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Abstract Efforts to promote responsible conduct of research (RCR) should take into consideration how scientists already conceptualize the relationship between ethics and science. In this study, we investigated how scientists relate ethics and science by analyzing the values expressed in interviews with fifteen science faculty members at a large midwestern university. We identified the values the scientists appealed to when discussing research ethics, how explicitly they related their values to ethics, and the relationships between the values they appealed to. We found that the scientists in our study appealed to epistemic and ethical values with about the same frequency, and much more often than any other type of value. We also found that they explicitly associated epistemic values with ethical values. Participants were more likely to describe epistemic and ethical values as supporting each other, rather than trading off with each other. This suggests that many scientists already have a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between ethics and science, which may be an important resource for RCR training interventions.
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This content will become publicly available on April 16, 2026
Perceptions of network-level ethics in an engineering research center: Analysis of ethical issues & practices reported by scientific & engineering participants
Background: Despite the rise of big-team science and multiinstitutional, multidisciplinary research networks, little research has explored the unique challenges that large, distributed research networks face in ensuring the ethical and responsible conduct of research (RCR) at the network level. Methods: This qualitative case study explored the views of the scientists, engineers, clinicians, and trainees within a large Engineering Research Center (ERC) on ethical and RCR issues arising at the network level. Results: Semi-structured interviews of 26 ERC members were analyzed and revealed five major themes: (1) data sharing, (2) authorship or inventorship credit, (3) ethics and regulation, (4) collaboration, and (5) network leadership, norms, and policy. Interviews revealed cross-laboratory differences and disciplinary differences as sources of challenge. Conclusions: This study illuminates ethical challenges that a large, multi-institutional research network is likely to face. Research collaboration across disciplines, laboratories, and institutions invites conflict over norms and practices. Network leadership requires anticipating, monitoring, and addressing the ethical challenges in order to ensure the network’s ethical and responsible conduct of research and optimize research collaboration. Studying perceived ethical issues that arise at the meso-level of a research network is essential for understanding how to advance network ethics.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2220611
- PAR ID:
- 10654605
- Publisher / Repository:
- Taylor & Francis
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Accountability in Research
- ISSN:
- 0898-9621
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 - 22
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Research ethics Network ethics Team science Multiteam system Network leadership
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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