External Regulation to Stop Misconduct in Science 'Can Be Ruinous'

摘要

Scientific misconduct is to be expected. It is in the nature of humans to fail and occasionally to fail badly. The issue should not be how to build perfect public institutions but how to react when they fail. The question that public authorities need to confront when assailed by demands for greater regulation of the scientific community is whether such controls will replace scientific standards with extraneous ones. It is not socially responsible to turn science into laboratory administration. Early in July, Monash University psychologist William Webster revealed plagiarism in a work by his vice-chancellor. It was the third time that Professor David Robinson had been detected in this academic sin and he quickly left his position.