When good results are bad results?
Professor Ballistico is scratching his head. Looking at the
results of last month’s series of experiments makes him feel a bit
uneasy. He has been sitting in his office for hours now trying to
analyze the spreadsheets from every possible angle-but without
success. He even had an argument with his research assistant,
accusing her of having prepared the results incorrectly – but she
had been right all along.
Not that Ballistico is particularly unhappy about his project.
It is actually quite a successful piece of research looking at the
various side effects of food additives in frozen foods. The two
year-year project has already produced some very good publications;
he has even been invited several times to give interviews on the
television and in the press about the results. However, this time
round he has a strange feeling. The thing that is making him feel
uneasy is that according to the results of the latest tests, two
substances involved in the study, called “Long-life” and
“Rotnever”, appear to quite significantly increase the risk of
human allergies for long-time consumers of the additives. And
however he turns and interprets the result, his assistant really
seems to have delivered solid work on the database.
Normally such surprising results would be good news. Solid
results of this kind would make for sensational presentations at
the next conference of the World Food Scientist Federation. On top
of that, “Longlife” and Rotnever” are very common additives in the
products of the large food multinational Foodcorp, which is the
market leader in frozen food in his country. His results could
really make big headlines.
There is one little problem though: Professor
Ballistico is director of the Foodcorp Hub for Food Science at
BigCity University. Three years ago, the food company donated €2.3m
to BigCity University in order to set up the research hub and to
fund its activities. The company felt that as “a good corporate
citizen we should give something back to society by funding
academic research for the benefit of future generations”. They also
had signaled that they saw this as a continuous engagement over
time… and Ballistico is only too aware that the decision about the
next €2m funding will be imminent three months from now.
Professor Ballistico has a major dilemma: if he
publishes his results, Foodcorp might get into serious trouble. He
also knows that this will be quite embarrassing at the next meeting
with his sponsor, and it will most certainly influence the
company’s decision to further fund the project. And he hardly dares
to think of his next meeting with the president of the university,
who is always so proud of BigCity having such excellent ties to
companies and scoring highest in the country in terms of
its ability to secure external funding. Should h therefore just
tell Foodcorp privately about his results so that they can take
appropriate actions to deal with Rotnever and Longlife?
Questions
1. What are the
main ethical issues for Professor Ballistico here? Give three and
why an issue.
