Based on Ethical and policy issues topic of the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting 2010, San Diego, CA, USA, November 10-17, 2010
Koudinov, Alexei. Why ethical and policy issues topic of the Society for Neuroscience annual meetings is overdue? Program No. 28.4. 2010 Neuroscience Meeting Planner. San Diego, CA: Society for Neuroscience, 2010. Available online at abstractsonline.com
Neuroscience is a human activity that has lots of features only insiders can talk about with confidence. While general public may consider science is a privilege of those with high IQ, for many behind a university campus wall (or commercial lab secrecy) it is a matter of surviving, battling for funds, lab space, equipment access, and tenure. It is so great to have a confidence you are set up until a pension age. It was long time ago that you had a scientific quest excitement and late night lab hours of experimentation. Surely, you built your research on the data by others, heavily quoted a field leader, prominent Professor of the national premier research center you dreamed about as a postdoc or a faculty member. You could not know that this Professor had industry appointments and that he sold his million dollar stock shortly before the clinical trial on devastating human brain disorder failed (1). Well, you thought this failure could be a failure of the major theory of the disease. But who cares? A number of years ago you read an article in the Wall Street Journal (2) that called this theory a dogma retarding the development of the true disease cure. Would it be practical to you to combat the field corruption? Can one be a warrior? The natural answer for you as an ordinary human being is not: NOT at a postdoc time, because otherwise who of the field leadership would say “yes” to your tenure promotion and approval? NOT now (when you are a senior professor) because you have so many ties. Our World is in fact small, so, you take your tenure/grants as a fragile substance and prefer to be not so loud. You recall five years ago or so British Parliament published written evidence, a fact based encyclopedia of the corruption in your research field (3). But its’ impact is remote, as no one wants to take ethical issues seriously or talk on them openly. Several no-response open statements by a caring scientist to US Office of Research Integrity ORI, SEC and British Office of Fair Trading are all examples that in neurosciences patients are forgotten, commercial interests or one’s Ego are ruling (1). Well, you hope the SFN takes a leadership by introducing new annual meeting topic of Ethical issues in Neurosciences, and that as of now evidence based facts of wrongdoing will be not that easy to hide. Openness means change for good. Good in science means public non-private interest in scientific findings.
References:
1. http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/article1017839.ece
2. http://neurobiologyoflipids.org/editors/alexeikoudinov/pdfdocs/submittedletters/koudinov2wsj23april04.html
3. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we125.htm
4. http://twitter.com/alzforum
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