Abstract
In this issue, Verkade et al. (2020) present a most interesting contribution on conscience. In their study, conscience can be viewed as a sophisticated psychological device consisting of a finely tuned assemblage of empathy, guilt, shame, and moral reasoning, which develops over time. A developmental approach is particularly welcome given its hopeful underpinning in terms of prevention, rather than retribution. Moral reasoning, de facto, guides, implicitly and explicitly, most of our actions.
During my training years at the Johns Hopkins Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in the mid 90s, our Chairman, Paul R. McHugh, one of the clearest thinkers I have ever met and from whom I learned about clinical discernment, made a recurrent comment relevant to contemporary psychiatric inquiry: “If you think you have discovered anything new, it is because you have not read the Germans.” He was referring, of course, to some of the founding authors of modern psychiatry, such as Emil Kraeplin and Carl Jaspers, whose clinical phenomenology and descriptive psychopathology so strongly influenced contemporary behavioral science, and whose analysis of mental phenomena in both illness and health has yet to be outmoded.
In the case of moral reasoning another German is to be credited with being one of the seminal contributors to ethical theory. Immanuel Kant in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, in 1785, introduced the a priori Categorical Imperative with respect to moral law. Its imperative nature implies its prescriptive quality: an unconscious obligation (Taylor, 1975). However, as Verkade and colleagues remind us through their work, this obligation, ontologically, stems from experience: it is not a priori. The prescriptive duty-oriented moral imperative struggles with the relativism of real life and is more often than not supplanted by a Kantian Hypothetical Imperative, a moral advisor of sorts, rather than law, which one could summarize with the word If: “If you want to get an A on the next test in Ethics, you ought to study Kant diligently” (Beauchamp, 1991). Clearly the “if” requires an “ought” if one is to hope for any persuasiveness relevant to the pursued goal . . .
One of the definitions of imperative (Rh Value Publishing, 1989) is “a fact that compels attention” and among the synonyms of imperative is the word necessary. In academia—which I will here loosely describe as a community of individuals pursuing truth—and in life in general, for that matter, attention is important. It is, indeed, necessary.
Twenty four hundred years ago, Plato, in his own athenian Akadēmeia (’Aκαδημία), taught of the existence of the hyperuranium, a place which contained all ideas relevant to reality: . . . the world beyond heaven . . . in which the ideas are perfect and unchangeable, approachable only by the intellect, intangible and incorruptible by earthly bodies . . . They have the power to distinguish or divide, gather or unite . . . (“Enciclopedia Filosofica Bompiani,” 2010).
Academia—with a capital A—should be all about that: celebrating knowledge, which is gathering and uniting, and incorruptible by earthly bodies.
Ideas, today, are no longer in the hyperuranium. They can be freely found, both “beyond earth”—in the Cloud- to paraphrase Plato, and via the many available search engines, which permit direct access to, and dissemination of, knowledge. Internet additionally allows for a rapid comparison of retrieved work. Yet, despite public availability, ideas do—should—belong to those who conceived them and who gave their time to make them intelligible and public. Of course “belonging” cannot be meant in a property sense, given the academic circumstances, but more from a moral perspective.
In this same issue a corrigenda is offered, relevant to the version of record of a paper by Stasch et al. (2018). The term corrigenda, from the Latin corrigere, means precisely “what must be corrected.” It is published when an editor and/or a publisher becomes aware of a “significant error”, so as to alert the readership (“Corrections & Crossmark Policies,” 2019). Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca some 2000 years ago warned that corrigendus est qui peccat (those who err must be corrected), so it is by no means a novel concept and antedates both Kantian moral philosophy and current editorial policies. The term corrigenda is typically used when any necessary rectifying is relevant to an author’s error, particularly when this may be construed as a breach of publication ethics, as opposed to a an errata, which is relevant to a journal error. A breach of publication ethics, may be represented, among other behaviors, by plagiarism, simply defined as the act of “the appropriation or imitation of the language, ideas and thoughts, of another author, and representation of them as one’s original work” (Rh Value Publishing, 1989). There may be a fine line between misrepresentation of other’s work as one’s own, and an oversight resulting in improper or absent recognition of authorship of a text. While one might think that the former is grave enough to warrant a retraction of a manuscript, a certain degree of “duplication” is surprisingly considered physiological and unavoidable. This, irrespective of whether it is detected via available “plagiarism detection software” or by old-fashioned whistleblowing, which, as we can all witness from recent current affairs, is still quite effective. Furthermore, as in so many arenas of life and biosocial science, pragmatism (alleged) dictates rules and conduct, often trivializing what once was upheld and respected (McHugh, 1996), and actions which are per se wrong, become normalized through an imperceptible mechanism whereby a behavior, becomes normal because of its prevalence. Consequently, it must be “physiologic” and hence tolerated. Examples abound and are beyond the scope of this writing.
We appear to live in an era of relative truths. Today’s certainty is tomorrow’s mistake. In 1998, the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, admitted to having mislead, but not lied (Green, 2001). Richard Nixon, U.S. president from 1968 until 1974, years after his resignation amid the Watergate scandal, admitted to have dissembled but denied ever lying (Ekman, 2001). While one can conclude that misleading is bipartisan, perhaps because it is human, deception is not solely a U.S. problem. Former German defense minister Karl Theodore Guttenberg resigned in 2011 following evidence of plagiarism in his own doctoral dissertation (“Plagiarism Affair: Defense Minister Guttenberg Resigns,” 2011); Annette Schavan resigned as Germany’s Education Minister in 2013, also following evidence of plagiarism of her doctoral dissertation (“German Ex-Education Minister Schavan Loses Plagiarism Appeal,” 2014).
Borrowing from the cognitive neurology literature the concept of AAMI—Age Associated Memory Impairment (which has been supplanted over time by similar descriptors; Gilles, 2003)—it is conceivable we may be facing an epidemic of an “Academia Associated Memory Impairment” of sorts. A corrigenda will be hence used to correct “what must be corrected” in light of an absent minded author, who may have used others’ work, yet failed to give them proper credit. An author who, while still contributing to the literature meaningfully, gave proof, in addition to a lapse in memory, to one in academic fair play. A corrigenda becomes necessary when Immanuel Kant’s aforementioned hypothetical imperative succeeds in overcoming his categorical one, allowing for a letting go of moral common sense.
Unlike the majority of life circumstances, academic ones are, for the most part, under our control. The same cannot be said, likely—and sadly—of the life stories of most of the youths studied by Marion Verkade and her coworkers. So when we fail to attend to academic detail, including ethical norms, we are wrong and, while not being unlawful, we are wronging someone. Common sense, integrity, and sound executive skills should suggest we acknowledge the work of others. This is what one does when choosing a life of study. And this is what is expected, and requested by academic journals when receiving a submission. In the cover letter supplied alongside a submission, in fact, the author declares authorship and originality, something indeed to be proud of given the amount of work which has gone into the researching and drafting of a manuscript. It goes without saying that when declarations and reality fail to coincide, it leaves one baffled. Certainly, an academic oversight does not result in death or serious damage, as could be the case for forgetfulness in the military, law enforcement, or in medicine. Yet the plethora of cases (Marusic et al., 2016) of alleged or demonstrated academic misdemeanors, and the obvious ex post nature of any consequence may (apparently) minimize the gravity of the behavior, which threatens the very idea of scholarly inquiry. Furthermore, implicit in the postponement of any correction is also the loss of a pedagogically healthy “shame” which may very effectively correct bad habits and which we seem, on a societal level, to have relegated to an archeology of social norms. When this takes place within a field devoted to the study of misbehaviors, it becomes even preposterous.