Towards What Shining City, Which Hill? Responsibility for Trust in Research
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Nature Vol. 289 22 January 1981 211 22 January 1981 Towards what shining city, which hill? The American presidency is an impossible job which has an which trade magazines such as Nature grind their own axes on enlivening effect on those who do it. New encumbents embark on occasions such as the inauguration of a new president, special tasks widely held to be beyond the resources of one man with the pleading may be excusable. On the face of things, for example, zeal and enthusiasm of an army. Both Presidents Kennedy and there is no reason why the new Adminstration should give an Johnson, when new to office, offered the promise of a fresh start instant's thought to the special interest of the scientific on old problems, domestic and international. Given the persistent community in the management of the arms race. Scientists, the importance of the United States in the affairs of most other argument might go, have (among other things) a special communities, the promise of a change of direction echoes around competence in military research and development. But only the world. Some of the consequences are unsettling; changes of taxpayers have a right to say what should be done about direction are disconcerting. Some are also enlivening, as for the relationships between the superpowers. President Reagan has in new incumbent himself. It is too soon to know what will be the any case come a long way since the beginning of the election consequences of Mr Reagan's accession to the presidency, but a campaign, when he was bent on seeming a 1950s hawk. Now (the single inauguration speech is not a sufficient guide to what will argument continues), he is for renegotiation of Salt I1 and other follow in the months ahead. The safest assumption is that Mr accommodations of that kind. The argument misses a point that Reagan, like all his predecessors, will be good at some things and will quickly become apparent, that the special but not exclusive less good, or even frankly bad, at others. There is no shame in interest of the scientific community in arms control is not merely that, given that the job is everywhere acknowledged to be academic. There is a sense in which J. Robert Oppenheimer was impossible. After a spell in which the president seemed to be bad right in saying that "the physicists have known guilt" - hawks - but not for want of trying to be good - at most things, it is no among them have persuaded doveish graduate students to work wonder that Mr Reagan's coming has cheered even his political on unwelcome projects since time immemorial. The point has opponents. For a time, at least, people will be prepared to give been reached at which both hawks and doves share with the President Reagan the benefit of the doubt. The vacillations and general public the belief that it would be best if the consequences exaggerations of the election campaign will be forgotten. To that of the products of their joint endeavours could be contained rule, there will be only one exception. In his acceptance speech in within bounds, and that more or less any bounds would be better Detroit last summer, Mr Ronald Reagan promised that he would than none. This does not imply that all scientists share with the lead the American people to a "shining city on a hill". That Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists the view that international phrase, redolent of Blake or Bunyan, is too arresting to forget. tensions have worsened in the past few weeks - the Bulletin President Reagan, no doubt less innocent than he seems, will advanced its notorious minute hand one minute last week (and not be starved of advice, solicited and otherwise. Politics being was mentioned on the British Broadcasting Corporation's what it is, his presidency may well be made or broken in the next morning news programme as a consequence) but did not few months by almost accidental issues - the inflation rate, or the convincingly explain why it had done so. Yet there is a great problems of Central America. In these connections, no new majority in the scientific community that would wish something president would choose to start from where President Reagan sensible done about arms control, and which knows that such a must. One of the perils of the job is that he has no choice. Another course is not unattainable. The political question for the new is that the issues, although recently made clear, are by no means president is whether he can see this as an opportunity. irrelevant to what may happen on the wider stage. If inflation Another issue for President Reagan, not too long to be left on continues as it has been in the past few years, American the back burner, is that of the research community itself. Mr institutions will be weakened as surely as they have been Carter (or, more probably, Dr Frank Press) has left the incumbent undermined elsewhere, then the foundations of the shining city President with an awkward choice. Should an expansionary will be found not to exist. Already many of the new occupants of science budget be cut in the interests of financial prudence, or left offices in the White House must be regretting that there had to be as it is so as not to give offence? Neither of these questions should a campaign, and a promise of a tax-cut to go with it. If the bother President Reagan in these early heady days. There is a problems of democracy in Latin America are ignored or, worse, simpler question he must answer. Sincc his early days as Governor supposed to be familiar problems susceptible to oldfashioned of California, he has cut the figure of an adversary of the solutions, the roof could fall in. Even President Reagan's friends universities. At one stage, he forced Mr Clark Kerr out of his post will be well aware of the seriousness of these dangers. Those who as president of the University of California. Since then, he has heard his acceptance speech may be forgiven for looking further made clear his disdain for academic preoccupations - decision is ahead. what matters. Such a position can be defended but is not The Reagan position, so often defined in the past several defensible. The President needs urgently to build a bridge to the months that it has become unclear, is ambiguous on two crucial academics. To fail to do so will be to alienate some of those who issues - arms control and academics. In the parochial spirit in might build a city, or find a hill. Responsibility for trust in research The public complaint, fashionable in the 1970s, that scientists people's first reaction to the article by Harris et al. on page 228, could not be trusted when making statements about the hazards and our Washington Correspondent's commentary on it (page of pollution or of genetic manipulation, is now mercifully 227). The reaction is understandable, even forgivable. For what abating. Is the complaint now about to be replaced with the has emerged is that three out of four laboratory cultures of cells suspicion that scientists cannot trust each other? This will besome originally described in 1977 as derived from the spleens of patients 212 Nature Vol. 289 22 January 1981 with Hodgkin's disease have nothing to do with human ways more difficult. The necessarily close working relationship malignancy but are, instead, almost certainly derived from owl- between people sharing the same facilities and even the same monkey kidney tissue. This improbable conclusion h8s been objectives in research is one of the most powerful safeguards of established by means of as neat a piece of detective work as can be the authenticity of the scientific literature. However great may be found in the recent literature. The fact remains that the four cell the temptation for individuals to make too much of preliminary cultures have been the basis, in the past four years, for aspattering findings or to apply cosmetic treatments to otherwise untidy data, of spurious data in the scientific literature. Some of these the knowledge that their most candid critics are likely to be their unwarranted conclusions have been used by others in unrelated closest colleagues is constantly an influence towards sobriety. It is work towards the understanding of Hodgkin's disease. true, of course, that individuals who have misled themselves can Elsewhere, laboratories have tried (usually without success) to usually succeed in misleading more junior colleagues as well, but establish their own analogous cell cultures from patients with the even this is an unsure calculation now that many graduate disease. But Dr John Long's apparent success with his supposedly students are zealous custodians of what is right and proper. The authentic cultures appears to have led to the award of at least one more certain safeguard, however, is that people in laboratories substantial research grant (for $500,000 over three years), where all researchers are in the habit of talking freely with their afterwards rescinded. Especially because the principal immediate colleagues about their work, not merely at formal investigator had been accused of falsifying data in a different colloquia but over lunch, are imperceptibly persuaded to couch context, many will now be tempted to suppose that four years of their interpretations of their work in moderate language. (The so- work with Hodgkin's disease has been a kind of hoax. called sociologists of science, always on the look-out for subjects To jump to that conclusion would be wrong. Those who work to study, could profitably pay some attention to the sociology of with cells in culture are continually aware of the risks of the laboratory as a formative influence on the pattern of science.) contamination.