ACCOU-VTS OF CHEXK’AL RESEARCH” Registered in US’.Patent and Trademark Office; Copyright 1983 by the American Chemical Society
VOLUME 16 EDITOR JOSEPH F. BUNNETT
ASSOCIATE EDITORS Joel E. Keizer John E. McMurry EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Robert Abeles Richard Bernstein R. Stephen Berry Michel Boudart Maurice M. Bursey Edward A. Collins John T. Gerig Jenny P. Glusker Kendall N. Houk Jay K. Kochi Maurice M. Kreevoy Theodore Kuwana Ronald N. McElhaney Kurt Mislow George W. Parshall Kenneth N. Raymond Anthony M. Trozzolo Gene G. Wubbels
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NUMBER 11
NOVEMBER, 1983
A Scientist’s Ethical Obligation to Publish The tentative Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research, recently put forth by the editors of ACS journals,l are by no means complete. Those guidelines were purposely chosen for having little likelihood of being controversial. There are others, for which the ethical justification is even stronger, that should ultimately be included. AU scientista make use of knowledge generated by other scientista, as recorded in the literature, and nearly all scientific work of good quality produces data and/or conclusions of potential value to other scientists. We inquire whether, or to what extent, a scientist has an ethical obligation to publish the data or conclusions that his/her work generates.* Currently several groups of scientists do not acknowledge any ethical responsibility to publish the results of their investigations. These include many associated with commercial or military organizations who are restrained by organization policy from publishing their work. Administrators often fear that some commercial or military advantage gained by research may be lost by publication of it. Or they merely want to deny a potential commercial or military adversary the comfort of knowing that they have been thinking about. In another dimension,some academic researchers tend to publish only those discoveries they consider to have importance or elegance such as to enhance their reputations, and to let less exciting work of good quality languish unpublished in their files. Those who publish their work regularly and completely are contributing to the overall treasury of human knowledge. The results so contributed have potential value to other workers. But those who fail to publish, for whatever reason, take advantage of the contributions of others but offer nothing themselves to add to the intellectual heritage of mankind. Their behavior is ethically defective. Certainly some, while admitting the validity of this judgment, would assert that other considerations justify restraints on publication such as many commercial or military organizations impose. They would argue that withholding of research has value to the company or the nation such as to outweigh the abuse of ethical principle. Let us’examine that position. Let us imagine a scheme whereby a company or a military organization that engaged in restraint of publication were to contribute, in penance so to speak, a sum of money annually to a fund that would be used to support research for publication. Such a scheme would be an improvement; some would publish rather than pay, and the fund as collected would be applied to the increase of scientific knowledge. However, how would one reckon how much should be contributed? How much should Faraday have paid if he had chosen to withhold his discoveries on electromagnetic induction, or Fleming if he had kept secret his discovery of penicillin, or Du Pont had it hidden the fundamental discoveries of Carothers on polymers, including nylon? With regard to nylon, one might contend that whether the research were published or not, the secret would have been out once nylon appeared on the market. No doubt it would. But what if no one at Du Pont had realized ita commercial potential and Carothers’ reports were still developing yellow edges in Du Pont files? How many discoveries of comparble importance, perhaps as yet UNecOglllzed,have been made in industrial or military laboratories in recent years and remain locked up? The problem is complex. It is not OUT intention to assert that no constraints on publication ever are justified. However, we do hold that keeping research results secret violates an important ethical principle. Joseph F. Bunnett (1) ACS Editors, “Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research”, Chem. Eng. News 1983,61(39), 39. (2) See also: Christman, R. F. Enuiron. Sci. Technol. 1983, 17, 275A.
