Culture of science and ethics

Introduction : Science as a methodology for probing the secrets of nature is well known. During
the last four hundred years science has created a gigantic store house of exact knowledge of the
physical world. On the other hand science as a technology has maximised the use of scientific
knowledge to transform the economic conduction of the society.

There is a third aspect of science which is mostly overlooked and rarely discussed. This is, science
as a culture. It has deep and important implications, though not as clearly manifested as the other
two. In India, ours is a scattered and mostly ineffective scientific community. So far our
community needs are, to a large extent, met by the Western society. I believe one reason for this
is, we are lacking, collectively speaking, in scientific culture.

Science as a Culture : In 1874 Francis Galton, the father of biometry, carried out a survey of 180
top ranking scientists of England and Wales. The result was published in a book entitled English
Men of Science. Their Nature and Nurture. Some of the findings on the religious belief of scientists
were as follows.

(i) Eight out of ten scientist were members of the conventional church of England.
(ii) Most of them showed a concern for human welfare much above the average people.(iii) Even
these, who categorically stated, they had a religious bent, did not believe in the christian doctrine
of original sin and the doctrine of life after death.

Scientific Aspects
The discipline of the ethics of science is concerned with the systematic reconstruction of those
specific orientations for action that are determined by the understanding, immanent in each field
of science in respect of its individual subject area, and the understanding of the scientific
procedures for its description and explanation and an appreciation of the possibilities for action
opened up by scientific knowledge. In this, ethics of science shall be understood as a part of
philosophical ethics that refers to a specific, societal field of action determined by particular forms
of knowledge. Above all, ethics of science, in respect of the task on hand, has to deal with two
interrelated areas of phenomena. First, ethics of science draws on the specific ethos of the scientific
community in order to reconstruct those orientations to which the scientist is committed, in the
interest of seeking out the truth. This involves a smooth, unbroken transition from general rules of
action (e.g., the prohibition of falsifying research results) to specific regulations for individual
disciplines within the framework of their respective methodology. Second, ethics of science
concerns itself with the relationship between general moral orientations and the problems of
generating and applying scientific knowledge. Both in generating and applying, it is primarily a
question of the practical consequences resulting from technical knowledge.
An example of the moral problems involved in the generation of scientific knowledge can be seen
in the field of experiments on human beings in medical research and other medical science
disciplines (above all in the field of psychology); more recent discussions target experiments on
animals or genetic intervention into the genome of humans, animals, plants and micro-organisms,
for the purpose of getting to know more about genetics. The moral problems inherent in the
application of scientific knowledge and the responsibility of the scientists concerned are now under
discussion in almost every field of modern science, and have been especially since the ‘Manhattan
Project’
The beginning of modern science, at its core, has moved away from the concept of knowledge
generated by contemplation, since it is now essentially characterized by knowledge that owes its
existence to technical intervention into nature under controlled conditions. Not until a fundamental
appreciation of the problems of a modern concept of knowledge was undertaken by Kant and other
German proponents of idealism did it become clear that this, too, is thanks to
moral presuppositions. Whereas initially it was not the technical consequences of the application
of such knowledge that was in the foreground but rather the self-commitment of the scientist to
the truth, in the interest of generating reliable knowledge, the discussion on the ethics of science
in the twentieth century, in comparison, was first and foremost determined by the experience of
the technical and practical consequences of scientific knowledge. In this it was predominantly the
natural scientists, in the wake of the development of weapons of mass destruction and other large-
scale technical applications of knowledge, who posed the question as to the moral principles of
their actions. Above all, with the development of the modern biosciences, the question of the moral
responsibility involved in the generation of knowledge has become the focus of attention. The
problems arising especially in the medical disciplines and the biosciences are proving to be highly
complex issues, involving the fundamental ethical orientation of societies characterized by
scientific and technical civilization.
The Emergence of an Ethos of Science and Institutionalized Self-Regulation
The most influential analysis of the ethics of research as an institutional phenomenon where
researchers correct each other has been given by Robert Merton. He labeled the phenomenon ‘the
ethos of science,’ referring primarily to the internal norms and values connected to the truth
commitment of science. He first published his analysis in two small articles (Merton, 1938, 1942),
later followed by several others (as Merton, 1957). His analysis was both based on an extensive
historical understanding of the emergence of modern science in the seventeenth century, and
reflections based on the undermining and destruction of the ethos of science in the twentieth
century, by market forces, nationalism, Nazism, and Communism (Kalleberg, 2007; Enebakk,
2007).
Merton identified the ethos of science like this: “The ethos of science is that affectively toned
complex of values and norms which is held to be binding on the man /sic/ of science” (1942, pp.
268, 269; 1938, p. 258). This seminal definition was characterized by the triple perspective of
sociological imagination (see Mills, 1959), comprising the interplay
of individuals and institutions embedded in historical processes (biographies, traditions). To
underline this sociological perspective Merton used the expression ‘institutional imperative’ as a
synonym for ‘norm.’ The problem with several later definitions of research ethical norms,
including many who criticized Merton, has been a too narrow orientation only to individuals and
their ideals (or scientific conscience), not at the same time seeing the institutional framework
disciplining its members, and the tensions between norms and counter-norms, including the
complexity of role-sets embedded in evolving fields of research (Merton, 1963; Kalleberg, 2014).
Merton operated with a traditional, sociological typology of social norms. “The norms are
expressed in the form of prescriptions, proscriptions, preferences and permissions” (1942, p.269).
The norms and values of the ethos of science are in operation as a set of shared and internalized
norms and values, institutional imperatives, characterizing well-functioning scientific
communities. Merton did not claim that his typology was exhaustive, nor that the different types
were exclusive. They are clearly internally related, partly overlapping each other.
Merton's scientistic interpretation of norms in science, basing them on emotions and not reasons,
is not tenable. But that can be corrected at the same time as one preserves the superior insights and
realism in his analysis (see Kalleberg, 2007, 2009). Merton's contributions illustrate a typical
phenomenon in the social and cultural sciences: classics are not only of historical interests, but
also keep on being of contemporary and systematic interest (see Calhoun, 2010).
The ethos of science in Merton's conception can be presented as a set of six norms, the CUDOSH-
norms: Communalism, Universalism, Disinterestedness, Originality, Skepticism and Humility
(see Kalleberg, 2007, p. 141, 142). Communalism refers to the fact that scientific activity is a
sociological phenomenon; there can be no isolated, private science. Knowledge and insight have
to be published, made public, in order to be tested and recognized by the collective of peers.
“Property rights in science are whittled down to a bare minimum by the rationale of the scientific
ethic” (Merton, 1942, p. 273). Universalism concerns issues of scientific validity and refers to “the
canon that truth claims, whatever their source, are to be subjected to pre-established impersonal
criteria; consonant with observation and with previously confirmed knowledge” (Merton, 1942,
p. 269, italics in original). This institutional imperative can also be characterized as the pursuit of
truth, the truth-commitment of science. In a later article Merton explained the relatively few cases
of scientific fraud, as compared to other fields, by the institutional “emphasis on the value of truth
by whomsoever it is found, and a commitment to the disinterested pursuit of truth” (Merton, 1957,
p. 321). Disinterestedness concerns impartiality in posing of questions, collection and
interpretation of data, and impartiality in argumentation. Science is done for the sake of valid and
reliable knowledge.
Originality requires that contributors in well-functioning scientific communities are obliged to
present new knowledge and insight, and not only preserve the knowledge of a tradition. As a
historical sociologist of the seventeenth century scientific revolution, Merton had a keen eye for
identifying the historically new in the insistence on originality. Skepticism refers to the obligation
to check the validity of documentation and argumentation, not just believing what authors claim.
Skepticism became institutionalized in many ways, two of them being the scrutiny of peers reading
the contributions and the mechanism of peer review. The basic precept can be formulated like this:
only reliable documentation and consistent argumentation shall influence the formation of
opinions in well-functioning scientific communities. Humility refers to the institutional obligation
to understand how little each researcher and discipline understand of a complex reality, and how
dependent each individual researcher is on the transnational community of scholars. This
intellectual dependence does not only include contemporaries, but also earlier and coming
generations. The age-old metaphor often used to convey the meaning of scientific humility in this
strict meaning, is the following – here quoted as expressed by one of the greatest scientists of all
time, Isaac Newton: “If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” (Merton,
1942, p. 274, 275).
The ethos of science – like other institutional ethoses, for instance the protestant work ethic
(Weber) – does not have to be codified in order to influence action and interaction within research
groups and disciplines. The research ethic of science can be characterized as the oldest internal
control system in the modern world, as old as modern science. Scientific communities are
unthinkable without it; research ethics is internal to science. For Merton, there was little doubt that
all in all the amount of fraud was smaller within the social system of science than in other
institutions in a modern society. The relatively small amount of deviance in science is due to an
institutional trait, its high degree of transparency. If one should try to understand the phenomenon
strictly individualistically, without sociological imagination, one would have to rely on an
unrealistic presupposition of researchers as moral super-beings. Merton (1957, p. 311) gave this
general explanation for the effectiveness of this kind of interactional self-correction:
Scientific research is typically, if not always, under the exacting scrutiny of fellow experts,
involving as it usually, though not always does, the verifiability of results by others. Scientific
inquiry is in effect subject to rigorous policing, to a degree perhaps unparalleled in any other field
of human activity. Personal honesty is supported by the public and testable character of science.
With the historical emergence of the ethos of science came also violations of those norms and
corresponding conflicts. Merton (1957) mentions several examples of fraud in the history science,
some of them based on the well-known book by Babbage (1830) on fraud in science. Merton's
most detailed discussions of scientific misconduct were focused on plagiarism and priority
struggles. When the requirement for originality emerged as part of the scientific revolution, also
the first struggles about priority and plagiarism also emerged. An early example is the bitter
conflict between Newton and Leibnitz about the invention of the calculus (Merton, 1957, pp. 314,
315). Merton also noted the possible distorting effects of the institutional obligation of originality
“in many academic institutions, to transform the sheer number of publications into a ritualized
measure of scientific or scholarly accomplishment” (1957, p. 326).