Responsible Research
One of the things we are supposed to blog about this week is what our research question is. I pretty much said it in my first post, but just to reiterate: I'm trying to get a better idea of the protein-protein interactions of RIM, a presynaptic active zone protein in the brain that has been implicated in some disorders. I'd tell you more, but I'd have to kill you ;)
Our other blog topic is responsible conduct in research. We watched a movie on the subject, And The Band Played On, and read two articles about a paper that has been retracted. After getting some experience in a lab, a few things kept coming to mind as I read these articles. One was how many people can and often have to be involved when some sort of misconduct occurs in research. Research isn't just one scientist (either crazy or fame-seeking, of course), working in a lab all day trying to cure the world's diseases alone. Everyone has someone they are accountable to, even the PI. As I read the papers, I began to think that it's pretty tough for just one person to conduct some sort of unethical act in this kind of field. I thought of what had to be done for something like this to happen, and pictured a small group of senior lab members whispering about how great their work would look if they just took this image from another experiment, flipped it around, and used it for their purposes.
However, I wondered to myself how a discussion like that could even begin. "Hey, Jim, want to compromise your professional integrity and potentially your career on doctoring some results that will make us look really good... until someone tries to use them and figures out we lied?" "yeah Bob, that sounds like a great idea!"
It just doesn't add up. I feel like they'd know better. Then I thought about how clueless I am in lab. I thought about how many mistakes I made, and how many more I would have made if Zac, with his infinite wisdom, weren't there to correct me or lead me back on the right track. With improper supervision, I can see how big mistakes can happen. Perhaps even some malicious ones. Nonetheless, I can't convince myself that this accounts for all of the misconduct. I must be missing something.
Anyway, our other assignment was to find an article that has been retracted recently. Here's a link to a New York Times article about the retraction of a neuroscience paper written by a Nobel prize winner that I thought was pretty interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/science/07retractw.html?_r=1
Adios!
