Ethics and Disclosures2

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

>I suggest that. in any further discussions on this subject, some recognition
>be given to the difference between the kind of activity, e.g., drug testing
>by private physicians in which there is no public awareness of the
>relationship between physician/tester and the drug company that employs
>him/her, and the situation such as Mr. Butters was in in which his court
>testimony made his position a matter of public record.

I don't know of existing disclosure policy that makes this
distinction, nor would it really be in the interest of readers or
authors. The fact is that many  grants made to researchers are in
fact matters of public record, in the sense that the sponsoring
corporation or agency announces them publically . That doesn't exempt
researchers from having to disclose them explicitly disclose them in
journal publications, since readers can hardly be expected to do
extensive searches on every author of every publication to find out
whether the research was funded by a corporation with a stake in the
outcome.

Legal opinions become matters of public record only when they are
explicitly cited in a published decision, which covers only a tiny
proportion of the opinions that linguists write. And even then, you
can hardly expect the average reader of a linguistic journal or
attendee at a conference to do a Lexis search every time he or she
hears a paper that bears on a question that has come up in a legal
context, assuming of course that he or she knows of the existence of
such a case (since in some instances the case itself is not mentioned
in the paper). The burden of disclosure should be on the author, not
the reader.

More to the point, what conceivable reason could a researcher have
for NOT disclosing information of this type, when readers clearly
have a right to know if the author had a financial incentive for
reaching a particular conclusion, and when omission of this
information would leave the author open to the inference, whether
fair or not, that he or she was deliberately concealing a source of
funding?

Geoff Nunberg


>Bob Fitzke
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Cohen, Gerald Leonard" <gcohen at UMR.EDU>
>To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 8:13 AM
>Subject: Re: Ethics and Disclosures2
>
>>FWIW, here are a few thoughts on the ethics issues currently being
>>discussed on ads-l:
>>
>>1) I'm uncomfortable with the charge/implication of an ethical breech
>>being made by either of the two participants.  Both are honorable figures
>>in our field, and it is best to assume that in the "redskin" discussion
>>both proceeded in a manner they deemed correct in all respects.
>>
>>2) The main point of interest in our ads-l discussions is the linguistic
>>material itself.  We now know that Ron was a paid consultant, but so what?
>>The ads-l discussions are free-swinging affairs, and its members will
>>agree or disagree or remain ambivalent to material presented based on our
>>reading of that material itself.  An appeal to authority might work in the
>>courtroom but not on ads-l.  To cite just one personal example, I'm
>>probably one of the leading
>>ads-l etymologists, but whenever I've sent messages whose content is weak,
>>I've noticed no bashfulness among ads-l members to disagree.
>>
>>3) If I publicly present a paper on "hot dog" to a linguistics conference
>>and someone decides to tape it without notifying me first, I would not
>>consider this an ethical breech. Such notification would be a courtesy,
>>but since the paper is presented very publicly, with the press possibly
>>present, the information in the paper should be considered as belonging in
>>the public domain.  If the recording would be sold for profit, that of
>>course would be different.
>>
>>4) We might try to work out ethical rules/guidelines pertaining to future
>>discussions such as the "redskin" one, but I suspect this would turn out
>>to be a time-consuming and less-than-satisfactory endeavor--grist for the
>>mill for an ethics discussion group but a tangent for our ads-l members.
>>Ads-l is a
>>self-correcting operation. So it's probably best to rely on its
>>free-and-open discussions to bring any omitted information to light and to
>>see what will survive in its market-place of ideas.
>>
>>Gerald Cohen