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Tuesday, October 15, 2002
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How Much Worse Is This Going to Get?
Let's review. Microsoft stole the idea of Apple's switch campaign. As soon as they found out about it, the good folks over at Slashdot discovered that there were potential problems with the advertisement. The single switcher that Microsoft used was actually an employee of one of Microsoft's public relations firms. They meant to keep her anonymous, but the Word file format betrayed them. Her name is Val Mallinson. And she was represented in the advertisement not with her own picture but with a stock photograph from Getty Images (apparently a standard practice for Microsoft). When presented with that information, Microsoft withdrew the advertisement but still claimed that the woman in question did actually switch from a Macintosh to Windows.
Now another helpful soul at Slashdot has pointed out that Ms. Mallinson has been providing professional Pocket PC advice for about a year. This is particularly ironic given the closing line of the errant advertisement:
Editor's Note: Now that we've successfully converted our writer to a Windows PC, we will be working on getting her to try a Pocket PC. Stay tuned for more developments!
I can hardly wait. If I worked for Microsoft, I'd quit, and I were a Microsoft shareholder, I'd sue management for gross incompetence.
9:29:58 PM 
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Is It Such a Surprise That Human Institutions Are Fallible?
Research misconduct is a growing scandal in the world of science:
In some ways, the pivotal figure in the research misconduct case at Bell Labs was not Dr. J. Hendrik Schön, the scientist fired last month for fabricating and manipulating data, but Dr. Bertram Batlogg, the man who hired him in 1998.
An investigatory panel cleared Dr. Batlogg, and all other co-authors, of knowledge of the deception. But without Dr. Batlogg's imprimatur, the remarkable findings in superconductivity and organic electronics, now discredited, would have been scrutinized more skeptically sooner.
In the last decade, there have been about 50 cases of misconduct among basic science research sponsored by the National Science Foundation and 137 cases of misconduct among biological and medical research financed by the National Institutes of Health.
One in four respondents to a poll in 1991 by the journal Science said they had personally encountered fabrication, falsification or theft of research in the prior 10 years.
I can't help but see parallels between this and the recent scandal of sexual abuse by priests. There are of course huge differences. The dishonesty is not so heinous and the damage is not so devastating. But here we have a field that tells us about our world, whose practitioners are entrusted with our desire to discover the truth. In both cases, the search for something trancendent and absolute is being undermined by human fallibility. And the reactions by the practitioners is similarly bureaucratic:
Many scientists are upset that when the misconduct allegations arose publicly in May, [Dr. Batlogg] quickly distanced himself. He was quoted in a German publication as saying, "When I am a passenger in a car and the driver drives through a red light, then I am not to blame."
After the scandals, Bell Labs has reminded researchers of its scientific honor code and strengthened its internal reviews. Journals, which do not generally make researchers submit underlying data, are considering measures like asking for additional data.
The two cases have spurred the American Physical Society to work on an addition to its ethics guidelines that spells out to what degree scientists need to vouch for the work of their collaborators. Dr. James Tsang, an I.B.M. scientist who is chairman of the society's public affairs panel, said the proposed guidelines would strike a middle ground between collaborators' being narrowly responsible for their own contributions and being responsible for the work of all their co-authors.
8:01:04 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Morgan N. Sandquist.
Last update: 11/2/03; 10:29:43 AM.
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