Ethics in physics: The need for culture change

Abstract

In 2002 two highly publicized events shaered the common complacent view that the quantitative nature of physics research and strong peer- review practices would shelter the discipline from ethics violations. The fi rst, at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was the retraction of Victor Ninov's claimed discovery of two new elements1 (atomic numbers 116 and 118). The other, at Lucent Bell Labs, was mounting suspicions about Jan Hendrik Schön's data showing extraordinary properties of many novel materials, including high- temperature superconductors and thin fi lms for device applications. (See PT, November 2002, page 15.) Investigations at both institutions uncovered fl agrant data fabrication. Those events showed that ethical practice in physics could not be taken for granted and added to a growing awareness that ethical practice in scientifi c research was not a given.