Stealing into Print: Fraud, Plagiarism, and Misconduct in Scientific Publishing by Marcel C. LaFollette

Abstract

TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 643 The separate chapters of part 2 study the role of periodicals such as Time, Life, and Fortune in the drive toward a modern business imagery conceived along Fordist lines, the resistance to this program manifest in the epic murals of Diego Rivera and the private retablos of Frida Kahlo, and the work of Social Realist photographers such as Lewis Hine and Roy Stryker, enlisted by the Farm Securities Administration and other agencies to publicize the New Deal vision ofAmerica’s past and future. Together, whether wittingly or not, they created an aesthetic that served to bring into harmony the contending elements of modernity. Part 3, finally, extends the argument to the commercialism of the nascent industrial design profession, the purist modernism endorsed by the Museum ofModernArt, and the futurism projected by the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Although full of shrewd judgments and arresting insights, the author’s discussion of “the priority of the visual” in design relies excessively on a small number ofdated sources, with the result that this section is the least persuasive in the book. Although written with the perspectives and priorities of an art historian, Smith’s overall argument rests on premises that are directly pertinent to the history of technology. In its leaps from the gravity-fed conveyor belt to the photographs of Margaret Bourke-White, from Harley Earl’s idea of “dynamic obsolescence” to Alfred Barr’s struggle for custodianship of the standards of Modern Art, Making the Modem demonstrates that in structural ways, “modernity in one ‘sphere’ shapes modernity in another, that a discursive formation evolves across a variety of otherwise not necessarily connected sites” (p. 58). This insistence on the mutual determinations of art, industry, and design should provide great encouragement to historians of technology alarmed by the growing preoccupation of the field with microanalyses of individual technical processes. Barry M. Katz Dr. Katz is associate professor at the California College of Arts and Crafts where he teaches the history of industrial design. He is currently working on Ideas and Engineering, a book which examines technology as a theme in the history of ideas. Stealing into Print: Fraud, Plagiarism, and Misconduct in Scientific Publishing. By Marcel C. LaFollette. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. viii+293; notes, bibliography, index. $30.00. Marcel LaFollette presents a meticulously researched survey of cases in which the integrity of a piece of scientific publishing has been disputed. She uses this information to systematize the roles played by individuals and institutions and builds on this interplay of interests to tease out the conflicting social, ethical, and legal forces at work. In doing so she relies not only on cases from scientific publishing itselfbut 644 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE also on comparisons with art forgery and with literary accounts, to produce a convincing presentation of the issues which must be defined. LaFollette achieves clarity of reporting without straying into the grounds of oversimplification: her own experiences as a journal editor take a valuable place in the book in illustrating the complexities and dilemmas involved. The introductory chapter lays out the controversies of recent years over misdemeanor in scientific publishing, arguing that these are not isolated incidents that may conveniently be swept under the carpet. The next two chapters classify the misdemeanors involved and describe the world of scientific publishing in which they occur. This provides the ground for succeeding chapters which consider in turn various stages of the process of identifying and dealing with misdemeanor: authorship, decision making, exposure, action, and resolution. The final chapter reflects on these findings and suggests pragmatic goals for future action on fraud and plagiarism in scientific publishing. Links between technology and the culture of scientific publishing are made throughout this book, with particular reference to the depen­ dence of existing standards for scientific publishing on “print-era attitudes and relationships” (p. 67). LaFollette stresses a need to recon­ sider standards for scientific publishing against a backdrop of changing technologies for their production, dissemination, and cataloging. The final chapter lays out the implications of increasing use of the new information and communication technologies for the commission and detection of sins against scientific norms. LaFollette thus...