Abstract
can be considered as a search for a scientificethos. Its author, Nicolas Lechopier, is a professor at the Claude Bernard University ofLyon-1 (France), and formerly (2008–2009) a postdoctoral fellow at the University ofSao Paulo (Brazil) in the Thematic Project “Origins and significance of technoscience:on relations among science, technology and society”.Merton’s classic formulation of the scientific ethos as a set of norms, “univer-salism, communism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism (...), expressed inthe form of prescriptions, proscriptions, preferences and permissions” (Merton, 1973,p. 268-9) lies behind the author’s considerations on ethics and science. This ethos, a“habitat” where scientists share a common set of epistemic and ethical values and thesame goals for science, presupposes that a demarcation can be made between good andbad science, and it provides conditions for scientists to reach consensus in their judg-ments of the epistemic worth of certain hypotheses. The author’s own account of scien-tific ethos goes beyond Merton’s; it rejects the separation of epistemic and ethical values,and contextualizes any demarcation between good (authentic) and bad (pseudo-) science.
Highlights
The word “ethos” occurs for the first time in the Iliad (6, 511)
This committee deals with the ethics of research involving human beings. It is charged with “giving an opinion – consultative – about the methodology of the projects of research, ensuring that the protocol of research is of good quality from a scientific point of view and that the personal data collected are necessary for properly conducting the research” (p. 135). Lechopier devotes his attention to research in epidemiology, the field in which research is conducted on the factors that influence the distribution and variation of health-related phenomena among populations, e.g., phenomena connected with the efficacy of specified drugs and the risk factors for diseases
Epidemiology, as Lechopier explains, lies “at the crossroads of many disciplines that are located in biomedicine, in mathematics, social sciences and health” (p. 17)
Summary
The word “ethos” occurs for the first time in the Iliad (6, 511). Homer tells us about a wild horse that struggles against the chains that keep him captive and, once he breaks loose, gallops until he finds his ethos – a place where he feels good, a place that gives him identity. This committee deals with the ethics of research involving human beings It is charged with “giving an opinion – consultative – about the methodology of the projects of research, ensuring that the protocol of research is of good quality from a scientific point of view and that the personal data collected are necessary for properly conducting the research” Lechopier devotes his attention to research in epidemiology, the field in which research is conducted on the factors that influence the distribution and variation of health-related phenomena among populations, e.g., phenomena connected with the efficacy of specified drugs and the risk factors for diseases He analyses the evaluations made by cctirs of protocols shaping research projects in this field – and explores issues about demarcation that arise in these evaluations. The outcome is a significant original contribution to the debate over the role of values in science
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