From Mike Strika's column

After all, Ashlee Simpson keeps "singing," "A Million Little Pieces" keeps selling, Barry Bonds keeps hitting home runs despite being clouded in a steroids controversy, Paris Hilton became a household name after a sex tape was plastered all over the Internet, Pete Rose never admitted he gambled on baseball until he had a book to sell, President Clinton "did not have sexual relations with that woman," "Lost" star Michelle Rodriguez chooses five days in jail over 200 hours of community service for her DUI conviction, Jayson Blair got a book deal after he was fired, and, and, and.

Viswanathan will learn a lesson from this, but the lesson she'll learn is any publicity is good publicity, and the more controversy surrounding her, the more money she'll make.

One could wring ones hands abuot the 'youth of today' not taking responsibility. Or one could point to our wonderful role models ie Bill Clinton, Ken Lay, Duke Cunningham, etc. I guess my point is that young people learn their ethical behavior from older people i.e. 'adults'. And when these adults have lapses, the youth don't know how to behave. When all this stuff (mentioned above) works and makes these 'stars' money, then that's behavior reinforcement.

Same thing in science; how could a young scientist have ethics if their advisor has none? Fortunately for us we were mandated to take an ethics course, something our advisors never had. So I think the young scientists will have stronger ethics than the older scientists. Plus we haev less incentive to cheat and lie, since it won't gain us much (except expulsion if we get caught). The outrageous claims are quickly investigated and either debunked or supported. In science you can pretty much tell if something is legit or not; since a bunch of people tend to get reinforcing data.