Prof. Michael Marder, UT-Austin

"American Physical Society Guidelines on Ethics"

Abstract: In 2002 the physics community was scandalized by two cases of data fabrication by Jan Schoen and Victor Ninov. The American Physical Society conducted a survey of early career scientists to learn how widespread such ethical violations might be, and found that 39% of respondents reported personal knowledge of them. Data fabrication was rare, but many other abuses, including harassment of subordinates were said to be very common. After a flurry of activity through around 2005, the physics community stopped paying much attention to these issues until 2017. I will describe what happened since then, including the adoption of unified Guidelines on Ethics, establishment of a standing Ethics Committee, and development of procedures to deny or revoke honors and official APS positions.