Terms such as “academic freedom,” “scientific integrity” and “conflict of interest” bounced around the Valley Library Rotunda at Oregon State University on Wednesday afternoon, as students, staff and community members gathered for a forum on scientific ethics.

“It’s important to cultivate a culture of open inquiry and expression, where differences of opinion are valued, and individuals feel free to express themselves without fear of censorship,” said Bill Boggess, Faculty Senate president, reading from a statement issued by Boggess and OSU Provost Sabah Randhawa.

The forum was sponsored by OSU’s Spring Creek Project and the philosophy department. Kathleen Dean Moore, director of the Spring Creek Project, moderated the event, which she said was only partially a response to the recent controversy surrounding graduate student Dan Donato’s research on post-wildfire logging.

“Maybe there isn’t such a thing as an institutional disaster. Maybe they’re all teachable moments,” Moore said.

Donato testified at a congressional hearing last week in Medford, where he faced scrutiny over his scientific ethics and data analysis.

Donato and his co-authors also battled the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which suspended and later reinstated funding on their study of salvage logging in the southwest Oregon area burned in the 2002 Biscuit fire.

Some professors in the College of Forestry who disagreed with Donato’s findings tried to delay publication of the study in the journal Science, raising concern among students and faculty about academic freedom.

The forum featured panelists Ed Brook, associate professor of geosciences; Courtney Campbell, chairman of the philosophy department; John Cassady, vice president for research; Anne Guerry, a doctoral candidate in zoology; Jonathan Kaplan, assistant professor of philosophy; and Mary Jo Nye, a history professor and Horning Professor of Humanities.

Moore posed a series of questions on the role science plays in forming public policy, how funding sources can compromise research, and what values make science work.

Nye and other panelists highlighted the “CUDOS” standard on which scientists often rely. The acronym stands for collaboration, universalism, disinterestedness, objectivity and skepticism.

Staying disinterested and skeptical becomes increasingly difficult as scientists face pressure from funding agencies and partners in industry, as well as politicians wanting to further their own agendas, panelists noted.

“You have the responsibility to bite that hand that feeds you if you think they’re doing the wrong thing,” Campbell said.

“We don’t owe anyone any particular kind of results. We owe them science,” Guerry added. “The questions might be determined somewhat by the funding agencies, but the results can’t be.”

Guerry shared how she and other graduate students felt watching Donato face opposition from professors within the college where he studied.

“I think that graduate students are properly afraid of a lack of respect, and being low man on the totem pole,” she said. “I think it’s important for students to be able to look at their faculty as providing a good example.”

Campbell agreed, saying students need faculty mentors who act ethically and have their best interests at heart.

Brook and Guerry stressed the importance separating personal politics from scientific research. Guerry even suggested that training on how to communicate research findings to the public be included in graduate student coursework.

Ken Krane, OSU professor emeritus in physics, asked the panel if and when scientists should go about making their raw data public.

At last week’s hearing, Donato faced criticism from U.S. Rep. Brian Baird for not providing data upon request. Donato responded that releasing his data was up to OSU.

Brook said geosciences has a history of making data public. Especially in the case of government-funded studies, Brook thinks people have a right to access information.

Graduate student Isaac Daniel questioned whether allowing articles to be viewed online prior to print publication, as happened in the Donato case, creates more opportunity for censorship.

Kaplan said there’s a growing trend of open review, where peer-reviewed articles are available for comment by the general public prior to publication.

As long as these forums are open discussions, he sees no problem.

“If there’s no public forum, then you’re in an area where it seems like a standard scientific disagreement,” he said. “Those disagreements get hashed out in future publications.”

The panelists agreed that scientists who disagree with a study should publish their own article to debunk it, rather than try to suppress controversial information.

“Disagreement drives scientific inquiry,” Nye said.

Mary Ann Albright covers higher education. She can be reached at maryann.albright@lee.net or 758-9518.