Week 4
Discussion Question 1:
BIOETHICS: Mendel’s numbers seem almost too perfect to be real; some believe he may have cheated a bit on his data. Perhaps he continued to collect data until the numbers matched his predicted ratios, then stopped. Recently, there has been much publicity over violations of scientific ethics, including researchers plagiarizing other’s work, using other scientists’ methods to develop lucrative patents, or just plain fabricating data. How important is this issue for society? What are the boundaries of thical scientific behavior? How should the scientific community “police” scientists? What punishments would be appropriate for violations of scientific ethics, and why?