School of Biotechnology, GGS Indraprastha University, Delhi
In an increasingly knowledge-driven economy, academicians, scientists, technologists and other such ‘experts’, play many roles in regulation, decision making and governance. Contentious policy decisions that impact the society often tend to be backed by ‘expert’ scientific or technical advice, complicating the very process of conflict resolution by distorting a people-govt conflict into a people-expert conflict. In this sense, academic ethics, or rather the ethics of academics and intellectuals, impacts much more than academics itself and the stakes for the intelligentia as well as the society at large are much broader and bigger. Ethical breaches in Indian science, technology and development pervade all levels of research, regulation and governance in public as well as private spheres. While many countries have enacted laws and built institutional systems and mechanisms to foster research integrity and deter misconduct in the last decade, the situation in Indian science is increasingly reaching a crisis point. This is inspite of the pioneering role of some Indian scientists in establishing the Society for Scientific Values way back in 1986, though Indian govt remained indifferent all along. Over the years, SSV investigations revealed that misconduct is not merely a temptation of the underdogs and is as much prevalent (if not more) among the top echelons of Indian S&T. It is therefore not surprising that official mechanisms to investigate misconduct are often compromised and the guilty go scot free, or that the government resists bottom-up demands for a national ethics policy or institutional mechanisms to enforce ethics. On the contrary, such initiatives in other countries came from the top, in response to highly publicised cases of misconduct, rather than in response to demands from the scientific community. SSV’s experience shows that even countries that have national ethics bodies don’t necessarily do justice all the time, especially to complaints from abroad. This is true regardless of the institutional model adopted for the national ethics body – whether a govt department (like US-ORI) or a non-governmental body (as in Europe). SSV experience also shows that foreign authors do plagiarize Indian work and foreign ‘experts’ do mislead Indian policy, and we can use such examples to resist the stereotyping of India abroad as a country of loose ethics, or for that matter the stereotyping of SSV at home as a witch-hunting agency. Ethics education, RTI act and Whistleblower protection will help, but a lot more public engagement of intellectuals at all levels will be needed to stem the rot.