The ruse of enticing Federal Councillor Moritz Leuenberger to Canton Thurgau to deliver the final speech at the 1st Ittinger Summer School succeeded. A considerable crowd made the pilgrimage to the former Carthusian monastery on a bright sunny Saturday at the end of July to participate in the closing event of the week under the motto of "The Cunning of Science" (1). The study week, which Johannes Fehr from ETH's Collegium Helveticum helped to organise, attracted the hoped-for attention.

What then is this ruse, which was the core theme of the work that the 20-odd participants from many different countries had engaged in during the five days spent in this monastic setting? Was it deceitfulness, as, according to Rector Gerhart von Graevenitz, in the case of the German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön "painfully experienced" by the University of Constance, which also participated the summer school? José Brunner from the University of Tel Aviv attempted to answer the question.

The professor from Israel began by stating that: "Ruse is not necessarily deceitfulness". Indeed, in some cases it was an inherent part of the business of research. Brunner underlined his statement with an account of the controversial psychological Milgram Experiment. In this study trial subjects were assigned the role of teachers to administer electro-shocks to another (pretended) trial subject, supposedly their pupil, whenever the latter made a mistake. The "teachers" were surprisingly compliant and were duped in as far as they didn't know that their "pupil" was really an actor (2). On the other hand, Brunner went on to describe how less drastic double-blind studies made clear how cunning is employed in science.

Cheating to be noticed

Brunner said that, generally speaking, one could consider Odysseus as the prototype of the modern scientist. By the employment of ruse the latter gains insights into new areas, even if this was not sufficient to plan a journey. The philosophy professor did, however, point to shortcomings in this allegory. Today, research is increasingly carried out by teams of researchers and science was taking on the character of mass production.

IIn the idyllic surroundings of the former Carthusian monastery in Ittingen young researchers ponder the problem of "Ruse in Science".

This led to the question of the kind of ruses researchers employ in order to stand out from the crowd. One option is fraud, whereby this is often carried out in a surprisingly ham-fisted manner. Nonetheless, Brunner expressed doubts as to whether truth always wins out. The maxim that science stands at the service of society was possibly no more than a thin coating of whitewash–especially if one took the increasing interweave of the economy and research into account.

Brunner's exposition gave a good general impression of the issues debated at the summer school but left open precisely how they were dealt with. Certainly many of those present at the closing event would have been interested to hear whether attempts were made to draw the line between ruse and deception. Or to know in how far a real discussion had taken place, or whether the withdrawal of Jan Hendrik Schön's doctorate degree by the University of Constance was considered to be an appropriate reaction in view of the fact that he had earned this degree without falsifying data.

Credibility of science endangered

Johannes Fehr was impressed by how quickly the participants started to collaborate. The chosen theme was something that everyone felt touched by and everyone had had some sort of relevant experience with at one time in one way or another. Asked about the insights that the summer school can be said to have delivered, the first thing Fehr mentions was the role of trust. It was becoming increasingly important because, to all extents and purposes, practical scientific data and methods were becoming less and less verifiable. Owing to growing competition and the drive for innovation, a growing allowance had to be made for the part that trust plays.

Science, as an institution, was one of the pillars of western civilisation, said Fehr with conviction. For progress to take place researchers needed a certain amount of leeway, which called for a special kind of responsibility. In Ittingen, said Fehr, there was a general consensus that it ought to be part of an enlightened research practice to be aware of what it means to "act in the name of science". The problem is accentuated by the monopolistic position of science. As no realistic alternative to scientific-based research existed to ensure future progress and security, scientific fraud released an atmosphere of particularly strong suspicion. The participants of the summer school at Ittingen therefore went home with the insight that cases of fraud were not only a problem for the deceiver but that the credibility of science as an institution was at stake.

The 1st Ittinger Summer School was made possible by the Lion Foundation, which was founded 1987 by Kurt Lion of Kreuzlingen, who died in 2001. The aim of the entrepreneur was to nurture scientific collaboration between the universities of Constance and Tel-Aviv. ETH Zurich joined the partnership at the beginning of this year with the Collegium Helveticum.