“Do Scientists Compete Unethically” is the title of an article in the New York Times Science section this week by John Tierney. This interesting piece is in response to a previous post on “What If Scientist Didn’t Compete” (here)

Which in both cases has spawned a series of intense debates.

The original post led to the majority of responders online insisting that competition is an essential element of science. This week’s piece is in response to one scientist (Dr Cutler) who’s main point is “Compete ethically”. Dr Cutler points out that there are elements of researchers who are unethical. These examples include reviewers who “exploit their access to privileged data to gain unfair advantages in the “race” to the next big discovery”, and lack of cooperation from scientists for requested published materials. Dr Cutler recommends a system of rewards for ethical behavior such as when it comes to publications and grant funding.

I though this was an interesting post for discussion here on Nature Network. My questions are therefore;

How can we regulate such a system and evaluate ethics?

How widespread do you think this problem is?