List of Hypothetical Ideals for the Conduct of Science(1)
Do you agree or disagree, or are you uncertain about each of the ideals on the list?
1. Scientists should always be disinterested, impartial, and totally objective when gathering data.
2. A scientist should never be motivated to do science for personal gain, advancement, or other rewards.
3. Every observation or experiment must be designed to falsify an hypothesis.
4. When an experiment or an observation gives a result contrary to the prediction of a certain theory, all ethical scientists must abandon that theory.
5. Scientists must never believe dogmatically in an idea nor use rhetorical exaggeration in promoting it.
6. Scientists must "lean over backwards" (in the words of the late physicist Richard Feynman) to point out evidence that is contrary to their own hypotheses or that might weaken acceptance of their experimental results.
7. Conduct that seriously departs from that commonly accepted in the scientific community is unethical.
8. Scientist must report what they have done so fully that any other scientist can reproduce the experiment or calculation. Science must be an open book, not an acquired skill.
9. Scientists should never permit their judgement to be affected by authority. For example, the reputation of a scientist making a given claim is irrelevant to the validity of the claim.
10. Each author of a multiple-author paper is fully responsible for every part of the paper.
11. The choice and order of authors on a multiple-author publication must strictly reflect the contributions of the authors to the work in question.
12. Financial support for doing science and access to science facilities should be shared democratically, not concentrated in the hands of a favored few.
13. There can never be too many scientists in the world.
14. No misleading or deceptive statement should ever appear in a scientific paper.
15. Decisions about the distribution of resources and publication of results must be guided by the judgement of scientific peers who are protected by anonymity.
1. Adapted from Woodward, J. and
Goodstein, D. (1996) "Conduct, Misconduct and the Structure of Science."
American Scientist 84(5), 479 - 490.