Table Of ContentChallenges
Serge La.ng
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Why does Lang make files?
Why did the chicken cross the street?
Serge Lang
Department of Mathematlcs
Yale Un1versity
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New Haven. 06520
USA
By agreement wtth the author. no royaltles were paid for this work.
Lang,Serge, 1927-
Challenges / Serge Lang.
p. cm.
Includes Index.
ISBN 978-0-387-94861-4 ISBN 978-1-4612-1638-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4612-1638-4
1. Scienc~Moral and ethica1 aspects---United States. 2. Scienc~Politlca1
aspects---United States. 3. Social Interactlon-United States. 4. Whistle
blowtng-United States. 1. TItle.
QI75.35.L361996
174'.90901-dc20 96-29303
Pr1nted on acid-free paper.
©1998 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Origina1ly published by Springer-VerlagNew York, Inc.in 1998
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ISBN 978-0-387-94861-4 SPIN 10547046
Challenges
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
PREFACE
I am very thankful to Springer-Verlag for publishing a collection
of some of my non-mathematical works-I call them political
works. in the broad sense of the word political. Three of these
have appeared in print:
- My article on the Ladd-Lipset sUIvey. which appeared in the
New York Review of Books. 18 May 1978; and also in The File
(Springer-Verlag. 1981).
- My article on the Baltimore case. which appeared in the Jour
nal of Ethics and Behavior. February 1993.
- My articles on HIV and AIDS. which appeared in the Yale Sci
entific (Fall 1994 and Winter 1995). reprinted updated in the
book AIDS: Virus-or drug induced? Kluwer Academic Pub
lishers. 1996. pp. 271-307.
The first item. "Academia. Journalism. and Politics." is itself a
book based on my Huntington file. The "Background and Motiva
tion" section of this sub-book can be used as a foreword for all
my "political" works. and also contains an explanation of how I
use the word "political." In that section. readers will find a general
discussion of the way I process information and some criteria I
use in discourse.
For another discussion in a different case. readers can refer to
my essay "Questions of Editorial Responsibility." The exchange
with the American Association for the Advancement of Science
and its reviewers provides a unique opportunity for a direct con
frontation of irreconcilable differences in the conception and exer
cise of editorial responsibility. At stake is what constitutes legiti
mate discourse and what gets published. by whom.
My New York Review of Books article on the Ladd-Lipset survey.
like the Huntington file. deals among many other things with
problems in the way some social scientists practice their field.
The remaining parts of this book concern several other cases of
questionable academic. scientific. or political behavior. in various
v
vi Preface
combinations. All pieces in this book reflect my fundamental in
terest in the area where the academic or scientific world meets
the world of journalism and the world of politics. The pieces deal
With various questions of responsibility in all these areas. It turns
out that the National Academy of Sciences happens to be involved
in all of them in some way or another.
One recurrent problem has been the difficulty I have experi
enced in getting published. Examples of this difficulty arise
throughout. The existing difficulties of getting criticisms of estab
lished figures or institutions printed in standard scientific or
scholarly journals is one of the fundamental issues dealt With in
this book. For concrete examples, see:
- In the Huntington case, the refusal to publish by Discover (a
national magazine); by scholarly journals such as PS and
Footnotes (American Political Science AsSOCiation and Ameri
can Sociological AsSOCiation, respectively); or by publications
in between such as the Chronicle oj Higher Education, and the
Washington Update of the Consortium of Social Science Asso
ciations.
- In the Baltimore case. the refusal to publish by Issues in Sci
ence and Technology (a publication of the National Academy
of Sciences), by the American Chemical Society and by the
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
- In the Gallo case. refusal to publish by Nature.
- In the HN/ AIDS case, refusal to publish by major SCientific
journals, which engage in suppression and manipulation, ob
structing challenges to the orthodox view.
Because of pressure from the media and Congress, over the last
few years there has been developing substantial interest in scien
tific or academic ethics. Courses on SCientific ethics are increas
ingly being taught, but the recommendation to have such courses
by various official bodies which have refused to take position in
concrete cases is to some extent hypocritical, because the evi
dence shows that it is not students who need such courses, but
senior scientists who have provided recent examples of transgres
sions of the classical standards of science. The sole existence of
such courses implies nothing about their effect, which depends
on who teaches them. and what is covered or suppressed in
them. Ironically, the courses provide an opportunity to inform
students of some failures of the scientific establishment around
them. I hope the present book will be useful in such courses. but
I also hope the impact of this book will not be limited to such
Preface vii
courses. I thank Springer Verlag once more for giving me an op
portunity to bring into the open profound academic, journalistic,
political, and philosophical differences with some dominant as
pects of our society.
CONTENTS
Preface v
Academia. Journalism. and Politics:
A Case Study: The Huntington Case 1
Strange Survey of u.S. Profs:
The Ladd-Lipset Case 223
Questions of Scientific Responsibility:
The Baltimore Case 239
Questions of Editorial Responsibility:
Publication of the Baltimore Article 341
The Gallo Case 361
The Case of HIV and AIDS 601
The Shafaravich Case and the
National Academy of Sciences 715
Maintaining Scientific Standards 765
Index 799
Ix
ACADENmA,JOURNALISM,AND
POLITICS
A Case Study: The Huntington Case
S. Lang, Challenges
© Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. 1998
