Abstract
We live in a world in which scientific expertise and its epistemic authority become more important. On the other hand, the financial interests in research, which could potentially corrupt science, are increasing. Due to these two tendencies, a concern for the integrity of scientific research becomes increasingly vital. This concern is, however, hollow if we do not have a clear account of research integrity. Therefore, it is important that we explicate this concept. Following Rudolf Carnap’s characterization of the task of explication, this means that we should develop a concept that is (1) similar to our common sense notion of research integrity, (2) exact, (3) fruitful, and (4) as simple as possible. Since existing concepts do not meet these four requirements, we develop a new concept in this article. We describe a concept of epistemic integrity that is based on the property of deceptiveness, and argue that this concept does meet Carnap’s four requirements of explication. To illustrate and support our claims we use several examples from scientific practice, mainly from biomedical research.
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Notes
The reason why we call our explicatum “epistemic integrity” is that there seem to be two distinct notions of research integrity in use—an epistemic notion, which focuses on the reliability of the results of research, and a moral notion, which concerns the moral acceptability of research practices. In this article, we only focus on the epistemic notion, as this is, we believe the more common, and also the more interesting notion of research integrity. We should also mention that our explication is only meant to apply to the epistemology of science, and not necessarily to other epistemologies.
This example is not unrealistic. The commercialization of biomedical science has stimulated epistemically problematic research practices such as the one in the example (Reiss 2010, p. 432). A new test drug for a certain condition is sometimes compared to inadequate doses of some other product (Rochon et al. 1994; Tandon and Fleischhacker 2005), or to a product that is administered in an inadequate way (Johansen and Gøtzsche 1999).
This is also in accordance with the requirements for findings of research misconduct as found in US federal regulations:
A finding of research misconduct made under this part requires that—
(a) There be a significant departure from accepted practices of the relevant research community; and
(b) The misconduct be committed intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly; and
(c) The allegation be proven by a preponderance of the evidence. (45 CFR 93.104)
This standard of evidence implies that a behavior can be regarded as research misconduct even if the misconduct was not intended.
Those who define research integrity in terms of honesty might respond that they disagree with Resnik (1998) that dishonesty requires the intention to deceive. They should then, however, have clarified what honesty/dishonesty does mean according to them, and they have failed to do so (see “Introduction” of this article).
This point, which was made by an anonymous reviewer of this article, is inspired by Richard Posner’s view that for plagiarism, it is not sufficient that the plagiarizing work is presented as original; the audience should also do something because it believes that the plagiarizing work is original, something that it would not have done had it known the truth (Posner 2007, p. 19). This would explain why college professors do not have to cite in their PowerPoint slides in class (except for direct quotes): in such cases the audience does not falsely believe that the college professor is the original author of the work. Note, however, that our account of epistemic integrity can explain why such cases are not problematic as well: (1) the college professor does not state that he is the original author of the work (he just doesn’t cite the original authors), and so he does not present a false statement as true [condition (ii)(a) is not met], and (2) the audience does not infer from the PowerPoint slides the false statement that the college professor is the original author [condition (ii)(b) is not met].
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Acknowledgments
Jan De Winter is a Ph. D. fellow of the Research Foundation (FWO) - Flanders. Research for this paper by Laszlo Kosolosky was supported by subventions from the Research Foundation (FWO) - Flanders through research project G.0122.10. We are very grateful to Erik Weber and two anonymous reviewers for reviewing earlier versions of this paper.
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De Winter, J., Kosolosky, L. The Epistemic Integrity of Scientific Research. Sci Eng Ethics 19, 757–774 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-012-9394-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-012-9394-3