Scientific Ethics

Scientific Ethics
Scientific ethics, defined as the standards of conduct for scientists in their professional
endeavors.
Excellent Science, Excellent Ethics
Ethics is part of the “warrant” for science; that is, science can be excellent only if its
practitioners conduct their research in accordance with the accepted practices in their
fields. For all scientific fields, ethical behavior includes adherence to the principles and
practices of valid experimentation.
Science can be said to be ethical in two different ways:
 Ethics of the topics and findings (morality): Ethicists ponder the question of
whether science is good or bad, especially in specific arenas of science such as
biomedical and other research where human or animal subjects are involved.
 Ethics of method and process (integrity): The process of doing and reporting
science has a strong ethical component. It addresses the nature of the design, the
experimental procedures, and the reporting of the research effort.
Scientific integrity, ethical science, and high-value science are entwined, particularly for
government-funded science.
Fostering Scientific Integrity and Responsible Science
Persons entering science must learn what is appropriate behavior and what is not. In
attempting to achieve high levels of scientific integrity and responsible science, strategies
that foster learning and work settings that reinforce desired values and behaviors are
powerful complements to strategies that focus on detecting and punishing misconduct.
The forces behind scientific integrity are social. The forces can be seen as representing
the following categories of influence:
 Childhood Socialization. Children acquire their moral sense of what is right and
wrong at home and in school.
 Scientific Socialization. Scientific education has the responsibility to provide
opportunities for student scientists to learn sound research practices and to impart
standards of ethical conduct.
 Collegial and Professional Norms and Values. Mentoring is a traditional approach
for imparting norms to junior scientists—an “on-the-job” opportunity for observing
and practicing good science.
 Workplace Norms, Values, and Incentives. Most scientists have workplace
standards and rules that define responsibilities and accountabilities, including
maintenance of the research record and punishments for violations. Workplaces
can provide incentives or rewards for maintaining high levels of scientific integrity,
as well applying appropriate and swift sanctions where misconduct has occurred.
Stakeholders in the Scientific Community
Those who have the ability to promote scientific integrity and roles to play in oversight of
scientific research and in controlling scientific misconduct include:
Research Methodology Francisco A. Cholico Hernández

 Scientists themselves, who serve not only as practitioners but also as reviewers.
 Editors and publishers of scientific articles, who have an interest in being the first to
publish ground-breaking science, but also have an interest in enhancing and
maintaining the reputation of their publications and institutions.
 Research project managers.
 Institutional research program officials, who employ the scientists and therefore
have direct line responsibility for ensuring compliance with regulatory and
contractual requirements.
 Officials in federal and other research funding agencies who commission the
research and have responsibility for ensuring that the funds are used effectively
and provide benefit.
Self-Regulation
Self-regulation plays a major role in identifying and controlling errors and misconduct in
science. Societies are willing to grant autonomy only so long as the members of the
profession demonstrate themselves to be trustworthy in regulating themselves, rather than
merely furthering the self-interests of group members. An important feature of self-
regulation is the ability of other investigators to adequately judge the credibility and
influence the acceptance of those findings.
The literature on scientific oversight discusses three principal mechanisms that provide
this self- correction:
 Peer review
 Refereed publication
 Replication of experiments
Types of Problematic Behavior: Mistakes, Unethical Behavior, Noncompliance, and
Misconduct
As systems for dealing with scientific misconduct have become more formalized,
increasing attention has been given to the definition of misconduct. As a result of this
definitional effort, four categories of problematic behavior have emerged:
 Honest mistakes
 Unethical behavior
 Noncompliance with legal or contractual requirements
 Deliberate deceit (scientific misconduct).
Sources of these behaviors vary from carelessness to deliberate attempts to mislead.
Theoretically, many are correctable by self-regulation.
Honest Mistakes
Scientists and their assistants, being only human, can make inadvertent mistakes of
various kinds during design, calibration, logging, data entry, and so forth. Errors in
interpretation might also fall into the category of honest mistakes.
Norms in the scientific community define acceptable and unacceptable practices. Provide
examples of behaviors that are not condoned but are in “gray areas”:

 Improprieties of authorship
 “Gift” or “honorary” authorship
 Incomplete citation of previously published work
 Bias in peer review of proposals or manuscripts
 Skewed selection of data or results to hide or disguise observations that do not fit
the author’s conclusions.
Noncompliance
Noncompliance generally refers to failures to follow practices dictated by law.
Noncompliance with such requirements may expose a scientist or institution to legal
sanctions. The regulatory requirements most commonly associated with scientific
research include those governing the ethical treatment of human subjects and laboratory
animals.
Scientific Misconduct
In general, deliberate deceit is the central defining criterion for scientific misconduct, with
erroneous information resulting from a deliberate attempt to be dishonest. Dishonesty can
occur in the form of forged or fabricated data, falsified or invented results, and plagiarism.
Noncompliance with these requirements can result in the loss of research funds.
Federal Definition of Research Misconduct
In 2000, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) published the final federal
policy on research misconduct to be used by all federal agencies in the United States.

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Scientific Ethics

Research Methodology Francisco A. Cholico Hernández

Research Methodology Francisco A. Cholico Hernández

Research Methodology Francisco A. Cholico Hernández

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