Scientific Ethos Research Articles

The public good vs. commercial interest: research scientists in search of an accommodation

The environment for scientific research in public organisations is undergoing radical change, particularly with commercialisation pressures and blurring of the distinction between public and private research. The commercialisation pressures are reflected in government policy frameworks and institutional contexts for scientific work which are reconfiguring the context within which scientists work and raising questions about their identities, values, roles, motivations and careers. The changes represent a challenge to the traditional public good role of science and accompanying values. Based on an empirical study of a sample of research scientists from two public sector research organisations in Australia, this paper explores the interpretations and reactions of scientists to this changing environment. It shows that the changes have generated significant tensions between a set of norms entrenched in a traditional ethos of science and the emerging commercialisation imperatives that the scientists struggle to come to terms with or reconcile.

Hermann Aron's Electricity Meters: Physics and Invention in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany

This paper examines how Hermann Aron, a well-trained physicist, exploited his multilayered knowledge of science for technological innovations, innovations upon which he built a successful industrial company with more than 1,000 employees. In his academic training, research, and teaching, Aron gained expertise in electromagnetic theory and experimentation, which he later put to use to invent a new electricity meter for the emerging electric power industry of the 1880s. While Aron employed established physical laws and data, particular methods and techniques were central to his development of technology. Moreover, these and the scientific ethos of precision, which he adopted from his training in the Neumann School, were crucial to his invention of a pendulum electricity meter. Contrary to a recent claim about the lack of a scientific basis to the electrical industry, Aron's case shows a direct transformation of knowledge from physics to technology. Still, his work also displays the influence of technology on many topics of scientific research. The relevance of Aron's particular scientific expertise to the technological questions he examined was a central factor in his unusual move from academic physics to his own industrial firm. The move also benefited from sharing ideas, methods, and interests between scientists and engineers. Berlin, in particular, provided a nexus for such an interchange. On the other hand, Aron's poor prospects for a professorship in physics (further reduced by being Jewish), made him more receptive to opportunities outside the academy.

Emanuel Edward Klein—The Father of British Microbiology and the Case of the Animal Vivisection Controversy of 1875

The new Appendix A of the European Convention for the Protection of Vertebrate Animals Used for Experimental and Other Scientific Purposes, which gives guidelines for accommodation and care of animals and was approved on June 15, 2006, was the main reason the authors decided to investigate the origins of the regulations of animal experiments. Although one might assume that the regulation had its origin in the United Nations conventions, the truth is that its origins are a hundred years old. The authors present a case of the nineteenth-century vivisection controversy brought about by the publication of the Handbook for the Physiological Laboratory in 1873, in which John Burdon-Sanderson, Emanuel Edward Klein, Michael Foster, and Thomas Lauder Brunton described a series of vivisection experiments they performed on animals for research purposes. It was the first case of vivisection to be examined, processed, and condemned for inhuman behavior toward animals before an official body, leading to enactment of the Cruelty to Animals Act in 1876. The case reveals a specific ethos of science in the second half of the nineteenth century, which was characterized by a deep commitment of scientists to the scientific enterprise and their strong belief that science could solve social problems, combined with an overt insensitivity to the suffering of experimental animals. The central figure in the case was Emanuel Edward Klein, a disciple of the Central European medical tradition (Vienna Medical School) and a direct follower of the experimental school of Brücke, Stricker, Magendie, and Bernard. Because of his undisguised attitudes and opinions on the use of vivisection, Klein became a paradigm of the new scientific identity, strongly influencing the stereotypic image of a scientist, and polarizing the public opinion on vivisection in England in the nineteenth century and for some considerable time afterward.

Darwin's legacy to comparative psychology and ethology.

Charles Darwin made numerous seminal contributions to the study of animal behavior over his long career. This essay places these contributions in the context of Darwin's life, showing his long-standing interest in psychological and behavioral issues encompassing all species, including humans. Ten areas are highlighted: natural history; communication; sexual selection and courtship; comparative cognition; emotion; instinct and behavioral development; inheritance of behavior; phylogeny of behavior; sociobiology and behavioral ecology; and applied animal behavior, animal welfare, and conservation. Several newer emphases that Darwin anticipated are briefly discussed. Darwin, while not always correct by current standards, crucially aided the process of firmly embedding psychological phenomena in a naturalistic scientific ethos.

How to detect indications of potential sources of bias in peer review: A generalized latent variable modeling approach exemplified by a gender study

The universalism norm of the ethos of science requires that contributions to science are not excluded because of the contributors’ gender, nationality, social status, or other irrelevant criteria. Here, a generalized latent variable modeling approach is presented that grant program managers at a funding organization can use in order to obtain indications of potential sources of bias in their peer review process (such as the applicants’ gender). To implement the method, the data required are the number of approved and number of rejected applicants for grants among different groups (for example, women and men or natural and social scientists). Using the generalized latent variable modeling approach indications of potential sources of bias can be examined not only for grant peer review but also for journal peer review.

The Changing Role and Contribution of Social Science to Nuclear Waste Management in Finland

This article explores both the social and political usage of social science research and its effectiveness, as perceived by experts, in the process of planning and decision-making in the context of Finnish nuclear waste management. The argument is that public participation in the process is important, but to reach some kind of public acceptability the actors in charge of “solving” the nuclear waste problem have to govern the societal process and respond to the claims and the needs of the public. This requires the integration of social science research into the process responsible for developing the nuclear waste management model. In trying to understand the uniquely positive nuclear waste siting decision by the Eurajoki municipal council in January 2000, and the decision-in-principle ratified by the Finnish Parliament in May 2001, one has to pay close attention to the bureaucratic processes underlying those decisions. Some kind of public consent, contentment or acceptability was reached in those long and skilful bureaucratic processes, involving both deliberative techniques and a responsive use of social science. A more general reflection underpinning the study concerns the deepening relationship between science and politics, including the growing bureaucratic ethos of science, the social responsibility of science, the increasing need to control the quality of different societal processes, and the legitimization of societal and political aims.

Warm, Fuzzy Feeling

I've always greatly admired the scientific ethos of Journal of Neurophysiology . Reading the Journal reminds me of what I like best about science. I like that it publishes full-length reports, which are still being cited 20 or 30 years on. I like that each paper can stand on its own, without 10

Scientific Achievement and Editorial Board Membership

A cornerstone of the scientific ethos is that editorial board members should be selected based on their scholarly achievements, as demonstrated by publications in peer-reviewed journals and evidence that their work is of value to others in their disciplines. To discern if this reasoning is applied in practice, this study examined the scholarly records of the editorial boards of premier peer-reviewed journals sponsored by the leading professional associations in management and six related disciplines.

'n Voorgestelde raamwerk vir die literatuurstudie as kwalitatiewe navorsingsmetodologiese tegniek: 'n Literatuurstudie oor genadedood as voorbeeld uit die teologiese etiek

This article proposes a framework on how to conduct a literature study as part of the research process. Seven steps form the design of this framework, namely the identification of the scientific ethos; the identification of both the research problem and the research project; the conceptualisation of key concepts; the analysis of material on the research topic; a reflection on the literature study; a critique on the existing body of literature related to the research problem, and the formulation of an opinion. Euthanasia serves to illustrate the application of this framework.Acta Theologica Vol. 2 2007: pp. 128-142

Re/Production of science process skills and a scientific ethos in an early childhood classroom

Many educators and researchers are convinced that age limits what students can learn and achieve in science. Elementary school curricula focus on isolated process skills under the faulty assumption that young students are not capable of combining the process skills and content knowledge necessary for reasoning scientifically. In the present study, I demonstrate that many process skills are produced in conversations between second grade students and between these students and their teachers, including: questioning, hypothesis formation, experimental design, identifying relevant evidence, critical analysis of hypotheses and predictions, hypothesis reconstruction, and variable identification. Through conversation analysis I show that most classroom community members adopted the role of skeptic at some time, but there was a strong tendency to defer to authoritative sources when resolving debates. This latter observation led to further investigation of when and how authoritative sources were consulted and used, and when and how a skeptical stance was taken. I show that, as students used science process skills and interacted with each other and teacher-mediators, community practices, values, and mores were shaped and an ethos of science began to emerge. It is my contention that this ethos often emerges unconsciously as part of the community’s dynamic set of rules and schema. Teachers who are attuned to the tension between open-mindedness and skepticism, and how they and their students cope with this dialectic, however, can actively shape the scientific ethos of their classroom community.

The Three Merton Theses

In this article I examine the historical background to Merton's formulation of the scientific ethos, especially in relation to his dissertation, published in 1938 as Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England. Here Merton outlined the so-called `Merton thesis', and I emphasize how both the content and the context of the monograph is related to his formulation of an `ethos of science' — introduced for the first time in 1938 in `Science and the Social Order'. Three different readings can, however, highlight different aspects of Merton's monograph, thus the article attempts to enrich the understanding both of the ethos of science and of Merton as a politically engaged social scientist by discussing `The Three Merton Theses'.

Trust in Science

Trust in science means in effect trust in scholars and their actions. Both the strategic trust based on concrete estimates of trustworthiness and the culture of trust understood as a general imperative to be trustful based on the general presumption of trustworthiness are engendered by the axiological and normative framework typical for the domain of science and known as a scientific ethos. The classical codification of the ethos of science was proposed by Robert K. Merton by means of four principles: universalism, communalism, disinterestedness and organized scepticism. Each of them is shown to facilitate or even evoke the truthful, competent, sincere and honest — in brief: trustworthy — conduct of scholars. The ethos of science and its implication — the trustworthiness of scholars — explain relatively low levels of fraud and plagiarism as compared with other domains. Unfortunately this description is adequate only with respect to the traditional model of `academic science'. In our time we have witnessed the emergence of a different model of science characterized by dependence on huge financial resources, privatization and secrecy of research, commodification of research results, bureaucratization of scientific institutions and instrumentalization of science by subjecting it to extra-scientific interests. In this period of `post-academic science' Mertonian norms lose some of their binding moral power, and the decay of trust in science is the predictable result. Consequently, the opportunities for, and actual cases of, fraud and plagiarism seem on the increase. To oppose this tendency it is necessary to rejuvenate the ethos of science by returning to Mertonian principles, but at the same time reformulating them in ways more adequate to the current institutional structures of post-academic science.

A Reconstruction of the Ethos of Science

Merton's early analysis of the ethos of science has gained increased relevance because recent developments — such as commercialization of research — have undermined basic norms, like impartiality. It is desirable to uphold the institutional realism in Merton's sociology of science in order to grasp contemporary challenges. But central elements in his analytical approach have also to be revised or rejected, especially his nomological conception of explanations, non-cognitivism in normative issues, and failure adequately to conceptualize Homo sociologicus as a reasoner. Reasoners present and discuss cognitive claims, related both to descriptive and normative validity. Merton's analysis of an ethos of science should be evaluated as a reconstructive type of empirical analysis where the goal is insight and adequate identification of phenomena. Several critics denying the existence of Mertonian norms tacitly presuppose the validity of the norms, thereby entangling themselves in self-defeating contradictions. As an unintended consequence, these critics confirm the existence of a fundamental ethos of science.

Some Historical Roots of the Ethos of Science

This comparative and historical examination of the ethos of science finds significant examples of the Mertonian ethos in university discussions from the 12th through the 14th century. The institutionalization of naturalistic inquiry based on Aristotelian modes of argument and demonstration was unique to Western Europe and did not occur in China or the Islamic Middle East. Nevertheless, Merton's writings on the ethos show no indication of his relying upon the rich historical evidence of Europe when formulating his famous conception.

E‐Research Infrastructures and Open Science: Towards a New System of Knowledge Production? 1

Abstract Major efforts are currently under way to develop e‐infrastructures for research. At the same time, there have been a number of calls for research in the digital realm to foster ‘openness’, for example in ‘open access’ policies. This paper explores the relation between e‐infrastructures and open science, and argues that there are a number of factors apart from research policy that will shape e‐research. These include not only the legal and economic environment, but also the ethos of science, ‘open’ initiatives outside of research, the momentum of large technological systems, and the activism of experts and wider social movements. The paper assesses the strengths and weaknesses of these factors, as well as the tensions and confluences between openness and e‐infrastructures.

Fraud: causes and culprits as perceived by science and the media

Almost 2 years after Woo Suk Hwang and colleagues published groundbreaking work on the creation of human embryonic stem‐cell lines, an investigation committee from Seoul National University, South Korea, announced that much of the research had been fabricated. Human embryos had not been cloned and stem‐cell lines had not been derived from patient‐specific somatic cells. Science retracted the two articles concerned, and Hwang and several members of his research team were later indicted on charges of fraud, embezzlement of research funds and violations of bioethical laws. In the aftermath of this case, many scientists expressed concerns that the public image of science, and of stem‐cell research in particular, had been tarnished. “Scientists fear that the episode will damage not only public perceptions of stem‐cell research, but science's image as a whole” (Check & Cyranoski, 2005). Others were more optimistic and hoped that the case would “serve as an antidote to the ‘tabloidization’ of stem‐cell research and … make the public conscious of the fact that the science is difficult” (Snyder & Loring, 2006). Some simply regarded the race as open again: “At one point, the research community thought that we might have, in Hwang, a technical virtuoso. Now we recognize that we all remain on an equal footing” (Snyder & Loring, 2006). The Hwang case provides a good example of how the scientific community and the mass media deal with fraudulent behaviour in science. Both give the impression that misconduct is committed mainly by individuals who have lost—or never had—a scientific ethos, while reassuring the public that fraudulent scientists are ultimately caught and punished. Indeed, agencies dealing with cases of scientific misconduct, such as the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) in Rockville, Maryland, and the German Research Foundation (DFG) in Bonn, also proceed on the assumption that misconduct …

‘A New Religion’? Eugenics and Racial Scientism in Pre‐First World War Hungary

This article discusses developments in eugenic thinking which animated Hungarian scientific community before the First World War. One case in particular is relevant in this context: the 1911 debate on racial improvement and heredity. The debate marked a major turning point in the evolution of eugenics and the emergence of racial scientism in Hungary. Both discourses were formulated as totalising responses to a number of scientific topics, like heredity, but also to practical social and medical problems such as degeneration, sterilisation and marriage counselling. The debate thus has a double significance: on the one hand, it gave supporters of eugenics in Hungary the necessary opportunity to articulate common programmes of hygiene and racial hygiene; whilst on the other, it introduced a scientific ethos into the general discussion on social and political transformation that characterised Hungarian political thinking in early twentieth century.

Patenting and US academic research in the 20th century: The world before and after Bayh-Dole

The dramatic growth of patenting and licensing of publicly funded research by American research universities in the closing quarter of the 20th century has stimulated some of the highest-profile debates in science and technology policy today. The issue of what aspects of academic research should be public – and what private – lies at the heart of each of these debates. The movement of academic scientists into commercialisation of discoveries and inventions has been extolled by some as a new model of academic research, one which facilitates economic and social returns from universities. At the same time, this trend has been criticised by others as representing a socially inefficient ‘privatisation’ of academic research and as a threat to the ethos of science itself. This paper places these debates in historical context, with a review of changes in American universities’ patenting policies, procedures and practices throughout the 20th century, an assessment of the logic underlying the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, and an overview of its effects on economic returns from university research.

The concept of risk and responsible conduct of research

The activities of the life sciences are essential to provide solutions for the future, for both individuals and society. Society has demanded growing accountability from the scientific community as implications of life science research rise in influence and there are concerns about the credibility, integrity and motives of science. While the scientific community has responded to concerns about its integrity in part by initiating training in research integrity and the responsible conduct of research, this approach is minimal. The scientific community justifies itself by appealing to the ethos of science, claiming academic freedom, self-direction, and self-regulation, but no comprehensive codification of this foundational ethos has been forthcoming. A review of the professional norms of science and a prototype code of ethics for the life sciences provide a framework to spur discussions within the scientific community to define scientific professionalism. A formalization of implicit principles can provide guidance for recognizing divergence from the norms, place these norms within a context that would enhance education of trainees, and provide a framework for discussing externally and internally applied pressures that are influencing the practice of science. The prototype code articulates the goal for life sciences research and the responsibilities associated with the freedom of exploration, the principles for the practice of science, and the virtues of the scientists themselves. The time is ripe for scientific communities to reinvigorate professionalism and define the basis of their social contract. Codifying the basis of the social contract between science and society will sustain public trust in the scientific enterprise.

The Emergence of New Scientific Disciplines in Portuguese Medicine: Marck Athias's Histophysiology Research School, Lisbon (1897–1946)

Summary This paper discusses the emergence of new medical experimental specialties at the Medical School of Surgery (Escola Médico-Cirúrgica) and the Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon University (Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Lisboa) between 1897 and 1946, as a result of the activities of Marck Athias's (1875–1946) histophysiology research school. In 1897, Marck Athias, a Portuguese physician who had graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, founded a research school in Lisbon along the lines of Michael Foster's physiology research school in England and Franz Hofmeister's physiological chemistry school in Germany. His research programme was highly innovative in Portugal. Not only did it bring together many disciples and co-workers, but it branched out and created new medical specialties within Portuguese medical science. These new disciplinary areas grew out of the study of the histology of the nervous system but eventually expanded into normal and pathological histophysiology, physiological chemistry and experimental endocrinology. The esprit de corps that existed between research school members ensured the school's success and influence in various fields social and political as well as scientific. Athias's school was strongly influenced by positivist ideals and promoted a teaching and research style that sought inspiration in Humboldt's university model, thus helping to bring about a change in the dominant scientific ethos and to modernize scientific research in Portugal during the first half of the twentieth century.