Category Archives: Ethics

Daily Egyptian: Professor holds out in ethics lawsuit

Faculty Association President Marvin Zeman is the last man standing in the battle against the Illinois inspector general’s accusation of non-compliance on a state-required ethics exam.

Of the four faculty members who initially refused to sign material labeling them non-compliant, two have signed and one was named compliant because he had trouble reading print on the Internet. Only Zeman is still seeking to settle a lawsuit with the inspector general, standing firmly against admitting non-compliance.

Follow

Contra Costa Times: Required ethics course draws ire

Fewer than half of UC Berkeley faculty members and other employees have completed a required ethics course that some professors say is irrelevant.

All 160,000 University of California employees were told last year to complete the online course after the institution was stung by newspaper accounts of a series of administrative missteps. Most managers, deans and other administrators statewide completed the training by January, but most UC Berkeley professors and other employees have not.

Follow

Inside Higher Ed: Would U.S. News Make Up Fake Data?

It’s not unusual for college presidents to complain about U.S. News rankings (at least out of the earshot of U.S. News editors). But on Sunday, the president of Sarah Lawrence College publicly charged that the magazine is preparing to publish made up, false data about her institution. Meanwhile, Inside Higher Ed has learned that 10 other liberal arts college presidents are preparing a letter to be sent to hundreds of college presidents proposing a new set of policies that might challenge the role of the rankings. The policy options include complete non-cooperation with U.S. News and refusing to fill out the “reputational” survey — which many educators deride as a “beauty contest” that is particularly lacking in substance, even though it represents 25 percent of the magazine’s rankings formula.

Follow

San Francisco Chronicle: All 230,000 UC employees required to take ethics course

In the wake of last year’s executive compensation scandal, the University of California is requiring every employee — from President Robert Dynes down to the guy who empties his trash basket — to complete an online course about ethics.

Follow

Boston Globe: Harvard professor loses honorary title in ethics violation

Star Harvard economist Andrei Shleifer has been stripped of his honorary university title following an investigation into whether he violated the university’s ethical rules while advising the Russian government.

Follow

Salon: Psychological warfare

Angered that their professional organization has adopted a policy condoning psychologists’ participation in “war on terror” interrogations, many psychologists are vowing to stage a battle royal at the APA’s annual meeting.

The 150,000-member American Psychological Association is facing an internal revolt over its year-old policy that condones the participation of psychologists in the interrogations of prisoners during the Bush administration’s “war on terror.”

Last summer, the APA adopted new ethical principles drafted by a task force of 10 psychologists, who were selected by the organization’s leadership. That controversial task-force report, which is now official APA policy, stated that psychologists participating in terror-related interrogations are fulfilling “a valuable and ethical role to assist in protecting our nation, other nations, and innocent civilians from harm.”

But Salon has learned that six of the 10 psychologists on the task force have close ties to the military. The names and backgrounds of the task force participants were not made public by the APA; Salon obtained them from congressional sources. Four of the psychologists who crafted the permissive policy were involved with the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, or served with the military in Afghanistan — all environments where serious cases of abuse have been documented.

Follow

The Chronicle: ational Academies Fail to Avoid Conflicts of Interest on Scientific Panels, Watchdog Says

About one-fifth of scientists who have helped write scientific reports for the National Academies had direct financial ties to industry groups with a stake in the findings, a watchdog group reported on Monday. Many of the ties were not disclosed publicly, and some of the panels had few or no members representing consumer or health advocates, the group said.

The findings, by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, were criticized on Monday as “wrong and misleading” by E. William Colglazier, the academies’ executive officer. He said there were no direct conflicts of interest, as the academies define them, among the panel members studied.

Follow

Boston Globe: MIT star accused by 11 colleagues

Eleven MIT professors have accused a powerful colleague, a Nobel laureate, of interfering with the university’s efforts to hire a rising female star in neuroscience.

The professors, in a letter to MIT’s president, Susan Hockfield , accuse professor Susumu Tonegawa of intimidating Alla Karpova , “a brilliant young scientist,” saying that he would not mentor, interact, or collaborate with her if she took the job and that members of his research group would not work with her.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they wrote in their June 30 letter, “allowed a senior faculty member with great power and financial resources to behave in an uncivil, uncollegial, and possibly unethical manner toward a talented young scientist who deserves to be welcomed at MIT.” They also wrote that because of Tonegawa’s opposition, several other senior faculty members cautioned Karpova not to come to MIT.

She has since declined the job offer.

Follow

Inside Higher Ed: A Lesson from the Churchill Inquiry

Ward Churchill should be fired for academic misconduct — that’s the decision made by the interim chancellor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, after receiving a report from a faculty committee concluding that Churchill is guilty of falsification, fabrication and plagiarism. That report shows that, even under difficult political conditions, it’s possible to do a good job dealing with charges of research misconduct. The Colorado report on Churchill provides a striking contrast to the flawed 2002 Emory University report on Michael Bellesiles, the historian of gun culture in America, who was found guilty of “falsification” in one table. The contrast says a lot about the ways universities deal with outside pressure demanding that particular professors be fired.

Follow

Columbus Dispatch: OU professor leaves post in plagiarism investigation

The chairman of Ohio University’s Mechanical Engineering Department has stepped down after an investigation that concluded that department graduate students had been plagiarizing for 20 years.

Follow

Columbia Missourian: MU looks to keep Lay’s grant

Money resulting from the sale of stock donated to MU by former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay, convicted Thursday of fraud, is worth about $1.8 million today, said Joe Moore, spokesman for the University of Missouri System.

Follow

Denver Post: Termination, suspension possible for Churchill; Governor calls for controversial professor to resign

University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill plagiarized, fabricated and falsified material and was disrespectful of American Indian traditions in his writings, a report released today said.

Three of the five scholars who examined the ethnic studies professor’s work for four months believe Churchill’s academic misconduct is serious enough that CU could fire him from his tenured job, the report said.

But two of those three said the most appropriate sanction would be to suspend him without pay for five years.

The other two committee members did not believe Churchill’s research misconduct was serious enough to warrant termination. They suggested the university suspend him without pay for two years.

“Churchill has tarnished the title of professor and his future at C.U. is appropriately in question,” said Gov. Bill Owens in a statement, after the panel’s findings were announced.

“Unfortunately, as the lengthy process continues, the prolonged presence of Ward Churchill at C.U. besmirches the reputation of a fine university and its many outstanding teachers. Confronted with the committee’s findings of falsification, fabrication and plagiarism, Churchill should resign,” Owens said.

Boulder interim chancellor Phil DiStefano plans to announce a decision on Churchill’s fate next month.

The committee investigated seven allegations against Churchill, including concerns about his writings about Indian law and a smallpox epidemic at Fort Clark.

The committee found that Churchill’s “misconduct was deliberate and not a matter of an occasional careless error.”

It found “serious deviation from accepted practices” in university research and that Churchill did not comply with established standards regarding author credit on publications.

The five-member ad hoc committee was formed by CU’s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct, which determined in September there was enough evidence against Churchill for a full-blown investigation.

The Standing Committee rejected two of the nine original allegations forwarded by the chancellor. The dropped charges concerned copyright infringement and whether Churchill misrepresented himself as an Indian.

The Standing Committee now is looking into recent allegations against Churchill from activist and author Ernesto Vigil.

Committee members have not announced whether Vigil’s six accusations – among them that Churchill wrongly described peasants in El Salvador as Indians and that he got the wrong name of a village – merit an in-depth probe.

Churchill’s attorney, David Lane, warned in a seven-page letter to CU last week that he would take the university to federal court if it did not end the “latest round of witch hunting.”

Lane accused CU of dragging the 15-month investigation on too long, drawing accusations from anyone with a personal or political vendetta against the professor. He said CU should drop Vigil’s claims.

The investigation into Churchill’s work began because of controversy over his essay comparing some Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center victims to Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann who managed plans to exterminate European Jews. The essay surfaced in the public eye in January 2005.

University administrators determined free-speech rights prevented Churchill from being punished for the essay, but regents voted in February 2005 to review Churchill’s work.

Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.

Follow