.

2. Ethical issues dealing with superordinate/subordinate relations or relations to peers (e.g., authorship, plagiarism, intellectual property)

The bulk of the complaints brought by bioscience graduate students to the University of Pennsylvania ombudsman and the main ethical issues brought up by the students in our ethics course for scientists deal with mentor/student relations or collegial issues. Questions or problems with authorship order, credit allocation for discoveries or ideas, payment of fees for assays or other licensed intellectual or proprietary property, and so on arise again and again in bioscientific research. Bioethicists are (or should be) well suited to contribute to teaching on these issues, for they are as trenchant for clinical medicine as basic science.

3. Ethical issues in the conduct of "science" (i.e., scientific misconduct)

Finally, "science" as a pursuit has a set of ethical precepts from which it derives much of its social authority. Falsifying data, exaggerating claims, reusing data for multiple publications, eliminating anomalous or disconfirming data or studies: all undermine the integrity of science and public confidence in its products. A discussion of the ethical underpinnings of the scientific enterprise is a valuable part of bioscience ethics training.

Not all three of these areas are best served by didactic methods. I fully concur with other commentators that the best way to instill these values is by having them discussed throughout the curriculum, not just in ethics classes, and by sensitizing mentors to the need to model these attitudes and behaviors to their graduate apprentices.

Finally, one last point: Chakrabarty (2002) raises the question of how...