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Challenges Serge La.ng Springer OJ OmJ T"" I IX) m T"" Why does Lang make files? Why did the chicken cross the street? Serge Lang Department of Mathematlcs Yale Un1versity cr New Haven. 06520 USA By agreement wtth the author. no royaltles were paid for this work. Lang,Serge, 1927- Challenges / Serge Lang. p. cm. Includes Index. ISBN 978-0-387-94861-4 ISBN 978-1-4612-1638-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4612-1638-4 1. Scienc~Moral and ethica1 aspects---United States. 2. Scienc~Politlca1 aspects---United States. 3. Social Interactlon-United States. 4. Whistle blowtng-United States. 1. TItle. QI75.35.L361996 174'.90901-dc20 96-29303 Pr1nted on acid-free paper. ©1998 Springer Science+Business Media New York Origina1ly published by Springer-VerlagNew York, Inc.in 1998 Ali rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or hÎ părt without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage or retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks. etc., in this publication, even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as nnderstood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone. The views expressed In this publicatlon are solely those of the author. ISBN 978-0-387-94861-4 SPIN 10547046 Challenges Springer Science+Business Media, LLC PREFACE I am very thankful to Springer-Verlag for publishing a collection of some of my non-mathematical works-I call them political works. in the broad sense of the word political. Three of these have appeared in print: - My article on the Ladd-Lipset sUIvey. which appeared in the New York Review of Books. 18 May 1978; and also in The File (Springer-Verlag. 1981). - My article on the Baltimore case. which appeared in the Jour nal of Ethics and Behavior. February 1993. - My articles on HIV and AIDS. which appeared in the Yale Sci entific (Fall 1994 and Winter 1995). reprinted updated in the book AIDS: Virus-or drug induced? Kluwer Academic Pub lishers. 1996. pp. 271-307. The first item. "Academia. Journalism. and Politics." is itself a book based on my Huntington file. The "Background and Motiva tion" section of this sub-book can be used as a foreword for all my "political" works. and also contains an explanation of how I use the word "political." In that section. readers will find a general discussion of the way I process information and some criteria I use in discourse. For another discussion in a different case. readers can refer to my essay "Questions of Editorial Responsibility." The exchange with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and its reviewers provides a unique opportunity for a direct con frontation of irreconcilable differences in the conception and exer cise of editorial responsibility. At stake is what constitutes legiti mate discourse and what gets published. by whom. My New York Review of Books article on the Ladd-Lipset survey. like the Huntington file. deals among many other things with problems in the way some social scientists practice their field. The remaining parts of this book concern several other cases of questionable academic. scientific. or political behavior. in various v vi Preface combinations. All pieces in this book reflect my fundamental in terest in the area where the academic or scientific world meets the world of journalism and the world of politics. The pieces deal With various questions of responsibility in all these areas. It turns out that the National Academy of Sciences happens to be involved in all of them in some way or another. One recurrent problem has been the difficulty I have experi enced in getting published. Examples of this difficulty arise throughout. The existing difficulties of getting criticisms of estab lished figures or institutions printed in standard scientific or scholarly journals is one of the fundamental issues dealt With in this book. For concrete examples, see: - In the Huntington case, the refusal to publish by Discover (a national magazine); by scholarly journals such as PS and Footnotes (American Political Science AsSOCiation and Ameri can Sociological AsSOCiation, respectively); or by publications in between such as the Chronicle oj Higher Education, and the Washington Update of the Consortium of Social Science Asso ciations. - In the Baltimore case. the refusal to publish by Issues in Sci ence and Technology (a publication of the National Academy of Sciences), by the American Chemical Society and by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. - In the Gallo case. refusal to publish by Nature. - In the HN/ AIDS case, refusal to publish by major SCientific journals, which engage in suppression and manipulation, ob structing challenges to the orthodox view. Because of pressure from the media and Congress, over the last few years there has been developing substantial interest in scien tific or academic ethics. Courses on SCientific ethics are increas ingly being taught, but the recommendation to have such courses by various official bodies which have refused to take position in concrete cases is to some extent hypocritical, because the evi dence shows that it is not students who need such courses, but senior scientists who have provided recent examples of transgres sions of the classical standards of science. The sole existence of such courses implies nothing about their effect, which depends on who teaches them. and what is covered or suppressed in them. Ironically, the courses provide an opportunity to inform students of some failures of the scientific establishment around them. I hope the present book will be useful in such courses. but I also hope the impact of this book will not be limited to such Preface vii courses. I thank Springer Verlag once more for giving me an op portunity to bring into the open profound academic, journalistic, political, and philosophical differences with some dominant as pects of our society. CONTENTS Preface v Academia. Journalism. and Politics: A Case Study: The Huntington Case 1 Strange Survey of u.S. Profs: The Ladd-Lipset Case 223 Questions of Scientific Responsibility: The Baltimore Case 239 Questions of Editorial Responsibility: Publication of the Baltimore Article 341 The Gallo Case 361 The Case of HIV and AIDS 601 The Shafaravich Case and the National Academy of Sciences 715 Maintaining Scientific Standards 765 Index 799 Ix ACADENmA,JOURNALISM,AND POLITICS A Case Study: The Huntington Case S. Lang, Challenges © Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. 1998
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