„the beagle boys” commercial contracts, institutional controls and individual courage

Irmline Veit-Brause

„The Beagle Boys“

Commercial Contracts, Institutional Controls and Individual Courage *1

Zusammenfassung: Professor Michael Briggs (Deakin University) erhielt in denfrühen 1980 er Jahren beträchtliche, aber nie genau genannte Summen von außer-universitären Forschungsgeldern von der pharmazeutischen Industrie (Schering)zum Zweck des Testens von Empfängnisverhütungsmitteln. Das Prestige und derStatus von Professor Briggs innerhalb der vergleichsweise jungen Universitätwurde durch diese kommerziellen Verträge, mit denen er ein Forschungsteam eta-blieren und finanzieren konnte, sehr gehoben. Er und seine Arbeit waren so gutwie immun gegen interne Rechenschaftslegung, da man seiner Ehrlichkeit vertrauteund sich an Vertraulichkeit hielt. Der spezielle Vertrauensbonus, der Briggs entge-gengebracht wurde, war, wie man behaupten könnte, eine Funktion der außeruni-versitären Forschungsgelder, die er in der Lage war einzuwerben.

Dank der medizinischen Kompetenz, des Muts und der Beharrlichkeit des Chair-man der Ethikkommission der Universität, Jim Rossiter, tauchten früh Verdachts-momente in Bezug auf die Ergebnisse von Briggs Experimenten auf. Briggs hatteunter anderem behauptet, Tests an Beagle Hunden durchgeführt zu haben – aber aufdem Campus hatte es nie Beagles gegeben. Es gab dann Gerüchte, daß diese Ergeb-nisse von einer pharmazeutischen Firma Briggs zugespielt worden waren, damit erdiesen Ergebnissen akademisch-wissenschaftliche Glaubwürdigkeit verleihe.

Aus der Perspektive der Wissenssoziologie ist wohl das Zögern und der Wider-stand der verantwortlichen Universitätsgremien – und ihrer Leiter – der interessan-teste Aspekt in diesem Fall von wissenschaftlichem Fehlverhalten. Die Universi-tätsverwaltung fürchtete sich eher vor einer öffentlichen Debatte wegen der Kon-sequenzen, die dies für die Reputation der Universität haben könnte. Der langsameProzeß, der zur Berufung einer internen Untersuchungskommission führte, wurdezunächst durch eine Gerichtsverfügung, sodann durch Professor Briggs Rücktrittvon der Universität gegen Ende des Jahres 1985 und sein Verlassen des Landesbald darauf zum Stillstand gebracht.

Meine Analyse dieses Falles zielt auf vier mir besonders wichtig erscheinendeAspekte, die schärfer zu beleuchten sind:

� das prekäre Funktionieren der Kontrollmechanismen, die es durchaus gab, undseine Abhängigkeit von Leuten mit Prinzipien, die solche Kontrollmechanismenzum Tragen bringen müssen;

� die Spannungen aufzuzeigen, die zwischen zwei ethischen Ausrichtungen exi-stieren – einer Gesinnungsethik, der es um die Reinerhaltung des wissenschaft-lichen Ethos geht, und einer Verantwortungsethik, die mit betrügerischem Ver-halten fertig zu werden versucht, ohne dabei die Glaubwürdigkeit einer ganzenInstitution zu zerstören;

* Paper presented at the XLth Symposium of the Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, „Blender, Täu-scher, Scharlatane: Betrug in den Wissenschaften“, Heidelberg, May, 29–31, 2003.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 27 (2004) 225–235 225

2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim DOI: 10.1002/bewi.200401018

� den äußeren und inneren Druck und die Versuchungen für Individuen und Insti-tutionen zu diskutieren, die entstehen, wenn Research Quantum Funding durchöffentliche Mittel – in komplizierter Berechnung – nach der Einnahme von,außeruniversitären‘ Forschungsgeldern durch die betreffende Institution berech-net wird; und schließlich

� einen Blick auf das Zusammen- oder Gegenspiel zwischen der juristischen Kul-tur eines Landes und der Kultur von wissenschaftlicher peer review zu werfen.

Schlüsselwörter : Betrug, Fehlverhalten (wissenschaftliches), Kommerzialisierung(Universitäten), peer review, Universitätsforschung, Vertragsforschung, Wissen-schaftsethos; XX Jh.

The processes of research protect the truth (AVCC) 1.1. Introduction

The Briggs affair was not the only case of fraud that shook Australian academe2.Most recently the Vice-Chancellor of Monash University, David Robinson, wasforced to resign – with a golden handshake – over further allegations of plagiarism.But the Briggs case was probably the most drawn out and most publicized case.The press coverage it attracted turned it into a cause celèbre of this young univer-sity – or should one say cause funèbre?

The case itself is surrounded by all sorts of incidental, entirely local events andfactors. Its handling depended on personal judgements of a handful of people, andsome of their confidants. I want to argue that despite this local nature the case hassymptomatic features which are of more general significance for considering fraudcases in contemporary academia.

Deakin University began operations in 1977 as a regional university in Geelong,west of Melbourne, in a town important for its harbour facilities, textile and car in-dustries. Its special charter was the provision of external, ITS technology sup-ported, studies. This provincial town with rather loose connections to its univer-sity was the agora on which the conflict was played out.

The documentations available for the history of this case is extensive press cover-age, Deakin’s own attempt to reconstruct the events in the Ramsay Report of 1988,publications by some of the actors and a half-prepared book, never published, withseveral actors’ / authors’ perspectives3. The publication of this book was abandonedfor reasons not immediately connected with the affair. Investigative journalism alsoplayed a decisive role in bringing some light into the affair, after the case had beenput to rest in the university context. Even though, the contributors more or lessintensely felt the Damocles sword of libel action dangling over their heads.

Cases of “gross scientific misconduct” – thus the subtitle of the planned book,which did not see the light of day – are interesting for several reasons. While theinvestigations are in train, the private motivations of the perpetrators may raisespecial interest and speculations. This is not my topic here; even the inquiries didnot unearth much about the motivations of Michael and Maxine Briggs. My inter-est lies in the structural pressures for ‘fudging’ test results, in the control mechan-isms established to prevent and penalize misconduct, and the social implications ofdealing with scientific fraud.

Irmline Veit-Brause226

Ber.Wissenschaftsgesch. 27 (2004) 225–235

The contentious issues of wider interest concern the principles applied to resol-ving the case, which had legal and academic aspects. The legal principle fiercely up-held by some of the defenders of Briggs was the principle of ‘natural justice’ – indubio pro reo, the Unschuldsvermutung. The academic principle in the mind ofthose who tried to get at the bottom of the allegations was that a researcher who isunwilling to submit his results to peer review violates crucial principles of aca-demic culture and for this very reason appears suspect. To consider the interplaybetween the legal culture of a country and the culture of academic peer review isone of the aims of this paper.

It has been argued in retrospect by one of the actors centrally involved in the at-tempt at clearing up the allegations that herein lay a deleterious clash. In this parti-cular drama, the latitude allowed by the structures to the protagonists is of greatsignificance, as I am trying to show. The drawn out process required to exorcise aghost left many personal scars but also prompted some significant reflections onthe nature of fraud and the power structures of science.

2. Structure of authority, governance, appeal

To understand the details, the process pursued in dealing with this case and theagonies it caused to those involved one needs to have some background knowledgeof the organisational structures in which this drama was played out. Australianuniversities are, by contrast to German universities, not subject in their decisionmaking to a minister of education and training. Financially they depend of courseon government funding, at least partially, yet today increasingly less so as they areput under pressure to find resources on a ,customer pays‘ principle. Funds are to-day to an ever-growing extent derived from fee-paying students in a complicatedschedule, which is not particularly relevant to the present problem. But this trendtowards commercialisation of higher education via consultancies and contract re-search – with its attendant opportunities and temptations – has been speeding uprather than slowing down in the time since this case shook one small university.

Universities are constituted by an act of parliament of the respective federalstate. The structure of governance has at its top a Chancellor with largely ceremo-nial functions, but also important discretionary powers in cases of conflict. TheChancellor is responsible to a University Council consisting largely of members ofthe public and few academics elected by their peers. Ultimate responsibility for therunning of a university’s affairs lies with Chancellor and Council.

The chief executive officer, so to speak, is the Vice-Chancellor (often: Vice-Chancellor and President – in analogy to the American system). He determines ininteraction with the Academic Board the day-to-day affairs and the mission andlong term planning of the university.

There was at that time no ombudsman at Deakin4, but this ultimate court of ap-peal and arbitration lay with the Visitor – ceremonially the Governor of the re-spective state – de facto somebody appointed by the Governor and ultimately alawyer. This, at least, was the situation at the time of the Briggs affair. Recent legis-lation has removed the Visitorial function without, however, establishing ombuds-men, respectively leaving details to the individual institutions.

„The Beagle Boys“ 227


3. Role of Staff Association (DUASA and FAUSA)

In the 1980s an industrial relations concept was introduced into the Australian uni-versity system. Legislation in 1986 modelled the relationship between the Vice-Chancellor and academic staff on the example of employer-employee arrange-ments. This concept introduced another player, that is, a representative of the Dea-kin University Academic Staff Association, and – more crucially – a representativeof the Federation of Australian University Staff Associations, into the process ofnegotiating between the suspect member of staff and the university, represented byVice-Chancellor and Chancellor. One needs to note that the Vice-Chancellor atthe time, Fred Jevons, had an academic background in and was well versed in so-cial studies of science. It could be expected that he would take a more informedand committed position than anyone else.

4. University Statute and Regulations, and dramatis personae

The University Regulations provided for enquiry procedures, once a formal com-plaint about the academic conduct of a staff member had been lodged. The legalinterpretation of ‘complaint’ was one of the contentious issues as the enquiry pro-ceeded, as was the notion of the Vice-Chancellor’s ‘discretion’.

The University also had established an Ethics Committee, and it was its chair-man, Jim Rossiter, who first raised – in a highly confidential manner – an alarmabout Briggs’ publications concerning the testing of contraceptives. One of hisclaims referred to the testing on Beagles. Thus the local fama registered the case asthat of ‘The Beagle Boys’, knowing only too well that there had never been anyBeagles on the Waurn Ponds campus at Geelong.

The actors, ‘dramatis personae’, of the affair were:Michael Briggs had come to Deakin via the Gordon Technical Institute, one of theantecedent institutions of Deakin University. He assumed the chair of human biol-ogy and served as dean of the science faculty. He had previously worked in Eng-land, Zambia, New Zealand, and briefly in the States. Some of his experimentaltesting of contraceptives, funded by Wyeth and Schering, had been done in Zam-bia. His credentials on paper seemed impeccable. Later, however, large shadows ofdoubt were cast even over his claims about his formal professional qualifications.Fred Jevons, the foundation Vice-Chancellor of Deakin, works in social studies ofscience and science policy. He accepted the offer of Vice-Chancellorship as a pro-fessor at the University of Manchester. It was his first acquaintance with Australiaand its local culture.Jim Rossiter, by training a paediatrician, was a highly regarded member of the medi-cal profession in Geelong when he was coopted as member of the University Coun-cil. In this capacity he also chaired for many years the university’s Ethics Committee.Justice Austin Asche, a respected lawyer, was the Chancellor and chairman of thecouncil at the time. His legal mind, his concern with diplomatic niceties and thereputation of the university, disposed him to a very cautious course of actions.Justice Starke, acting on behalf of the ‘Visitor’ – i.e. the Governor of Victoria, a re-tired Admiral – provided extensive legal advice and thus joined up with the legalmindset of the Chancellor.



Les Wallis was at the time the Deputy Secretary General of the Federation of Aus-tralian Staff Associations, a professional organisation, defending the working con-ditions and professional standards of academics, as well as individuals‘ disputeswith university authorities.

5. Scientific Fraud

In contemporary knowledge societies, depending essentially on the results of scien-tific research there is increased emphasis on the notions of reliability5 and trust inthe honesty and intellectual integrity of the researchers and the research process.Forgery and fraud, major examples of serious scientific misconduct, often have so-cial implications of incalculable dimensions whereas plagiarism is an offenceagainst intellectual property of academic peers. There are subtler forms of scientificmisconduct, violations of integrity and responsibility vis-à-vis colleagues, co-work-ers and the up-coming generation, a case of dereliction of duties as a supervisor.All of them are breaking the trust of the public in the processes of research as wellas breaking the trust among scientists and scholars and thus causing major disrup-tions within the scientific community. William Broad and Nicholas Wade, examin-ing a wide range of fraud cases in the US came to the depressing conclusion thatthe normal way of representing the operations of scientific research is somewhatmisleading. The image projected is at best the image of a ‘flawed ideal’6 Fraud,they thought, is endemic in science.

When and how is the threshold crossed between error, misconduct and fraud,that is, intentional deceit? What are the tacit rules of proper conduct? In Jevons’words7:

What, I wondered, would the scientific community think about the view that no adverse inferenceshould be drawn when a researcher refuses to say how he got his published results? It was argued laterthat, in his capacity as a lawyer if not as Chancellor, Asche was right to insist on the legal principle ofinnocent until proven guilty. Nobody questioned that principle, but was the application right in the cir-cumstances? A scientist had put forward certain knowledge claims. Asked to provide evidence to agroup of his peers, he had declined to do so. No legal principle, I think, declares it totally wrong todoubt the claims in such circumstances.

The progressive scientification of society makes it more vulnerable to fraud as itspolicy decisions and also private decisions take recourse to scientific test results. Thearea of Briggs’ research on contraceptives was definitely not a segregated quest forknowledge, but deeply integrated into the social concerns of present day society8.All the more damaging – potentially and actually – the fudged results on which mar-keting strategies of the pharmaceutical industries where based. Our science-based‘knowledge society’ has to have a more exacting attitude to forgery and fraud thanother times when forgers sometimes acted from somewhat altruistic motives. AsGrafton commented with reference to forgeries by historians or literary people9:

In most cases in which forgers have attributed greater deeds, more magnanimous sentiments, and moreeloquent words to historical figures than the record warrants, love has probably been their preeminentmotivation. Others have forged from hatred …

Our present day ‘Audit Society’ with its obsession with accountability for thefinancial support received and efficiency in the use of resources – whatever its ac-tual effects10 – would have no patience for such motives.



6. The Enquiry Process

The enquiry process was a valiant, but ill-fated and ultimately failed attempt to getat the bottom of the suspicions and allegations which began to be voiced in confi-dence right after Briggs‘ appointment by one of his colleagues, and by medical col-leagues at a Melbourne hospital. But even before any more serious doubts aroseconcerning Briggs‘ experiments, one of Briggs‘ colleagues had already, in a confi-dential talk with the Vice-Chancellor, taken exception to Briggs‘ letter to Americandoctors promoting a specific contraceptive, as such an action by an academic vio-lated medical ethics.

All in all, the enquiry process extended over three years, from the first suspi-cions raised in October 1982 to Michael Briggs‘ abrupt resignation from the Uni-versity in September 1985. One may argue that the enquiry process getting under-way eventually was due to the fortuitous coincidence of Deakin at the time findinga medical practitioner in the chair of its Ethics Committee. Confidentiality, respectfor the external resources Michael Briggs had been able to attract, and fear of defa-mation action shrouded the affair in secrecy. A final Report on the sad and har-rowing affair, which had at times the features of a macabre tragedy, was delivered,when a new Vice-Chancellor was in office, by a special Working Party chaired bythe Council member Margery Ramsay. It took two years to deliver the Report inDecember 1985, after an earlier Report – the Swan Report – had successfullycleared students and colleagues of Briggs from any suspicions tainting their workdue to their association with Michael Briggs.11

Before a preliminary Committee of Enquiry was formally set up, only to bequashed by the Visitor’s verdict, there had been several attempts to get Briggs toanswer queries concerning his test results, the data on assays he claimed to havemade or have made for him, and his formal qualifications.

In 1984, a letter of complaint was sent by Rossiter to the Vice-Chancellor. At-tempting to appear neutral and not involved in the details he proposed to Councilthe setting up of a Preliminary Committee of Enquiry. Its task was to considerwhether there was a case to answer. At this point Briggs involved his solicitors,but also contacted the Staff Associations, who themselves got their own legal ad-vice. FAUSA was concerned with ‘natural justice’ for the accused – or defamed.After some confusion over whose legal consultants were to be followed, Briggs ac-cepted FAUSA’s advice to appeal to the Visitor. In an extensive legal expertise re-ceived by Justice Starke, the verdict was to stop the Enquiry. The argument hingedon two highly technical and formalistic legal points. One was that the letter ofcomplaint could not be considered as a formal complaint as it did not contain spe-cific allegations of fact. The other focused on the notion of the Vice-Chancellor’s‘discretion’, which the Regulations required for the setting up of an Enquiry. Con-trary to Jevons’s attempt to stay neutral, the legal interpretation demanded a kindof judgement of the seriousness and tenability of the allegations from the Vice-Chancellor. It was an implicit reprimand for the Vice-Chancellor who understand-ably felt aggrieved when the Chancellor decided to accept rather than to arguewith the Visitor’s verdict. The first attempt at clearing up what had to be deemedrumours and suspicions thus failed over legal technicalities.



The complainants, however, did not relent and lodged a second formal com-plaint. Again the process of setting up a preliminary committee of enquiry got un-der-way, yet terminated, as the Regulations demanded, by the abrupt resignationfrom the University by Briggs in September 1985 while staying overseas on Out-side Studies Leave12. It was left to investigative journalism to chase up Briggs andhis wife at the Costa del Sol in Spain and to extract from him, in a secretly tapedinterview, a sort of admission that he had ,laundered‘ data, only to prompt anotherthreat of libel action by Briggs against the Sunday Times for which Brian Deer wasworking.

Briggs’ association with Schering and Wyeth was never fully explained, thoughSchering later dissociated itself from his work. The role, chances, pressures andtemptations of industry contracts and funding were left unexplored even in theRamsay Report which took a cautiously sympathetic view of the Vice-Chancellor’sactions.

In Brian Martin’s pessimistic view, based on a survey of a number of cases, theinstitutional priority is not – contrary to all high-minded rhetoric – to limit the in-cidence of fraud but rather to limit the damage to the institution. In my own ex-perience of a severe case of student plagiarism undetected for years, the reaction isunease not vis-à-vis the student but the colleague who raised the alarm. Jim Rossi-ter, whose personal courage and moral outrage moved the process of investigationas far as it did get, suffered for his pains from harassing threats and social ostracismwhich almost destroyed his practice as a paediatrician.13

The Vice-Chancellor, Fred Jevons, in December 1985 in his final address toCouncil, tried to summarize the principles, which moved his actions14:

Knowledge is a university’s business. It is, if you like, the commodity in which it trades. A universityneeds to be jealous of the reputation of that knowledge. If a university does not guard intellectual integ-rity and excellence, it is failing in the profoundest possible way the community that harbours and nur-tures it. The basic message, therefore [… is] a dual one: new ways, but old values. I hope that the uni-versity will continue to seek new ways to enact old values. It should be endlessly imaginative and inno-vative in finding and introducing new ways, but it should never lose sight of the basic values which un-derlie the work of the university. Old they may be, but they cannot be outdated, because they form itscentral mission. The task, as I see it, is eternal vigilance to maintain the integrity of the knowledge thatthe university creates and transmits, coupled with an eternal quest to find better ways to transmit it.

7. Conclusions

How to distinguish the general and the very (petty) local conditions? What’s to belearnt? What is the harm done by Briggs’ fraudulence? It almost destroyed somepeople’s livelihood and left deep scars of hurt in the memory of others. It shookthe university community and its members’ trust in its procedures. But beyondthese local effects there is the wider context of implication15. Briggs had tried toride the wave of the commercially lucrative and expanding market of contracep-tives among the women of the world. In his research he had been cutting cornersto satisfy his industrial financiers and the pressures of the market.

To combat fraud today, the revised Guidelines on Research Practice, issued bythe AVCC, the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee in 1997, place their em-phasis on the faithful operation of the ‘peer review mechanisms’16 although thereis mounting evidence that the peer review system is itself fraught with temptations



and non-ethical behaviour due to the fierce competition between researchers. Anattempt by the German Research Council (DFG) in 1998, to formulate principlesof “Scientific Responsibility” and to issue Recommendations on “The Self-Con-trol in the Sciences” underscored its ideas with an analysis of the social pressureswithin the sciences system itself raising the temptations for dishonest behaviour17.It also discussed the limits of and the pressures on the peer review system18.A symposium of the Max-Planck-Society dealt with philosophical articulations ofa scientific ethos, as well as with some interesting case studies of serious difficultiesin scientific practice, especially with the effects, which the ‘publish or perish’ com-petitiveness today has on the maintenance of intellectual integrity in prestigiousjournals like Nature or Science19. As Helga Nowotny and her co-authors pointedout20:

The peer review system, so deeply embedded in the functioning (and the life-world) of science, is pus-hing up against its own limits and, in the process, being transformed. This is not so much evident inspectacular cases of scientific fraud – which highlight the enormous pressure under which some parts ofthe science system operate – but in the demands for accountability and priority setting and to accept ad-ditional criteria of judging the quality and relevance of scientific work. A set of intermediate institutionshas sprung up consisting of research councils, advisory committees and similar more or less bureaucraticbodies, which seek to reconcile the upholding of standards of scientific quality with new demands thattranscend them and need to be incorporated. The difficulty of setting priorities in funding in basic re-search highlights how the system is struggling to embrace a kind of societal reflexivity – to which thereis no alternative.

The case of Michael Briggs is certainly demonstrating the limits of the peer re-view system21:

This compulsion continuously to check and test one’s own and each other’s claims and results is deeplyingrained in the training of researchers. It has also been institutionalized in scientific practice; a goodexample is the pervasive peer-review system. There is constant fear of contamination – whether by ‘na-tural artifacts’ that invade the experimental environment, producing ‘dirt’ or causing ‘noise’, or by theintervention of social, economic, or political interests which are also suspected of distorting the reliabi-lity – or, fundamentally, the truth value – of scientific results. It is for this reason that the commitmentto the autonomy of science and the belief that it must be independent from other social institutions andsystems are so strong. In the eyes of many of the institutional leaders of science, any penetration of sci-ence by other cultures – whether democratic or commercial – is bound to compromise its autonomyand, therefore, must be resisted (Ziman 2000) (169).

Moreover, this case foreshadowed complications which have become morepressing twenty years later when the profit motive of industry funding and of re-searchers sharing in the profits is leading to a situation deemed detrimental toscientific practice and increasingly harder to control. The research surrounding thegenome project is a case in point.22

All that remains are appeals to the truthfulness and sense of responsibility of thescientific community in the AVCC Guidelines23:

The broad principles that guide research have been long established. Central to these are the mainten-ance of high ethical standards, and validity and accuracy in the collection and reporting of data. The re-sponsibility of the research community to the public and to itself is acknowledged. This responsibilityis particularly important where professional practice or public policy may be defined or modified in thelight of research findings.

The processes of research protect the truth. Communication between collaborators; maintenance and re-ference to research records; presentation and discussion of work at meetings of experts; publication ofresults, including the important element of peer review; and the possibility that investigations will be re-peated or extended by other researchers, all contribute to the intrinsically self-correcting and ethical na-ture of research.



In the Rules or Recommendations of most countries the human sciences are notconsidered to pose particularly severe problems. Are there any equivalents in thehuman sciences?24 One of the most serious cases of fraudulence, that is, a fabri-cated new identity occurred in literary studies with an ex-Nazi professor assuminga completely new identity. The case is that of Schneider /Schwerte, who as a Ger-man literature scholar even rose to the position of Vice-Chancellor in his homeuniversity of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle)25.

Our knowledge societies take a more exacting view of forgeries and fabricationsthan other times and other fields of intellectual pursuits. One of the oldest conten-tious forgeries, the donation of Constantine (Valla)26 had a legal purpose in the his-tory of the Church. Cruder forgeries of documents, like Konrad Kujau’s Hitlerdiaries managed for a little while to capture the gullibility of the public. Literaryforgeries often acquired their own classical status. Australia had its own Ossianequivalent in the Angry Penguins‘ Ern Malley poems of the late 1940s27. Mundusvult decipi – the classical slogan – is today in our Audit Society most definitely nota maxim of behaviour.

One of the best publicized cases of the 1980s in the United States, which showsthe fragile nature and uncertainties of these issues, is the case of the American his-torian, David Abraham, as retold by Peter Novick. In 1981, David Abraham hadpublished a book on The collapse of the Weimar Republic: Political Economy andCrisis, and had received a number of very favourable reviews, even from his mostimmediate competitor in the field, Henry A. Turner. Until a closer reading of thebook, revealing errors, misquotations, wrong attributions of documents and similarexamples of what looked to some as sloppy scholarship, caused a storm of “out-rage and incredulity”28. Suddenly, some of the powerbrokers and gatekeepers ofthe American profession changed their judgment from “not just deficient” to “butfraudulent”29. The allegation now was “not […] error, but fraud”30. The chargewas that Abraham had fudged his documentary evidence to suit his ideologicalpreoccupation. There was no court of investigation and settlement. Rather it wasleft to the feuding parties and some commentators to sort out the matter in profes-sional journals and the media. In spite of Abraham’s admission and corrections offactual errors, the letter campaign waged by Gerald Feldman and Henry Turneragainst his appointment at a number of universities who were considering him fora permanent position was left to run its course. The AHA declined to take a standor to investigate the actions of the two senior historians. The end effect was thatAbraham was driven out of the profession without the allegations of fraudulenceever having been examined before a committee of enquiry.

I would like to conclude with some searching remark by Gabriel Gosselin,which go further than the usual considerations concerning fraud, respectively in-tellectual integrity of research maintained and self-regulated by peer review andethics committes. Gabriel Gosselin has entered a plea to reconsider the quest forknowledge for knowledge’s sake which in his opinion is a quest for power. Speak-ing as an anthropologist and sociologist, with the experience of fieldwork in Africa,Gosselin takes account of the social implications of their work and challenges theborderline conventionally drawn between producing knowledge, which is thescholar’s and scientist’s business, and its application, which is left to politicians andbureaucrats. A concern for the responsibilities of application should be shouldered



by the producers of knowledge themselves. His radical pleas deserve attention asthey respond constructively to the entanglements of the sciences in society createdby Mode-2 Science, which in turn is responding to new social complexities and un-certainties31:

[T]he limit that we have crossed (without knowing it) is general submission, unreasoned as well as un-discussed, to the desire made sacred for knowledge in order to dominate […]. We continue to be willingto submit “the application” of our scientific discoveries to the ethical question – without great success,however – but we consider it to be a crime against research to submit the research process itself to sucha question. In reality we do quite the reverse. We submit the ethic to science and we name this substi-tute “ethic of knowledge.” The name is no less deceitful than the procedure perverse. In fact what weare naming is the determination to know for knowledge’s sake, and to know at any price. Is this reallyreasonable?

1 AVCC (Australian Vice-Chancellors‘ Committee) (1997) Joint NHMRC/AV-CC Statement andGuidelines on Research Practice (May) 7. Research Misconduct, p. 1.

2 For the discussions in Germany, cf. the issue: Lug und Trug in den Wissenschaften. 13 Annäherun-gen. Gegenworte – Zeitschrift für den Disput über Wissen, Heft 2 /1998.

3 Two of the papers prepared for this abandoned book have been published elsewhere, namely JimRossiter: A whistleblower’s perspective. Nature 357 (June 1992), 434–436; and Brian Martin: Scienti-fic fraud and the power structure of science. Prometheus 101 (June 1992), 83–98.

4 The institutionalization of an ombudsman to deal with the volatile and confidential matters in thecase of suspicions of breaches of scientific integrity, which can range over a whole lot a issues, notonly fabrication of results, forgeries or plagiarism, has been one of the actions, for example, of theGerman Research Council, where three members of the Council perform the role of ombudsman.The German Max-Planck-Society has acted similarly with ombudsman at the institutes’ level andhigher up the organisation. In Australia, there is at least at the New South Wales government levelan ombudsman who was recently involved in fraud charge against a medical scientist, cf. The Austra-lian, Higher Education, August 20, 2003.

5 Cf. Helga Nowotny/Peter Scott /Michael Gibbons: Re-Thinking Science. Knowledge and the Publicin an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge 2001, p. 168.

6 William Broad/Nicholas Wade: Betrayers of the Truth. Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science.New York 1982.

7 Unpublished manuscript, pp. 8 sq.8 For the distinction between relative segregation from, respectively integration of various research

fields into the context of society, cf. H. Nowotny et al. (see ref. 5), chapter 7.9 Anthony Grafton: Forgers and Critics. Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship. Princeton

1990, p. 39.10 On the operations and effects, especially on universities, cf. Michael Power: The Audit Society. Ri-

tuals of Verification. Oxford/New 1997, esp. pp. 98–104.11 The history of the university by Roy Hay/David Lowe/Don Gibb: Breaking the Mould. Deakin

University the First Twenty-five Years, Deakin University 2002, devotes only a couple of pages tothe unsavory scandal. The accompanying CD contains among other documents the Ramsay Report.

12 In contrast, the AVCC Guidelines of 1997 (see ref. 1) require the continuation of “any such investi-gation to establish the facts of a matter [1/4] even if the person accused of such misconduct resignsfrom the institution”.

13 More recent legislation (Whistleblowers Protection Act 2001) has attempted some protection of theso-called whistleblowers.

14 R. Hay et al. (See ref. 11), 27.15 Cf. H. Nowotny et al. (see ref. 5), 158ff.16 AVCC Guidelines 1997 (see ref. 1), p. 4.17 DFG: Empfehlungen der Kommission ,Selbstkontrolle in der Wissenschaft‘, 1998. DFG website

dfg.de.18 For an early discussion cf. Everett Mendelsohn et al.: The Management of Scientists. Boston 1964.19 Cf. Max Planck Society: Max Planck Forum 2, Ringberg Symposium on Ethos der Forschung Ethics

of Research, Oct. 1999.20 H. Nowotny et al. (see ref. 5), 46.



21 H. Nowotny et al. (see ref. 5), 169. – John Ziman (Hrsg.): Technological Innovation as an Evolutio-nary Process. Cambridge 2000, S. 169.

22 Cf. Reinhard Blomert: Der universtär-industrielle Komplex. Das Profitstreben in der Gentechnikgeht zunehmend auf Kosten der Wissenschaftlichkeit – Debatte. DIE WELT of May 18, 2001.

23 AVCC Guidelines 1997 (see ref. 1), p. 1.24 For a searching discussion of the ethical responsibilities of the social sciences, cf. Gérald Berthoud/

Beat Sitter-Liver (eds.): The Responsible Scholar. Ethical Considerations in the Humanities and So-cial Sciences. Canton, MA 1996; esp. Gabriel Gosselin: The Ethical Paths of Knowledge in the So-cial Sciences, pp. 169–192.

25 Cf. Marco Finetti /Arnim Himmelrath: Das verdrängte Phänomen. Vom jahrzehntelangen Nicht-Umgang deutscher Wissenschaftler und Wissenschaftsorganisationen mit Betrug und Fälschung inden eigenen Reihen. Gegenworte – Zeitschrift für den Disput über Wissen, Heft 2 /1998, 31–33, esp.p. 32.

26 Cf. A. Grafton (see ref. 9).27 On literary fraud, cf. K. K. Ruthven: Faking Literature. Cambridge 2001; reviewed by Martin Wech-

selblatt: Faking it for Real: K. K. Ruthven’s Book of Literary Fraud. Australian Humanities Review,September 2002 (www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/ Issue-September-2002/wechselblatt.html).

28 The case is discussed at some length by Peter Novick: That Noble Dream. The “Objectivity Ques-tion” and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge /New York 1988, p. 612 sqq.; here p. 618.

29 P. Novick (see ref. 28), 613.30 P. Novick (see ref. 28), 615.31 G. Gosselin (see ref. 24), 188 sq.

Anschrift der Verfasserin: Assoc. Prof. Irmline Veit-Brause, Honorary Fellow, Faculty of Arts, Deakin Uni-versity, Melbourne Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Melbourne,Vic. 3125, Australia; [email protected]

Eingesandte Literatur (Sammelbände)

Peter Dilg (Hrsg.): Natur im Mittelalter. Kon-zeptionen – Erfahrungen – Wirkungen. Aktendes 9. Symposiums des Mediävistenverbandes,Marburg, 14.–17. März 2001. Berlin: AkademieVerlag 2003. X und 498 Seiten, gebunden � 69,80;ISBN 3-05-003778-4.

Der Band enthält nach dem Vorwort des Heraus-gebers (S. IX f.) und dem Eröffnungsvortrag vonGundolf Keil: Physis. Aspekte des antiken Natur-begriffs (S. 3–29), die Hauptreferate und Sektions-beiträge des Symposiums.

Hauptreferate. Christoph Kann: Zeichen –Ordnung – Gesetz: Zum Naturverständnis in dermittelalterlichen Philosophie (S. 33–49). – JürgenSarnowsky: Zur Entwicklung der Naturerkennt-nis an den mittelalterlichen Universitäten (S. 50–69). – Udo Friedrich: Die Ordnung der Natur.

Funktionsrahmen der Natur in der volkssprach-lichen Literatur des Mittelalters (S. 70–83). –Mechthild Modersohn: Natura als Göttin – einePersonifikation zwischen Mythos und Aufklärung(S. 84–110 mit 34 Abbildungen). – Ortrun Riha:Mikrokosmos Mensch. Der Naturbegriff in dermittelalterlichen Medizin (S. 111–123). – Chri-stian Hünemörder: Traditionelle Naturkunde,realistische Naturbeobachtung und theologischeNaturdeutung in Enzyklopädien des Hohen Mit-telalters (S. 124–135). – Peter Schreiner: Die By-zantiner und ihre Sicht der Natur. Ein Überblick(S. 136–150).

Sektionsbeiträge. Kurt Smolak: Dum tremetmundi machina: Reflektiertes Naturerleben imFrühmittelalter (S. 153–162). – Michele C. Ferrari:Aura levatitia. Naturbeherrschung und Naturexe-gese im Frühmittelalter (S. 163–177). – Thomas

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 27 (2004): Eingesandte Literatur (Sammelbände) 235


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