On any problème du jour, and these days it’s ethics, a person must go through some visible motion to convince all interested parties that “something” is being done. The process has a therapeutic effect: Frustrations get vented (often anonymously), the judgments of “experts” gain support, and one gets to imagine that the “bad guy” at least feels bad; all these outcomes are quite uplifting. Ethics is always in plentiful supply as long as problems happen elsewhere. Or, as Otto von Bismarck put it: “Principles are held high as long as one is not held to them.”

After people’s nominal attention to ethics has been exhausted, will there have been that grand catharsis, with crooks arrested and abused students redeemed? Stop dreaming: In our society the ultimate enforcement is through the legal system, where the only winners are the lawyers. Put differently, the cost/benefit ratio of following through on most perceived injustices to the satisfaction of the presumably injured simply doesn’t warrant substantive action. A student’s gripe against his professor has very different opportunity costs compared with salvaging a university’s reputation.

In science, those who fake data a priori set their own trap and will be caught, aside from the sad fact that they never understood the ultimate privilege of scientific pursuit. Those folks are taken care of automatically and inevitably. The rest constitute a social problem, not a scientific one, and I’d like to offer some specific actionable observations for younger folks out there:

  • Science is done by people and therefore is not exempt from social problems. Start by genuinely coming to grips with that. It’s a fundamental fact, not an aberration.

  • Inquire about your new collaborators and your boss carefully, as you would about salary and benefits. If an institution has a bad reputation, stay away. Money won’t make up for it. If you’ve lost all confidence in your chain of command, consider having worked there a bad investment, pull up stakes, and move on. Don’t play hero and destroy yourself; better yourself. Change your job, change your boss, change your institution, and choose better next time. No white knight will come riding to your rescue, ethics guidelines in hand, and behead the guilty. So stop waiting for one.

  • Once you have folks working for you, step up and lead by example. You’ll find it’s easier to demand standards from others. Once you lead, you get to hear both sides of the argument and do something about the issues raised, even if you don’t agree with the view of the complainer. Be explicitly generous with giving credit, and conscientiously short-change yourself. People will see that you’re not primarily interested in yourself, and you will earn their trust. It’s one of those magic hard-earned ingredients of leadership. I’ve had the huge privilege of working for several men who lived that way.

  • If a sleazeball does get caught—and it happens!—relish the sight and let him know you do. Consider his demise a strength of your organization, not a weakness of it. Besides, leaving someone dangling at the gallows for all to see has been an effective deterrent for thousands of years.

After all the ethics discussion has died down, some people will continue to cover their tracks and maybe add another layer of obfuscation; and it will work, too. Some will continue to see the inside but hang on; who knows why? Only a few who have wavered already might actually change—for better or worse. By far the largest group will continue to do good work with decent colleagues and bosses, as they always have. To close with a quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole town will be clean.”