Many people in today's society view scientists as impartial observers of the universe, holding no biases or previous positions that could cloud their judgment. At Penn State, committees and ethical review boards oversee the university's research to make sure studies are ethical and unbiased.

In general, ethics describes a code of conduct that every member of a group wants all members to follow, said Stephanie Malia Fullerton, postdoctoral research fellow in the anthropology department.

Scientific ethics can sometimes go beyond just morals and ethics, Fullerton said. "[Ethics] can be much more abstract and philosophical in emphasis encouraging reflection and discussion of the implications of choosing particular courses of action."

History has shown, however, that scientists are not infallible, and that breaches of scientific ethics are far too real, said Steve Walton, professor of science, technology and society.

This becomes even more relevant at a land-grant institution like Penn State, which often works to address practical problems in the real world, explained Kevin Murphy, head of the psychology department.

"There is a special bond between the world and Penn State," he said. "[Researchers] may be working by themselves in the lab, but what you are doing will eventually reach the community. You have to be very cognizant of the ethical issues involved in your role here as a researcher."

According to the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center Web site, www.hmc.psu.edu, institutional review boards (IRBs) focus just as much on upholding rights of those involved in research as they do on preventing breaches of ethics.

The Web site says, "The [IRBs] are independent committees of medical, scientific and lay members ... established to ensure the protection of rights, safety and well being of human participants involved in research."

IRBs are guided by three main tenets: respect for persons, beneficence and justice.

The boards work to address the rights of all persons and are dedicated to protecting human subjects by addressing any concerns they may have about any particular research. Most importantly, they are the main judiciary committee that is responsible for punishing any scientists or researchers who may breach any ethical standards.

Breaches of ethics can be as simple as changing a few numbers in calculations or completely falsifying conclusions, Walton said.

One form of an outright breach of scientific ethics is data theft, Walton said. This includes hacking into someone's computer to access lab data, or plagiarizing from another publication.

A more subtle and perhaps more common occurrence is data manipulation.

Anyone who has had to write a lab report for a science course is familiar with the temptation to "fudge" the data or "massage" it so that it conforms to your expected results, Walton said.

Many people view scientific ethics differently than other forms of ethics, he said.

One argument for this is that scientific knowledge is pure and not dirtied by industry, so the ethical standards must be higher. In some cases, however, scientists can be willingly deceived by their sponsors, such as when many were convinced by tobacco companies that their product is not harmful.

Scientific ethics also explores the gender and power relationships in laboratories and society, Walton said. For example, Rosalind Franklin received little credit for her work on DNA, while the men involved, James Watson and Francis Crick, won the Nobel Prize in 1962.

Many famous cases of questionable scientific ethics occur in the "wet sciences" of biology and chemistry, Walton said.

The current sets of scientific ethics are comparatively new, Walton said, having developed in the past 200 years. The famous story of Galileo and the Catholic Church in the 17th century was largely theological, not ethical, and Galileo was not charged with willingly "fudging" his data.

Walton said ethics are far from constant. There may be a uniformity of ethics in the Western tradition, he said, but it has changed through time. "Scientific ethics is Western ethics because science is Western," he said.

Ethics are a matter of willful intent, Walton said. That is, breaches must be intentional on the part of the scientist. Furthermore, ethics is between humans, he said. You can't be unethical to an inanimate object. Environmentalists must therefore personify nature by calling it Mother Earth or Gaia, giving it human form so that it becomes an ethical issue, he said.

Support is required to conduct most research, Murphy said. Scientists need to find agencies that think what they are doing is worthwhile to commit funding to the project.

Fear of the possible lack of funding is the greatest pressure on many contemporary scientists.

"You need to be able to convince people why it is good science and why it is beneficial to invest their time and money," he said.

If a researcher violates any scientific ethics, funding for any of his current or future projects would most definitely be in jeopardy, said associate professor of chemistry Karl Mueller.

"Their future work would definitely be suspect. It's a matter of trust -- we live and die on grant money and compete for support. If the ethics and validity is suspect, it's hard to justify giving thousands to do research," he said.

"A very skeptical bunch"

Almost all branches of science and research are based on reproduction and scrutiny as a way to remove suspicion of ethical breaches in research, Murphy said.

Nearly every scientific discipline publishes peer review journals, where researchers publish their findings for the sole reason of having the results scrutinized and the experiment repeated, Murphy explained. Often researchers put their best scientific work in these journals with the hope that they will be replicated and proven to be true.

Murphy added that if the results of an experiment don't fit the accepted model, researchers begin trying to understand why there was such a change. Often through a process called triangulation, other researchers use new methods to obtain the same results or attempt to use new theories to validate the same conclusions.

Mueller elaborated further on the intrinsic, inquisitive nature of all scientists.

"Scientists as a lot are a very skeptical bunch," he said. "We are skeptical of both our work and the work of others-not always in a mean way, but we are always watching to make sure each person gets it right."

In some cases, experiments can not be repeated due to lack of funding or lack of proper equipment and facilities -- which is often the case with advanced sciences such as high-energy physics.

In these cases, the scientific community understands that if the experiment was only completed once, that those results were only obtained once and they shouldn't be taken as fact, Mueller explained.

Walton said part of the reason the tenure system was developed for professors was so that they could engage in research they found interesting without fear that others would find it questionable.

Codes and oaths

Because of the lack of a standard ethical code, Walton said, scientists are in many ways unregulated.

Some societies, such as the American Bar Association, can enforce their ethics statements by taking away licenses, but most don't have that authority. Also, the American Psychological Association (APA) requires all of its members agree to abide by a set of ethical principles that are published and constantly updated, Murphy said. The APA publishes a list of all of those who violated ethics each year.

Penn State has several policies designed to help researchers meet its expectations for scientific ethics. University policy AD47, for example, tells professors their goal is "to seek and to state the truth as they see it." Other university policies deal with the use of human or animal subjects in experiments as well as the coauthorship of scientific papers.

Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath, a code of ethics for practitioners of medicine. There is nothing as clear and direct for scientists, Walton said, except for a few special cases. The Iron Ring ceremony in Canada, for example, is a requirement for all engineers and is meant to establish the social significance of engineering.

Fullerton said the American Institute of Chemists has adopted a code of ethics in order to "protect the public and maintain the honor of the profession." This code requires members to "perform all professional work in a manner that merits full confidence and trust," to "be conservative in estimates, reports and testimony," and to "advance the profession by exchanging general information and experience with fellow chemists and by contributing to the work of technical societies."

Government agencies, on the other hand, concern themselves more with specific procedures and regulations, Fullerton said.

"Searching for the truth"

Judging the extent of damages done by breaches of scientific ethics is difficult, Walton said. The severity of the violation can depend upon its broader effects on humanity, such as if cancer researchers were to report false findings.

Penalties can include being expelled from professional associations, loss of grant funding or their job. A researcher that breaches any ethics may also find it is difficult to obtain any future support, either the support of his or her colleagues or financial backing, Murphy explained.

Rarely are scientific ethics cases brought to court, but they can have effects on hiring and firing of scientists, or as part of a consumer lawsuit.

Instead, institutional review boards within each college or university where research is taking place serve as a means of upholding ethical research, Murphy explained. Researchers must present their research to these boards, who often decide whether or not scientist is breaching ethics or simply conducting cutting edge research. Murphy, who is new to the university, added that in all his years in the psychology profession, he has never seen a stronger review board than Penn State's.

Fullerton said there is a perception in the public that scientific fraud is becoming more common, but that this trend is hard to quantify.

Often, any falsified data is caught by a researcher's peers and handled within the scientific community before any of the data is made public, Murphy said.

He said that ethical research is something that is engrained and repeated in all training and education, both at the graduate and professional levels.

"Scientists believe they are searching for the truth, but in practice I'd say they're ethically no different from everybody else," Walton said.