“The immature poet immitates, the mature poet steals” T. S. Elliot once said. And postmodernism even declared the ecclectic recycling of old and new pieces of literature and art as its aesthetic principle, cumulating in books like Helene Hegemann’s “Axolotl Roadkill” where the fine line between plagiarism and postmodernism filled the feuilletons of German newspapers for months.
Luckily, there is no such postmodern principle of ecclecticism in science. Science is about downright conservative values like honesty, elaborateness and truthfulness. In politics until a few days ago these values were personalized by the figure of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, German minister of defense and the most popular German politician at present. Then somebody discovered that large parts of his doctoral thesis were plagiarized from a plethora of different works. What was supposed to be a scientific work reflecting all those conservative values of science turned out to be a journeyman’s piece of postmodernism.
Is honesty in science outdated? Certainly not, and not only the case of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg teaches us that plagiarism and fraud in science will have its consequences.
During my undergraduate studies, my professor for organic chemistry once told us the story of Guido Zadel to illustrate exactly this statement. Zadel formerly was a co-worker of Prof. Eberhard Breitmaier at the Institute for Organic Chemistry of the University of Bonn and published spectacular results on enantioselective synthesis.
Designing enantioselective reactions has always been a hot topic in organic chemistry. A lot of organic molecules, especially biologically active ones, can exist as two mirror images (enantiomers), which both have very similar physical properties. But usually only one of them has the desired biological effect, the wrong enantiomer can even be harmful as was the case e. g. in Contergan (Thalidomid). Chemists aim at synthesizing only one of the two enantiomers by means of enantioselective reactions.
Zadel and Breitmair claimed that they could influence enantioselectivity simply by applying a static magnetic field. To put it in simpler words, they stated that one just has to hold a very strong bar magnet next to the reaction mixture and – viola – no complicated work around like in all other enantioselective reactions is necessary anymore.
Being able to conduct an enantioselective reaction without putting any chiral information into your flask was a sensation, consequently it got published in the most prestigious journal on general chemistry, the Angewandte Chemie, under the title “Enantioselective Reactions in a Static Magnetic Field” (Angew. Chem. 1994, Vol. 33, pp. 454-456). The publication initiated a frenzy of attempts to reproduce the spectacular findings – but all of them failed. At the end it turned out that Zadel hat fraudulently manipulated the results not only betraying the scientific community but also his colleagues that co-authored the publication.
It took only months until the publication was retracted, the university of Bonn deprived Zadel of his doctoral degree and in the organic chemistry community the verb “to zadel” still is used as a synonym for “to cheat” – a dubious fame for Mr. Guido Zadel.
When it comes to outstanding findings with high scientific impact the self-correcting mechanisms in science seem to work well. The scientific community is ready to check sensational results to the core – there is no need to fear postmodernization of scientific principles.
Unfortunately, there are other developments threatening the free competition of thought in science. We do our research in the age of hirsch indices and impact factors, where hip phrases seem more important than the actual scientific quality of our investigations, especially when it comes to funding. Making science an objectively measurable masquerade for the public in our opinion falls short of the principles of scientific creativity – and creativity is the main ingredient of scientific progress.
Founding the Journal of Unsolved Questions we want to make our little contribution to recollect all those noble and sublime, but somehow conservative, values of science: Honesty, elaborateness and truthfulness. We’d like to cordially invite Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg to comment on these values and their importance for science in this journal.
— Leonie Mueck