Jeffrey K Aronson

BMJ doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q1862 (Published 23 August 2024) Cite this as: BMJ 2024;386:q1862

BMJ doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q1952 (Published 06 September 2024) Cite this as: BMJ 2024;386:q1952

The definition of an aphrodisiac in the Oxford English Dictionary is “A drug or preparation inducing sexual desire”; and “preparation” is defined as “A specially prepared or made up substance, as a medicine, cosmetic, foodstuff, etc.” However, these definitions, taken in conjunction, do not cover all the items that have been proposed to have aphrodisiac properties at one time or another. They include: aromas; styles of dress; honeyed words, lewd or titillating pictorial representations, plays, verses, songs, or dances; and behaviours, such as glances, gestures, and other forms of body language. About a half of all supposed aphrodisiacs are based on plants and plant products, including trees, herbs, fungi, fruits, nuts, and vegetables, and another one fifth are based on animals and animal products, including land animals, sea creatures, birds, and insects. The rest can be categorised as foodstuffs and additives; medicines; appearances and behaviours, including language, body language, singing, and dancing; elements, minerals, gemstones, and resins; alcoholic drinks; aromas; charms; and human products. Certain doctrines have in the past been used to justify claims that substances are aphrodisiacs. The Doctrine of Signatures asserts that certain plants, animals, and minerals have distinctive features, particularly marks, shapes, or colours, often considered God-given, that indicate their medicinal properties. The Doctrine of Similars asserts that anything that resembles something else can be used in the same way. And the Doctrine of Analogy asserts that if a substance of a particular kind has an effect, another substance of the same kind is likely to share that property.

Henry W Fowler, author of Modern English Usage (1926), and Wilson Follett, author of Modern American Usage (1966), both included “barbarisms” as headwords in their guides. Fowler defined them as “words formed from a stem or word belonging to one language by applying to it a suffix or prefix belonging to another [and] words ... in which all the elements belong indeed to one language, but are so put together as to outrage that language's principles of formation.” I call these Type 1 and Type 2 barbarisms respectively. Some barbarisms Fowler regarded as unobjectionable; I call them Type 0. Follett's definition was different: He defined a barbarism as “an expression in the mouth of an educated speaker which is so at variance with good sense and good usage that it startles the hearer.” This extends the class to many other types of words, such as malapropisms, mispronunciations, and a variety of malformations and neologistic phrases; in short, anything that is wrong, otiose, or self-contradictory. These are Type 3 barbarisms. There are many examples of all of these types in medical terminology.

BMJ doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q2128 (Published 27 September 2024) Cite this as: BMJ 2024;386:q2128

BMJ doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q2188 (Published 04 October 2024) Cite this as: BMJ 2024;387:q2188

BMJ doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q2250 (Published 11 October 2024) Cite this as: BMJ 2024;387:q2250

Although the concept of academic integrity has been long with us, and violations of it not uncommon, formal research into the topic began only in the 1990s, particularly by a pioneer in the field Donald McCabe of Rutgers University, whose main interest lay in the US collegiate system. In recent years concern about academic integrity, or rather the lack of it, has increased markedly, particularly in the area of research integrity. Having failed to find a satisfactory definition of academic integrity, I propose the following: uncorrupted moral virtue in relation to truth, uprightness, honesty, and sincerity in the pursuit of research, education, and scholarship. Several codes of conduct outline what is expected of academic researchers, of which the European Charter for Researchers is an example. A companion publication, the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity, which deals in greater detail with the principles outlined in the European Charter for Researchers, and which itself refers to many other codes of practice, also outlines a range of possible violations of academic integrity, i.e. matters of academic dishonesty or misdemeanours. These include fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism, misuse of statistics, concealing the use of AI, withholding information, and selective or inaccurate citation. Other matters of concern include predatory journals, paper mills, and the large increase in the numbers of papers being retracted after publication.

To understand how academic science can be violated we must first understand the norms that determine how it should be successfully prosecuted. The work of the sociologist Robert K Merton is informative. In the 1930s and 1940s he described, in three related essays, the ways in which academic norms had developed and what they were. In the first essay, he described what he supposed had been the influence of Puritanism in the 17th century, while acknowledging that the Protestant religious ethic was only one factor in the development of rational and empirical science. In the second essay he focused on factors that might induce hostility against science, leading to the enunciation of some academic norms: scientific autonomy (preventing contradictory influences from other spheres), integrity (the appreciation of which enhances the likelihood that scientific results will receive public acceptance in the absence of complete understanding of how they were achieved), the use of comprehensible language in describing outcomes and their interpretation, and the restriction of academic skepticism to scientific thought. In the third essay he outlined other norms, based on the cultural values and mores that govern scientific activities: universalism, communality (which he called communism), disinterestedness, and organised skepticism; to these we can add appropriate curiosity and restraint of excess enthusiasm. In addition to these, there are norms relating to the methods that are used to obtain evidence and to the methods used to analyse the knowledge thus obtained. Together these constitute a scientific ethic and imply a scientific conscience.

Academic norms include: preservation of academic autonomy; integrity in academic practices; a priori formulation of hypotheses and publication of protocols; the use of appropriate methods by which evidence is obtained; the use of appropriate methods for interpreting the accumulated knowledge so obtained; the need to take heed of the possible consequences, both intended and unintended, of research; the use of comprehensible language in describing outcomes and their interpretation; universalism; communality; disinterestedness; organised skepticism, but limited to one's own sphere of academic interest; appropriate curiosity; avoidance of inappropriate enthusiasm; and respect for the work of others. Violation of all of these is possible, and different types of violations are known by different terms: “research misconduct” refers to three major violations, fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism; I prefer to call these collectively by the legal term “felonies,” emphasising their gravity and importance. Other violations are known as “questionable research practices,” which I prefer to call by the stronger term “misdemeanours,” again emphasising their importance, although they are less grave than felonies. Interest in detecting, reporting, and discussing these violations has increased markedly since 1990, but I have found only two systematic reviews, one of which, disappointingly, but perhaps not unexpectedly, shows that there is little useful evidence on the subject, and a second, which shows that the likely prevalences of both types, felonies and misdemeanours, are higher than one would want, although probably estimated at lower than they truly are.