Immoral scientific misconduct

Nowadays, you can find many products claimed that they are tested by scientific method. However, by how much, can we trust these products?

Science development is the representation of modern society. Science is a continuing effort to discover and increase human knowledge and understanding through disciplined research (from wiki). Moreover, science lets different countries to cooperate, so it impacts deeply in inter-cultural processes. For example, International scientific organizations, such as the International Council for Science, have since been formed to promote cooperation between the scientific communities of different nations.

However, some people exploit science to make profit for themself, ignoring the moral stance. They buy up the scientists, they do the fake scientific research, and they only concern their benefit and ignore the public wealth. In this blog, we will explore this moral conundrum deeply.

There are so many examples to such misconduct. For example, in the case of Diamond Energy Water, the company claimed that their water system is based on advanced Energy Converter Technology. This technology helps break water molecule clusters into smaller cluster for easier absorption (Hailed as a breakthrough health therapy). In order to make their statement more powerful, it cites several scientists name to prove their product’s credibility. However, sarcastically, those named scientists said that they never done such research, and didn’t hear such functional water machine.


People are basically AMORAL
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept about companies integrates social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis. One of the focuses of CSR is ethical, companies should be ethical, and they have the obligation to do what is right, just, fair and moral.

According to Carter McNamara ‘There is no clear moral compass to guide through complex dilemmas about what is right and wrong.’(Complete Guide to Ethics Management: An Ethics Toolkit for Managers) We assume that some people are basically amoral and do not consider the existence of morality plausible. They do not care what they do is right or wrong, completely absence of moral beliefs. They only analysis the cost and benefit of doing one thing and concerns their own interest.


Listerine is one of the most popular mouthwashes brand in the world. They have over 50 years clinical experiment experience to prove that their product can help people maintain healthy mouth. However, recently, some other research shows that people using the mouthwash products with alcohol will increase the chance of getting oral cancer. Although Listerine states that they have over 50 years clinical experiment experience of their products, they do not consider the existence of morality plausible that they ignore the subsequence of using alcohol-containing mouthwash. They should conduct a more thorough research and experiment of their products before selling it to the market.

And some of them are IMMORAL
Immoral perspective means that people are basically bad and they do something hurt others with the aim of getting benefits. Thus, the society should set some ethical rules which are accepted by major people to punish immoral people. For the long term, the immoral people should be educated and changed their mind.

However, some immoral company deliberately omit the undesirable data. For example, company misleadingly creates desirable result, although they know that what they done may be harmful to the consumers. Therefore, consumers are cheated by these fake scientific researches and further they suffer from these ‘guaranteed’ products.

‘..ethical involves learning what is right and wrong, and then doing the right thing—but “the right thing” is not nearly as straightforward as conveyed in a great deal of business ethics literature.’ (By Complete Guide to Ethical Management: An Ethical Toolkit for Manager)

The obvious example is about Marlboro. In fact, there is growing perception that smoking might be harmful to the health of others. The passive smoking is a sensitive issue to the tobacco industry which causes public prominence and it threaten the tobacco industry. In order to solve these unfavorable problems of Marlboro, Marlboro Company eliminated the sensitive data about passive smoking because these issues affect the tobacco industry so it bought up the scientist to get the desirable result of the research.

Marlboro put a huge amount of funding to establish a team including British scientists and the lawyer. They are operated under the direction of Marlboro. The team mainly produced a research on the problems of indoor air quality and the lawyers to eliminate areas of sensitivity.

However, after this report announcing to public, many people criticize Marlboro that it produce the misleading information to consumers. Actually, their product seriously affects people’s health. Therefore, immoral companies provide fake and misleading scientific data is inadmissible and unethical.
(example’s URL from http://www.ash.org.uk/ash_1cm2x3li.htm)

So, what are the impacts of such misconduct to the inter-cultural process, individual and cultural identity?

“Trust”

Individual might subconsciously believe the advertising once they saw scientific result because people deeply trust the “science”. As “Texted by scientific method” means professional, so they trust it completely. I still remember one time after swimming lesson, I saw my classmate who cleaned her face using a bottle of diamond energy water. Her explanation is that without using this “special” water, her face would suffer skin sensitive so that she brought it from home. It’s not exaggerated, in fact, there are really such guy totally rely on the scientific prove.

On the other hand, the others, who penetrate the pseudo research, might build mistrust with “Science”. They think they are stupid to trust such scientific research before, and never trust it anymore. They will unconscious to those advertising. It might even lead them to resist science, therefore, the term” anti-science” was appeared . But they don’t realize that, science itself hasn’t fault, but those unethical merchants have.

Country which ignores the important impacts of such behavior will develop a “fake culture”. Just like China, it’s famous for its “fake”, fake products, fake statistics and even fake singer in Olympics etc. Such a fake image will impact the others’ trust toward the country. And this negative image will even obstruct the science development. It may be the reason behind why China’s science still not develops well.

As no one trusts the fake culture anymore, how can they cooperate with each other? Science always requires different nations’ cooperation. But the fake image affects the inter-cultural process. For example, America NASA refuses the proposal of collaborating with China in space-development . So if we don’t stop the scientific misconduct, the problem will be continuous and become more serious.

Dilemma
However, some may argue that some fake scientific statistic mainly want to force people to doing something good, so, is not immoral. For example, in our previous blog, it indicates fishers will lost their job by 2050 if we keep on overfishing and shows the alarming amount of extincting marines. However, is the statistic really accurate? Or is it includes some exaggerated statistics in order to shock people to take action? Some people argue that the intention is good, and some fake scientific statistic should be done by the moral stance.

Sometime, it is hard to judge whether a decision is ethical or not since value judgments are personal and differ from people to people. However, we can still analyzing ethical dilemmas with the following models, which are more objective in nature.

Utilitarian approach
By using this approach, the pseudo-scientific research is not ethical at all since it will not result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Who will be benefited from these researches then? Surely, the producers and the parties which conduct these researches. They benefit from making profit through these advertisements, which are misleading, at the expense of exploiting the right of getting the accurate information for the customers. The customers cannot make the scientific researches claiming that smoking is not that harmful. It will, as a result, mislead the smokers and the potential smokers to continue or to start to smoke respectively. This is harmful to the customers; it is not simply to make them to purchase the cigarette, even more, it will hurt their health. If they can provide the accurate information in the market, it will save more people from smoking. In this sense, the producers, the minority, can be benefited from these misleading advertisements, at the same time, the public, the majority, suffers a lot. By using the utilitarian approach, these “researches” are not ethical.

Universalism
For this approach, whether an action is ethical or not depends on whether you are willing to be misled by the pseudo scientific researches. Surely, each and every one of us does not like being misled. We always want the accurate information, not the fake one, guiding us to make a wise decision. Otherwise, it will create a sense that the customers are not being respected. However, people do not share the same feeling under the same circumstance. For example, will you feel angry after knowing that the diamond energy water system is just a water filtering machine? The answers will be different among people. Some will be angry since they feel they are being cheated. Others may think that it is still acceptable that, at least, it has water filtering function. To sum up, it depends on whether it is acceptable for you to be misled by these researches. For our group, these unethical misleading behaviors are surely unacceptable since we do not like being misled.

So why these companies still make those unethical decisions then if everyone knows it is not good to do so? The following approach would help to make a better judgment.

Cost benefit
The common goal of giving this misleading information, for the companies, is to sell more products so as to make a handsome profit, regardless the negative publicity form it once these unethical behaviors are being discovered. The companies thought that it is ethical to do so since they can earn more money, which outweighs the cost of the negative publicity. So they will gain from this decision. They aim at short term profit by selling more since the customers cannot return the products or refund, or even they have consumed it. If it is successful to make the people believe in this fake information, it can generate handsome short term profit before it is known to be fake. The companies make the cheating decision using this approach that calculate the cost and benefit from it. If we judge whether conducting the pseudo scientific researches are ethical or not by using this approach, it will be “ethical”. However, it is the standpoint of those businessmen, which our team does not take.

Improve it!
All in all, such climate should not be promoted. We should do something to improve the situation.

Government
“Cultural variances are diminishing as a consequence of the internet society; ethical standards in one place now are likely to be similar in other geographic locales.” (By Louis C. Williams). Hong Kong Government can do a lot in order to prevent companies and organizations misleading the public by using scientific misconduct.

First, the government should promote correct and ethical value to the companies and people. Always show evidences that pass through different kinds of experiments and researches. It is a good way for the government to emphasize the benefits and the importance of using data, researches and statistics results honestly. For example, it helps company to build up a positive image and it would create an honest environment that customers can have more confidence when they consume.

On the other hand, the authorities can set up new law which forbids people using some incorrect data or researches to mislead customers and citizens. Offenders will have to pay the serious penalties for violating the law. Stiff punishment would scare people and companies from offending the legislation.

Besides, government should take the responsibility for protecting the right of the consumers. As we have mentioned, people are basically immoral. Most of them would only consider about their own advantages and just ignore the right of others.
According to the cost-benefit, they would only consider whether the benefits are useful or not and how great of them. Therefore, if there are no any organizations to keep a watchful eye on the market, the situation would be out of control.

Multinationals
Nowadays many corporations have offices, branches or manufacturing plants in different countries and where their original and main headquarter is located. They have multiple operation points that all respond to one headquarter. So, if some ethical guidelines are set by the head office and encourage other operation points to adopt it, the global environment would become more honest. Telling the staff how to tackle the difficulty when they are facing with ethical problem, for example, how to balance in making a profit without any unethical measures; how to attract the public by using method without exaggeration, immoral. Provided that there are some guidelines, the functional managers and staffs would feel easy to deal with the problems, especially the ethical problems.

By the way, multinational corporations such as Nike and Coca have a powerful influence in local economics as well as the world economy and play an important role in international relations and globalization. Some of them can even affect the governments in establishing the policy. As they have huge impact on the world, they should work ethically as an example and let other corporations, firms and organizations to imitate it.


Reference:

1 http://biocab.org/Antiscience.html

2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/aug/12/olympics2008.china1

3 http://www.blogercn.com/html/30/46830-289837.html

4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism