Apropos of nothing I started contemplating this scenario today . . .
Let’s say that Lance Armstrong, instead of being a cyclist, were instead a lauded medical investigator who was the top of his field, had won a lot of awards, and was credited with discoveries in medicine which had demonstrably improved patient care. There had been no widespread whisperings about drug use in the general public (because the general public doesn’t really care about the personal lives of scientists) but among his colleagues there were some murmurs about how he was able to regularly work for 48 hours straight with few breaks, etc.
Let’s further say that the institute which he worked at started random drug screenings, and Dr. Armstrong’s number came up. He was found to have amphetamine metabolites in his urine, and he publicly confessed to one of the following:
Adderall use, properly prescribed and taken in the appropriate doses
Adderall abuse: he was not prescribed the drug but was stealing it from his daughter
who was prescribed the drug
Adderall abuse: he was stealing the drug from the hospital pharmacy
Cocaine abuse
How would you, personally react in these situations? Would you expect him to return his awards? Would you think that his legacy was significantly tainted?
I would expect him to return the awards in situations 2-4, but honestly my opinion of his greatness would not be diminished. It seems like most people in medicine work crazy hours, and if you have the intelligence and drive to achieve but are not naturally blessed with stamina, I could easily see how you could turn to stimulants to try to achieve your goals. I also sort of vaguely suspect that a good chunk of doctors do take some kind of stimulant. How else does one regularly get 5 hours of sleep a night and still perform?
The problem with Armstrong wasn’t that he was a criminal (though he was)–it was that he was a cheater, and his corruption affected not only himself and his own results, but the whole context in which he worked.
A scientist caught falsifying data on a similarly long, deep, and prominent basis, would be more damaging than Armstrong. His career would be over, of course, his awards forfeit, his name one of historic shame–but even more than all that, and worse, he would cast a shadow of suspicion in the the public eye over all his colleagues and science generally.
There’s a drug you can take to help you find a cure for cancer, reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics, or build a practical quantum computer? I’d encourage Prof. Armstrong the scientist to take as much of it as he wants.
More seriously, the difference between the two scenarios is that Lance Armstrong the cyclist was competing against other athletes in a contest with carefully prescribed rules that has no ramifications outside of the contest itself. Similarly, I would expect a Jeopardy! contestant who was secretly looking up the answers on Wikipedia or threatening Trebek to waive his award. The former is perfectly legal and the latter is illegal, but the point is that they’re both against the rules and spirit of the contest.
I would be interested in knowing if you all think he should lose his awards, his position or any other kind of professional censure. My comparison to Armstrong was really just referential . . . I am not trying to make a point about Armstrong or anything.
If a scientist were committing fraud of an equivalent nature–creating false results–then yes, certainly he should be censured.
And while science has its share of scoundrels, of gamesmanship and politics… I think he would be. For all the flaws of the people involved, the methods of science still lead back to the truth, over and over.
I’m with Snarky_Kong. I don’t see why he should lose his awards in any of the cases. As I’m reading it, the scenario is that his awards have been given for (a) making significant and useful medical advances and not (b) for being some sort of model citizen. That being the case, why should his failure to be a model citizen impact on the awards?
I don’t see any equivalence. Athletes like Armstrong compete against other athletes. Having a prohibited advantage is a clear violation of the spirit (and the rules) of competition. Scientists aren’t in direct competition (although there may be a de facto sense of competition). In theory, all scientists are working on the same side to jointly find knowledge. So Professor Armstrong’s use of performance enhancing drugs did not harm any other scientists. The equivalent crime for Professor Armstrong would be falsifying his data and he would lose academic awards for that.
No, but they should definitely take them away from those who used technology to correct flaws inherent to their singing voice. The issue is whether the offending act has an effect on the output of your profession. I don’t care if they dub a line or solo, but if the person isn’t able to stay on key without help then they don’t deserve the award.
It depends on what the award was for. I’d accept taking away a performing award for what you’re describing. But if it was a producing award, I’d say let them keep it - the producer’s role is to make the final work sound good and removing flaws from the original performance is part of the job.
Scientific achievements are recognized on the basis of the facts and applications of those facts which have been uncovered by the investigator. They are not based upon the personal habits of the investigator.
Any given scientist can be a complete prick, an abuser and a drug addict, but his (or her) work stands based upon the abilty of others to replicate it, or to uncover further information by building upon it. Falsification of data is the unforgivable sin because it wastes everyone else’s time trying to replicate the results or chasing down false leads implied by those falsified results.
We can come up with examples similar to the OP’s premise. For example, Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize for developing the DNA polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The technique is ubiquitous in science, medicine, and forensics. It’s directly used in a number of modern diagnostics, as a highly sensitive way to detect pathogens. It’s been absolutely essential for much (perhaps even most) of the biological and medical research in the last 25 years.
Kary Mullis has also openly discussed heavy drug use, including decades of personal experimentation with psychedelics and amphetamines. I can’t track down the original quotes at the moment, but Wiki mentions that Mullis believes he would not have invented PCR without LSD.
For what it’s worth, Mullis is also an AIDs denier and climate change skeptic. By most accounts he is a complete asshole and more than a little insane.
Do we strip Mullis of his Nobel prize due to his drug use? As much as he is disliked in the scientific community, I don’t think anyone is interested in taking the award away.
This is a really compelling argument, actually. Compelling enough that I redact my previous statement that I think the awards should be taken away. However, I do think he should be subject to some censure.
The reason I made the Armstrong analogy is because I considered him someone to have still obtained the prize (riding a bike faster than anyone else), while employing methods to enhance his performance that were considered underhanded.
However, Peremensoe’s argument is, I think, the best way to frame the Armstrong controversy in order to distinguish it from my hypothetical. He basically violated the given rules of a sport. Because not using performance enhancing drugs isn’t essential to the ethos of science, using them, even in an unethical way, does not rise to the same level of unprofessional behavior as, say, falsifying data, which does violate the basic tenets of scientific investigation.
However, I still maintain that someone who has been found to abuse prescription and especially illegal drugs should be subject to some sort of censure, just as a non-famous person would.
Steroids and other performance enhancing drugs should be legal, as should all other chemical substances you might like to ingest, short of something dangerous to the public, like Anthrax or Plutonium.
This Puritan ethic regarding drugs and/or sports is silly and backward. When will this society grow up?
Also, race cars should be able to go as fast as they like … build the fences around the track higher. And make motorcycle helmets optional, and seat-belts, too.
That about covers it. Oh yeah, hookers … that should be legal, too. There, I’m done.
Also, if Lance Armstrong was a scientist, maybe he could expose himself to Gamma rays, turn all green, and really pedal fast. That should be legal, too.