ETHICS AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH A Selective Chronology with References || Norton Scientific Antivirus Scam

http://newdirections.unt.edu/resources/ethics_chronology.pdf

A summary overview in adapted bibliographical essay format of phases in the development of 

collective role responsibility for research integrity.  This overview, largely prescinds from the 

issue of human subjects research, which has its own special history. 

1970s

Rise of Research Ethics Concerns in the United States 

1974 William Summerlin (Sloan-Kettering Institute) “painted mice” case.  See Joseph R. 

Hixson, The Patchwork Mouse (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976). 

Scientific concerns about the dangers of recombinant DNA research lead to a shortterm voluntary suspension of such work and an Asilomar, CA, conference to develop 

safety guidelines. 

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Bar 

Association (ABA) jointly establish the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists 

(NCLS). 

1975 John T. Edsall et al. report on “Scientific Freedom and Responsibility.”  This report by 

an AAAS Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility (CSFR), which was 

first established on an ad hoc basis in 1970, led to the drafting and approval of a formal 

charter for the CSFR in 1976.  (Charter revised 1979 and again 1996.)  Among the first 

major post-Edsall activities of CSFR was the AAAS Professional Ethics Project, which 

produced a workshop report and collection of ethics documents: Rosemary Chalk, 

Mark S. Frankel, and Sallie B. Chafer, eds., Professional Ethics Activities in the 

Scientific and Engineering Societies (Washington, DC: AAAS, December 1980). 

1978 Gerald Holton and Robert S. Morison edit a special issue of Daedalus (vol. 107, no. 2, 

Spring) on “Limits of Scientific Inquiry,” examining the new social criticism of 

science; subsequently published as a book (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979). 

1979 The first U.S. Student Pugwash Conference, emphasizing applied social responsibility.  

Proceedings published in Sanford A. Lakoff, ed., Science and Ethical Responsibility

(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1980).