Teaching Ethics to & Instilling Morals in Scientists. After the Fact.

I'm reading Challenges for modern scientific writing and editorship: have we lost our moral compass? on Reproductive BioMedicine Online.

My random thoughts as I read this apparently necessary finger-wagging by the editorial staff of RBM Online: 

They're using Wikipedia to start their definition of scientific misconduct. Hm. Huh. (No opinion here, just stating the facts...) That is certainly reflective of a shift.

I'm often asked how I can write on the same topic (fertility and reproductive medicine) for 15 years without copy-pasting my own stuff over and over. Seriously? I can manage to do that (not plagiarize myself) for things like consumer blogs and magazine articles by the hundreds, but researchers can't do it for high-brow study articles? Maybe it's yet another benefit of my sieve-like brain... I can't remember from one day to the next if this is the first thing I've written about oocyte cryopreservation or the 20th, let alone know on which hard-drive any previous files exist. But ask me what's in my pantry and fridge, any time, any day. 

I will admit this: my own kid, who is precociously bright with an advanced wit of his very own, sometimes posts things on his Facebook page that make me wonder... So I ask. Maybe too often. "Did you make that up?" It's clear that there's a little generation gap on this topic.

Glad to see they're offering "workshops on scientific writing at international conferences that focus not only on how to write a scientific report but how to do so in an ethical and responsible manner." It would be even better, though, to start that educational process a little earlier, like, maybe in elementary school.

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It would be even better, though, to begin that academic procedure a little previously, like, maybe in primary university.