Conduct, Misconduct and the Structure of Science

Abstract

In recent years the difficult question "what constitutes scientific misconduct?" has troubled prominent ethicists and scientists and tied many a blue-ribbon panel in knots. In teaching an ethics class for graduate and undergraduate students over the past few years, we have identified what seems to be a necessary starting point for this debate: the clearest possible understanding of how science actually works. Without such an understanding, we believe, one can easily imagine formulating plausible-sounding ethical principles that would be unworkable or even damaging to the scientific enterprise.

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