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Published September 1996 | public
Journal Article

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.

Additional Information

© 1996 American Scientist Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. The authors wish to thank Kathy Cooke, Ph.D., for her valuable assistance in thinking through the problems discussed in this article.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 25, 2023