P. Aarne Vesilind

There is no doubt that Dr. Well's actions are inappropriate and potentially damaging to both Mary and Michael, as well as the health of the entire laboratory. Some may admire what Dr. Well is doing -- using his clout to steal Michael's work and give it to Mary. Robin Hood may have been admired by some, but he was still an outlaw.

More important are the actions of Michael and Mary. Given the obvious age of both of these people (six years in the lab), I would presume some level of maturity. They should, as a team, speak to Dr. Well and explain to him that his plans are not acceptable to either of them. If Dr. Well is as caring as he is made out to be, he will understand his mistake and apologize.

One last comment: It is interesting that Dr. Well is concerned with the welfare of a female graduate student and is about to cause damage to the prospects of a male graduate student by helping the female. One way to think through this problem is to reverse the roles. Would Dr. Well (or some other laboratory director) be more or less likely to help Mary if she were male, and if Michael were female? I think gross sexism is implied in the entire scenario.

The interesting character in this case study is Richard, identified as a "senior research scientist." In response to Tom's concerns, Richard describes what he sees as the role of scientists:

We have some responsibility as scientists to be objective and stay neutral in such a debate.

He speaks as if being objective and staying neutral are all the same. It is not good, according to Richard, for scientists to fail to be objective or to take sides in debates concerning the use of their scientific information.

I want to ask first if it is necessary for a scientist to be objective in order to be a good scientist. That is one issue. The second issue is whether it is necessary for a scientist to stay neutral.

At the risk of being called a positivist, I believe that scientists discover the truth by the use of their senses. Tom and Richard measured the pH in the lakes, counted the fish species and performed other tests in their aquatic biology and chemistry laboratory. They used their senses of sight, smell, touch and perhaps even hearing to draw conclusions about the health of the lakes. Most of these data would be considered "objective." If Tom uses a pH meter to measure the pH of the water a certain distance below the surface during a certain time of day and at a given temperature, the result is an indisputable number (provided there have been no interferences and the meter was properly calibrated). Given this information, all scientists would agree that the data are objective and valid.

Suppose Tom and Richard find that the lake directly downwind from the power plant has by far the lowest pH value, and the lakes that are not affected by the plume from the power plant have neutral values, normal for lakes in that region. Is it then "objective" to jump to the conclusion that the power plant is responsible for causing the low pH in the lake?

Good scientists will not make that statement. Proving causality is notoriously difficult, and Tom should refrain from suggesting conclusions where causality is uncertain.

A similar problem with drawing causative conclusions based on environmental data exists in the global warming controversy. We know, for example, that the carbon dioxide concentration in our atmosphere is increasing, and we also know that the temperature of the earth is increasing. We understand how the increased CO2 in the atmosphere could cause global warming, and indeed most mathematical models suggest that CO2 and other greenhouse gases such as methane indeed are the culprits, but there is no proof of that. A good scientist would say that there is evidence that both curves are increasing, and that there are some very sophisticated mathematical models that suggest that there is a causal relationship, but there is no proof up to this point. The role of scientists is to provide the data and to make suggestions. It is not the role of scientists, as scientists, to jump to conclusions where there may be alternative explanations for a phenomenon. If that is what Richard means by "neutral" in the case study, then he is right. In the absence of proof, the scientist is morally committed to simply present the data and suggest possible alternative explanations.

But there are other ways to stay "neutral," and that is what Tom is coping with. He recognizes that time is running out for the various species in these lakes, and that their loss would not only be detrimental to the ecosystem, but would result in an economic catastrophe for many of the people who depend on the fish. He also knows, I am sure, that once the pH in a lake has dropped to levels that preclude the procreation of fish, the water will stay at this pH for a very long time. There are no known techniques for economically revitalizing a lake destroyed by acidity.

Tom is now weighing the question of neutrality the same way that atmospheric scientists weigh the problem of global warming. We do not know for sure what is causing warmer temperatures, but the results of global warming are so catastrophic that it makes a lot of sense to do all we can to prevent further temperature increases now instead of waiting until it is too late. Atmospheric chemists talk of a "forcing function," a notion that we can do something to the atmosphere at the present time and not find out for many years what effect it might have on the long-term global temperature. Similarly, Tom recognizes that the "forcing function" on the lakes is most likely the power plant emissions, and that if these emissions continue, the lakes will die.

Second, as a private citizen, Tom can advise the group and even represent them in a public hearing. Tom cannot do that in his role as a university researcher or a participant in a government-sponsored study, but his knowledge can be put to good use in his role as citizen. If he strongly suspects that the power plant is causing the pH to be depressed, then he has a moral obligation to say so. In contrast to his role as citizen/adviser, in his published scientific papers he has an obligation to refrain from suggesting that the problem is caused by the power plant unless he lists this possibility as one of several.

This dual role as scientist and citizen is not hard to understand because all of us participate in such mental bifurcation. I spend time with my buddies at a ball game and we drink beer and tell risqué jokes. At the ballgame, I am in my role as fan and friend. But the next day, in my role as professor, I cannot drink beer or tell such jokes. I continue to be the same person, but my roles change, as does appropriate behavior for those roles. In Tom's case, the appropriate role of the scientist is to question everything and to publish irrefutable data. As a citizen, his role ought to be to advise the people who could make a difference and perhaps save the lakes.

When my kids were growing up, they experienced the usual pressures to conform to the standards of their society, including having the latest toys, clothes, electronics. They would ask for these necessities using arguments that often consisted solely of: "But, Dad, I need that!"

I tried my best to reason with them by pointing out a difference between need and want. What they wanted, of course, was the trappings of their culture. Their needs were already satisfied - a stable home, enough good food to eat, a warm place to sleep, and a cadre of good friends. But in their adolescent way of thinking, these were taken for granted. Because they had not known a different life, they thought that all lives had these advantages. What to the rest of the world would have been luxuries, to them became needs.

I remembered these arguments with my kids when I read this scenario, particularly, where the author quotes the Society of American Foresters (SAF) as taking the position that the Endangered Species Act is too restrictive, arguing that human economic needs [sic] should be considered as well as the biological needs of plant and animal species.

This argument is blatantly anthropocentric. It uses the word need in two different ways, just as my kids did. The need of nonhuman nature for forests is a need for survival, both as species and individuals. Humans' need, however, particularly in the United States, is one of luxury. Our country uses timber now to build palatial houses that have 10 times as many rooms as there are people to occupy them, and uses paper at a clip faster than when computers were not used for communication. We clear-cut forests because they belong to us, and we have been assured that we can do with them whatever we want.

The distinction among the senses of "need" is applicable in this scenario. One could argue that the Society of American Foresters, supported by and dominated by the timber industries, has a clear economic reason for dismantling the Endangered Species Act. SAF argues that the property owners (the large pulp and paper companies) would be economically deprived if we gave nonhuman nature a chance to survive. What we are witnessing, of course, is simple greed, not only on the part of the forestry industry, but also on the part of people who purchase lumber far and above their legitimate needs. Want is what is governing and justifying these decisions, not need.

The author of this scenario quotes from Weil and Arzbaecher: The three major goals of research groups are "1) to get research done; 2) to get students trained; and 3) to acquire the funding needed to achieve the first two goals." The author suggests that Professor Morris may have acted to sacrifice the second of these goals in order to accomplish the first and possibly the third, and goes on to suggest that a discussion of this scenario should include a reflection of how these goals can be appropriately balanced and how inappropriate balancing can lead to unethical behavior.

I do not want to pick a fight with Weil and Arzbaecher, but I believe they have taken a very short-sighted view of university research. If they asked researchers what their goals are, they probably would have obtained the list above. That is what researchers are expected to say. But I suspect that probing and candid interviews with scientists that constitute a research group would have produced a far different list of goals. I suspect they would have listed their goals something like: 1) to win fame and recognition; 2) to discover new knowledge; 3) to do something beneficial for humanity; and 4) to have a rewarding career (with adequate compensation for doing interesting work).

Their job then, as opposed to their reasons for doing their job, would be to get the research done (so they can become famous, find new knowledge, and help others); train students (for the same reasons); and obtain funding (so they can continue their careers).

In that light, let us consider the actions of Professor Morris, who is clearly interested in getting this student, Johnson, to work on the project. Morris wants to be famous (an assumption based on extensive empirical evidence, but it could be challenged), discover new knowledge, do something beneficial (maybe) and have a great career. His student Johnson is his means to these objectives. He wants Johnson to finish so that the research can be published and enhance Morris's fame. I suspect that he cares little for Johnson's welfare, except that the sooner Johnson can graduate and join a faculty somewhere, the sooner Morris's fame as the producer of many PhDs will be slightly improved.

What Morris apparently does not understand is that one very bad PhD student can destroy one's reputation for graduating many good ones. In a way, this situation will be a self-correcting. When the word gets out, Morris will have a hard time attracting new graduate students, and if the research Johnson and his ilk will do is bad, Morris will not be able to get the findings published and will have increasing difficulty getting research funds. This outcome is sometimes known as Darwinian selection in science.

There is no argument here that Professor Brown is guilty of moral misconduct. Society, which indirectly pays his salary and supports his cushy life-style, must hold him accountable for doing the right thing. Part of his job is to certify that graduate students have certain expected skills, and in this regard he is clearly violating the public trust. The rest of the faculty, by knuckling under to Professor Brown, are equally guilty accomplices.

But should the focus of this unfortunate situation exclude James, the student who was unfairly helped through the program? Did he not, by accepting unfair assistance in passing the cumulative exams, essentially steal his degree? Is this behavior any different from that of students who cheat on exams or plagiarizes papers in order to graduate from college? In such cases, while the students receive the degrees, they must, at some stage in their lives, reflect on what underhanded means they had to use, and that reflection must be personally painful.

Just recently the local newspaper carried a story about how term papers can be purchased; the author of the news article estimated that at least 10 percent of college students use one of these paper mills during their time in college. The author had interviewed a writer of such term papers, who understood the sleazy nature of her craft, but then rationalized it by saying; "It's a natural thing [to purchase term papers and use them as your own]. If someone tells you a joke, you tell it as your own."

Her statement is wrong on two accounts. First, it is not a natural thing to steal, or to use deception in obtaining a college degree. Most students who cheat in college do so with full knowledge that it is wrong and often agonize about it. Second, telling a joke does not imply that the joke has been created by the person telling it. Everyone knows that jokes are shared without attribution. Only when the jokes are claimed to be original when they are not is the re-telling immoral. But the purchase and use of term papers without proper attribution is an immoral act, and the writer of such papers is guilty of immoral behavior by openly and notoriously acting as a source of such papers.

It is interesting, however, that while some 20 states have made the sale of such papers illegal (punishable by a civil penalty), not one state has outlawed the purchase of the papers, although the entire industry would collapse if there were no buyers. The students who purchase the papers are also guilty parties in this sorry business.

Similarly, James is the truly guilty person in this case. It is his responsibility to conduct himself in an honorable way, and if he perceives that he is being unfairly helped (by having Professor Brown tell him what is on the comprehensive exams, e.g.), then he should stand up and refuse such help. This requirement differs little from that of a student who is offered a term paper for sale. We all recognize that the moral thing to do is to refuse to purchase the paper. Similarly, James should refuse to accept Brown's assistance. By cheating his way through graduate school, not only does James paint himself as a scientifically incompetent person, but also as an immoral one. It might be, that, as in the scenario, James could not hold a job; the problem with the job was not that he could not perform in the laboratory, but that his co-workers soon discovered that James could not be trusted. That second conclusion is far more damning than the first. If James were simply incompetent, he could always find a job cooking French fries. If he was a cheat and liar, then no one would hire him.

This interesting and rich scenario raises two primary issues:

1. Did Jihvraj and Brady use an appropriate procedure to punish the graduate student?
2. Did the graduate student deserve to be punished?

Any university that allows its faculty to impose sanctions on students for academic dishonesty without going through a judicial process is morally corrupt and legally on very dangerous ground. One of the hallmarks of our legal system and Western morality is that all people are to be treated equally unless there are justifiable reasons for doing otherwise. Ideally, a transgression by one is treated exactly like that of any other, regardless of wealth, race, status or any other irrelevant characteristic. When a university allows its faculty to decide on their own what penalties are to be imposed, it is saying in effect that it does not care that all students be treated equally and with justice.

Second, the university is in shaky legal territory when it allows individuals to impose sanctions. Any student who receives sanctions should be able to seek redress in a court of law. The student's legal argument would be that the sanctions imposed by professors are arbitrary. To show that they are not, the university would have to prove that similar transgressions resulted in similar sanctions, which they could not do because they would have no record of the results of academic irregularities. Legally speaking, the university would be placing itself and its professors in harm's way.

So the answer to the first question is that the procedure used by Jihvraj and Brady was not appropriate - not because the two professors did not want to do the right thing, but rather because their university failed them.

The second question is an interesting one. Should the graduate student deserve to be punished at all if he honestly did not know that his behavior was inappropriate in the context of an American university?

Once again we must look to common law, that wonderful living legacy from England that still guides our jurisprudence. In common law, not only are all penalties to be just, but penalties are to be imposed for wrongs even if the perpetrator did not know that he or she was committing an unlawful act. If I drive along a highway at 60 m.p.h. and get pulled over for speeding in a 35 m.p.h. zone, I cannot plead that I did not know the speed limit. If the police can show me a speed limit sign that I should have seen, then my ignorance does not mitigate my wrongful act.

Plagiarism, and writing research papers based on others' work, are clearly a fuzzy area. What do we consider acceptable behavior, and what do we consider inappropriate? In this country, we agree that we can take a word, phrase, or even a paragraph from another publication and use it in our own work as long as we clearly indicate its source and original author. But suppose we change the rule to read that we could take whatever we wanted from another publication as long as we gave general credit in the bibliography at the conclusion of the paper. Would this strategy not be just as workable? Yes, it might lead to students copying entire papers or large chunks of papers and pasting them together, but the students' papers would then be judged on the basis of their ability to assimilate the works of several authors and to produce a seamless document that makes sense and presses a point of view. Students would want to do a lot of editing in tense, voice and vocabulary to produce such a paper, which are skills many professional editors value. Why, then, do American universities consider this behavior wrong? We must conclude that taking large sections of other works and synthesizing them into a cohesive document is not by itself an immoral activity. We are not breaking any moral rules by using such sections.

So the graduate student in our scenario might have been perfectly justified in arguing that he did not do anything immoral. The problem is, of course, that he was still going 60 m.p.h. in a 35 m.p.h. speed zone. He is enrolled in an American university, and he has had ample opportunity to learn the rules. If, as in this scenario, he has an M.D. and is a well-read and intelligent person, there should be no excuse for ignorance.

There is, of course, the question of the university's role in helping its graduate students (particularly graduate students from overseas) to understand the rules of academic conduct. Given the first part of this scenario, it might seem that this particular university has failed to prevent such problems. If I were Jihvraj and Brady, I would definitely start looking for a new job.

The educational system, since the days of the Greek skholē, has been organized around a simple plan: The student is to be helped with seeking out knowledge and is expected to work hard at learning this knowledge, and then the student is tested to ascertain the level of achievement. The modern university is no different, although corrupting influences threaten to turn our large public institutions of higher learning into circuses and beer drinking spas.(1)  The faculty at most universities steadfastly continue to support a system that has proven to be most effective and productive: a system of meritocracy - a system in which success comes from achieving certain norms and skills. It is strict adherence to this principle that has made the American university the envy of the world.

While a system based on merit seems an obvious choice for a university, we have seen many universities and many social systems where that was not true. Even today, for example, in some universities, it is common practice to cheat on examinations. A recent incident at Bangladesh demonstrates that the merit system is not universal. Apparently friends and parents traditionally stood outside the windows where students were taking a test and helped them with the answers. A riot ensued when the faculty closed the windows, thus preventing the blatant cheating. In other countries, one's connection to political parties or powerful people ensured graduation. In the former Soviet Union, for example, entrance to the university was not determined by merit, but rather depended on one's parents' participation in the Communist Party. Even in the United States, some schools, such as a small private college in South Carolina, ignore all appeals by faculty to curb cheating and routinely side with tuition-paying students. As a result, faculty give up on trying to attain some semblance of academic integrity in their courses and allow students to cheat as much as they wish.

Students and faculty at most universities understand that a system where cheating is condoned is not the system they want for their university. Witness the recent demonstration at Howard University, where students protested the faculty's apparent laxity in enforcing academic integrity guidelines. The only way students can be proud of their university and their degree is to know that they worked hard for this certification. The desire to make a university a merit-based organization designed for the common good is a commendable moral goal.

However, this moral goal unfortunately sometimes conflicts directly with another moral concern - providing unequal assistance to the disadvantaged. Ever since John Rawls' arguments in A Theory of Justice,(2) our American society has agreed that it is morally permissible, and indeed necessary, to give preference to those with the least ability to achieve the good life. Rawls' "veil of ignorance" asks us to propose unequal treatment for those who will enter life with the least talents or the least raw material, lacking social, economic or physical advantages. Thus we now have affirmative action, giving certain persons with identifiable traits such as racial ancestry preference in jobs, education and other social goods. In the universities, we have extended this unequal advantage to students with identifiable learning disabilities such as dyslexia or attention deficit disorder (ADD). In college, these students are diagnosed as either having or not having a learning disability and, once positively diagnosed, are given certain advantages.

Unfortunately, what is not recognized is that all of these disabilities are present in all students to a certain degree. Some students have great difficulty in focusing on a lesson, but through sheer determination and willpower overcome this problem. Other students might have sleeping disorders and figure out various tricks to stay awake. These students persevere and succeed in a world where they have been given the short straw.

But other students in college find that they have difficulty mastering the material or keeping up with the work and seek assistance from psychological services. Through various tests, these students may be diagnosed as having various learning disabilities (LD). But having learning disabilities is not a black/white, off/on condition. Having some form of LD is not like being pregnant, where you either are or you aren't - there is no middle ground. In LD there is a continuum, with all students having some signs of all identifiable disabilities.

In this case study, Mike has been diagnosed as having some form of LD (unspecified) and has been given a special-learning waiver. This waiver simply means that Mike is to have an advantage over all other students. If the skill to be tested is a hands-on laboratory exam and a written report, as in this scenario, then Mike apparently believes, and Laurie, the TA, apparently agrees, is that his waiver allows him to have extra time. But it seems that Mike has also been blowing off the hands-on lab procedures, which apparently have nothing to do with his learning disability. Mike has played up this diagnosed disability in his own mind and now thinks of himself as a victim. Because he has a disability, he has an excellent excuse for not completing the lab, and he makes no attempt to do so. He does not read up on the procedures and does not even bother to e-mail Laurie with questions. He is convinced that he is simply not able to do the work in the same time and at the same rate as other students because of his disability. Mike is hiding behind this diagnosis to excuse himself from doing any work and is now asking Laurie and the professor to have pity on him.

There is no ethical quandary here. Laurie has done everything in her power to help Mike, and the rest is up to him. The sooner someone explains this fact to Mike, the more likely he is to pull himself together and get to work.

• (1)Sperber, Murray. Beer and Circus: How Big Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education. New York: Henry Holt, 2000.
• (2)Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971.

In Western jurisprudence, for a crime to have been committed, both a wrongful act and a perpetrator must be identified. In the case entitled "The Final Exam," only the act is identified, and that only through circumstantial evidence. The professor discovered that two answers were identical. True, it is highly unlikely that two students would have used exactly the same words to respond to a question, but statistically it is still possible. We do not know from the case description exactly how much of the answer was identical. Perhaps it was a single sentence response to a question. If I ask a question, "What are mercaptans?" I can expect at least half of the class to respond with,"Mercaptans are organic compounds containing sulfur." The answers would be identical. Does that mean cheating occurred? In other words, the premise that cheating had indeed occurred may be faulty, and the case should never have proceeded from there.

More important is the fact that even if we believe that a wrongful act had occurred, we do not know who the guilty party is. The cornerstone of our legal system is that one is presumed innocent until proven guilty. In this case, neither party was proven guilty, and both should have been treated as innocent persons. That is, there should have been no penalties, no hearings and none of the other actions that resulted.

The fault for such a miscarriage of justice can be spread around, and there is enough to cover almost everyone. Most guilty, in my mind, is the course instructor, Bell, who should not have penalized the students. Equally guilty is the review committee that should have recognized that guilt had not been established, nor could they prove it in their hearings. The worst behavior of all was on the part of the graduate college dean. (Why is that not a surprise?) The dean not only played an omnipotent god who knew everything, but also meted out justice under the shroud of secrecy, destroying in the process the career of a young person who might well have been totally innocent. Such sanctimonious behavior belonged to ages past when church courts ran inquisitions and extracted confessions by torture. Deans who behave in this way today should themselves be sentenced to the rack.

In conclusion, this case is an obvious miscarriage of justice, and there is little good to be found in the process or its conclusion. It is a sad commentary on the inability of faculty to behave ethically.

Dr. Angstrom is the Faust who already has sold his professional soul to Mephistopheles. The problem is that the devil has an insatiable appetite and has come to collect the soul of a graduate student as a down payment.

Julie is in a no-win situation. One could say that she is at fault for not finding out about the arrangement with ABC before she started work with ABC's support, but that would be unfair. No graduate student would know to ask such questions when first starting out.

The courageous thing for Julie to do would be to sign the agreement, finish the research and get her degree. Publication can wait. If the negotiations with Joni do not result in a mutually agreeable paper, then Julie need not publish anything at all. She can leave the data to be used by Dr. Angstrom's laboratory and go off to find a position elsewhere. Alternatively, she can take the data with her and publish a paper later, away from the clutches of ABC and Joni.

But that, as I stated, is the courageous thing to do. There is no good and simple solution here, and all alternatives are difficult. In that sense, it is a good case study, but it is also a depressing one. I wish all graduate students better luck in finding their mentors and advisers.

Professor Creasin is wrong. Consider the simplest test of ethical behavior: If your actions were on the front page of the New York Times the next day, would you be proud of yourself? Would Professor Creasin be able to explain satisfactorily why he allowed a student to conduct an unsafe experiment and why he further allowed his students to eat in a laboratory that clearly had airborne contaminants?

A more difficult question is what Anna should do. My observations in ethical quandaries have been that more often that not, the more information available to affected individuals, the better. I believe she should immediately tell all the students what she has found out and advise them to at the very least not eat in the laboratory. Graduate students are intelligent people. They don't need professors to take care of them. If they find out that the experiments are most likely contaminating the indoor air with lead, they will take precautions, irrespective of what the professor will say.

Should Dan continue his experiments? That is a tricky question, because the answer depends on the alternatives. As the case study reads, constructing expensive hoods would require spending money that would be made available by firing several students. Dan would not be one of the students fired because the laboratory would be constructed for his experiments. Professor Creasin should either fire Dan first and save the renovation money, or renovate the lab so Dan can finish his experiments.

But that is not the main point. The main point is that it is far better to lose a job than it is to suffer from lead poisoning.

When I was a kid, I used to make balsa wood model airplanes. They looked real, and some of them even flew, powered by rubber bands.

When I became an engineer, I made other kinds of models -- mathematical and conceptual models -- of environmental engineering problems. And some of these models "flew": (They were accepted by the profession as useful for solving real problems).

The two types of models are similar in that they are toys that I like to make. In both cases, the models try to represent reality, and I have fun when they give results that match real world data.

These models take on ethical overtones if they are to be used by others and if their use can result in some benefit or harm. If I had suggested that my balsa wood airplanes could fly more than a few feet, I would have raised expectations in someone who might have been willing to pay me for these airplanes and thus would have invested wealth based on my assurance that the planes would perform as I claimed. Obviously, I would have been lying.

Similarly, for Oleson to say that his model will simulate the crash is raising undue expectations in the person who is about to use the model for a serious purpose -- a lawsuit. The Svenson/Oleson model is a toy. Their experience has shown that it did not correctly simulate the crash. That should be the end of it. Oleson's behavior is unethical and unprofessional, and it is a shame that he, a mentor, is presenting such a dishonorable example to Svenson.

I might suggest a simple test to determine whether Oleson is acting honorably. Take away the money. Assume that he is not getting paid. Would he still be willing to compromise his professional reputation in such a way? If not, then he has sold his professional integrity.

I find it difficult to see any extenuating circumstances or excuses for Dr. Richard Bell's actions. His tenure situation, future funding or whatever is simply irrelevant. He stole intellectual property from a colleague. To make it worse, this colleague is in an uneven power situation and cannot respond as an equal. This fact makes Bell's actions even more reprehensible.

More importantly, what should Lisa do? Any action she might take could hurt Bell, and, of course, Bell knows that. His reluctance to bring her into the publishing process clearly shows that he knows that he is doing something underhanded, and that Lisa could prove her case. He and Lisa both know, however, that Bell can easily ruin Lisa's career in retaliation.

What should Lisa do? She has several alternatives.

1. She could write to the editor of the journal, explaining what happened. Depending on the editor's integrity, the paper may be withdrawn or an addendum published in a subsequent issue, causing great harm to Bell's standing in the community. Or the editor may consider this matter an issue for the authors to sort out.
2. Lisa could go to the chair of the department or the dean. This person, of course, will try to get to the bottom of the issue, call Bell in for a chat and even have a three-way conversation. Lisa will have to prove that the discovery was indeed hers and that she has been wronged. Typically, faculty will support each other, and she will be cast as the infamous "disgruntled employee," unless she can prove without a doubt that Bell has misrepresented himself and the chair or dean has the moral fibre to respond appropriately. The chair or dean will look for some easy way to end the controversy and may, for example, ask Bell to write a letter of apology to Lisa.
3. Lisa could seek a new position, even in a different laboratory in the same university, and simply avoid all future contact with Bell.

In a way, the choices boil down to deontological vs. consequentialist options. If Lisa keeps quiet, Bell could go on mistreating other graduate students and post-docs. His actions are simply unethical. The principle here is what is important, not the outcome, and Lisa should choose Option 1 or Option 2, or both.

If Lisa were my daughter, however, I would strongly recommend the third alternative to her. The incremental good Bell received from publishing the purloined paper is small compared to the harm Lisa would suffer if she took any action to redress the situation. If she chose to fight, she would still have to leave Bell's laboratory. Whatever the choice or the outcome, the mentor/protegee relationship has forever been damaged. Bell will never be able to write a letter of recommendation without thinking of the incident, and Lisa will never be able to call on him for support in her career. She should take heart in the knowledge that sooner or later, "Time heals all wounds."

The two questions raised by this scenario are: 1) Should nontechnical (marketing) people be welcomed at a theoretically oriented conference? and 2) Should the problems with the particle analyzer be made public?

Having attended many technical conferences where salespeople make up the majority of the audience, I sympathize with the author's concerns. The problem is not with the salespeople, however, but with the conference organizers. If they are not careful in screening out patently commercial papers, they have no right to complain. A paper that describes the function and performance of a commercial product certainly would not be considered a theoretical paper. The papers probably were well-received by the marketing people like Peter, but the very inclusion of William and Katherine's paper on the program precluded the conference from being a theoretical conference.

The second problem relates to the answer that William ought to give to the professor's question. There is no doubt that he should not lie or withhold information. But there are ways of presenting the facts that will not damage the future of the product or the company. William could say, for example, that the particle counter is not designed to operate in the overlapping size ranges because the response curves are not linear and the ends of the curves can be expected to deviate, thus giving false readings. He could repeat that the particle counter has been shown to have excellent precision and accuracy if used as recommended by the manufacturer. That is, the device should be used within the three ranges; its applicability should not be pushed into the overlapping ranges. This response would have been honest and forthright (and would have saved his skin).

There is a big difference between engineering and science, even though engineers often work in the same environment with scientists. By their nature and training, engineers seek to "make things work" or "make knowledge useful." They are far less likely to seek personal credit, because the true joy in engineering is watching something happen, creating something that was not there before.

When Jack presented his seminar to the Chemical Engineering Department, the engineers in the audience did not care nearly as much about who did something as they marveled at what was accomplished. The important thing was the fact that Jack was able to put it all together, to tell a whole story, even if parts of it were written by others.

Obviously, Jack should have acknowledged the contributions of Bob and his mentor, and to fail to do so would have been an oversight. But the job interview seminar is quite different from a formal presentation at a national conference, and the credit given with the concluding slide would be considered appropriate in these circumstances.

In summary, Jack is not guilty of unethical conduct. The important lesson to take away from this case, however, is that acknowledging the contributions of your colleagues does not subtract from your own work, especially if you are synthesizing the information and telling the whole story of how you (plural) "made things work."

Information does not have to be shared. If there is no good reason for sharing information, and if sharing it would in fact cause damage, then one is obligated to keep the information to himself or herself.

Not volunteering information is not lying, and it is not deception. Suppose Schmidt had asked Bernhard whether Maxwell had said anything about her performance on the exam. If Bernhard had said (untruthfully) that Maxwell had not, he would have been lying. Saying nothing is not deception, which presumes some expected sharing of information. Suppose Schmidt knew that Bernhard had a meeting with his adviser, Maxwell, and asked Bernhard afterward if Maxwell had said anything interesting. Maxwell's comments on Schmidt's performance are obviously interesting to Schmidt, and a negative response from Bernhard would have been deceptive. Schmidt should not have been expected to ask specifically whether Maxwell had said anything about her (Schmidt's) exam.

But none of that occurred. Bernhard possessed information that would cause Schmidt great anxiety if he volunteered it to her. Why, then, should he tell her? For what good purpose? What he should have done is to keep quiet until the test results were in and the situation had stabilized. At that point, he had a difficult decision to make: whether to tell someone such as Campbell (Schmidt's adviser) or the departmental chair. Because Bernhard had no reason to tell Campbell, it seems that the logical alternative for him would be to tell the departmental chair and hope that Maxwell would be cautioned against sharing confidential information with students.

I am aware of the philosophical argument that all information is to be shared and that this is the only way we can be assured of getting along with each other. We might argue that Bernhard's silence might cause him personal anxiety and might change his relationship with Schmidt, causing her to doubt his friendship. But these are minor concerns compared to the life-long relationship Bernhard would expect to have with Schmidt. There is nothing wrong with occasionally declining to volunteer information.

Jan's story is sad, but predictable. We all presume a high level of professional conduct on the part of our colleagues, and it takes a while finally to recognize a situation where this standard is not met. We are just not willing to recognize the situation for what it is. We assume there must be something we don't understand about the situation, and we give our colleagues the benefit of the doubt.

With hindsight, Jan should have become aware of the unethical conduct and her own untenable situation immediately and, before she spoke with anyone, gathered irrefutable evidence of wrongdoing. With this evidence in hand, but not necessarily revealed to anyone except her attorney, she should have approached the option of whistleblowing by first discussing the problems with the Director of Nursing (DON) and so on up the ladder to the hospital administration, using as little of her ammunition as needed at every step. It is possible that somewhere up the ladder the situation would have been resolved. If not, Jan should have found herself a good job in nursing or even outside nursing and then quit, blowing the whistle from a position of security and power.

But that's easy to say, of course. As I suggest, few people have such foresight.

Jan's actions in this case are not nearly as interesting as the ethical problems of the Director of Nursing. The DON would certainly be aware of the central issues in the situation (maltreatment of patients), and he/she would be in a situation similar to that of the Morton-Thiokol managers who made the decision to allow Challenger to fly. As engineers (and they were all engineers), they saw the long-range problems to the company if they did not acquiesce to NASA's clear wishes. The DON, both a nurse and a manager, would be in a similar situation. Just as it is more interesting to consider the problems of the Morton-Thiokol managers than the decisions by Roger Boisjoly and his colleagues, so it would be more interesting in this case to evaluate the actions of the DON. What should he/she have done? Does he/she have any responsibility now for what has happened to Jan? Jan clearly did the ethical thing and suffered for it. But we don't know what the DON has done, and what effect these actions have had on his/her career. By focusing on the DON, the case might have been written with less passion and more disinterested journalism.