Re: Re: Ethics and Disclosures2

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Most people I have heard from on this issue seem to believe that medical 
research--or any research where the public may be directly affected by a published 
article (as distinct from the legal proceedings that may have engendered 
it)--needs somewhat stricter adherence to policies of revelation of possible 
conflict of interest than does linguistic research. This is no doubt why the 
Linguistic Society of America has never instituted a policy, despite Dr. Nunberg's 
erstwhile attempt, and perhaps also why he "dropped the ball"--it didn't seem 
important enough to anyone to pursue it.

Even so, I agree almost totally with Dr. Nunberg here. In any case, it is 
easy enough to add a footnote to a published article, and it is often not 
apparent that an author had a connection with a law firm. However, I continue to feel 
it necessary to insist that "incentives" are not only financial, and that, 
indeed, partisanship engendered by zealousness for a particular social or 
political cause can be just as damaging, if not moreso.

Another thing (again, echoing Larry Solan's posting) that any official policy 
should consider is that the research somewhere in the background to the 
"conclusions" that one comes to in a scholarly article may be relatively remote 
from the "conclusions" that one came to in court. One should no doubt err on the 
side of purity and virtue of course, as Larry suggested. But it is not 
necessarily a simple matter. 

Finally, as relates to this list-serve and to the American Dialect Society, 
it seems to me that this is not really the place to continue this discussion 
further. I have already explained why I believe that Dr. Nunberg's charge of an 
ethical lapse on my part with respect to this list-serve is not valid. He has 
never answered that, and no one else has agreed with him. I assume that, if 
the person who manages this list felt that I had been unethical, he would have 
reprimanded me. So, I consider that matter closed.

I have already made it clear that I have never (to my knowledge) published an 
article in violation of the code of ethics that Dr. Nunberg proposes that we 
now implement, and that I thank him--I'm sure we all thank him--for raising 
the issue of ethics in publication, and I suggest that he take the matter up 
with the Executive Committee of the American Dialect Society (if he is a member) 
if he has proposals to make about ADS publications.

I have also already made it clear that I accept Dr. Nunberg's proposal that I 
join with him to bring the matter before the Linguistic Society of America. 
He has not yet responded to me about that.

I propose, then, that we end this thread on this list-serve, and take the 
question to more appropriate venues.


In a message dated 6/2/05 1:42:08 PM, nunberg at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU writes:


> >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 publicly. 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
>