Developing a Scientific Virtue-Based Approach to Science Ethics Training

Abstract

Responsible conduct of research training typically includes only a subset of the issues that ought to be included in science ethics and sometimes makes ethics appear to be a set of externally imposed rules rather than something intrinsic to scientific practice. A new approach to science ethics training based upon Pennock's notion of the scientific virtues may help avoid such problems. This paper motivates and describes three implementations-theory-centered, exemplar-centered, and concept-centered-that we have developed in courses and workshops to introduce students to this scientific virtue-based approach.

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ORIGINAL PAPER
Developing a Scientific Virtue-Based Approach
to Science Ethics Training
Robert T. Pennock
1
•Michael O’Rourke
2
Received: 16 September 2015 / Accepted: 12 January 2016 / Published online: 27 January 2016
The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Responsible conduct of research training typically includes only a subset
of the issues that ought to be included in science ethics and sometimes makes ethics
appear to be a set of externally imposed rules rather than something intrinsic to
scientific practice. A new approach to science ethics training based upon Pennock’s
notion of the scientific virtues may help avoid such problems. This paper motivates
and describes three implementations—theory-centered, exemplar-centered, and
concept-centered—that we have developed in courses and workshops to introduce
students to this scientific virtue-based approach.
Keywords Responsible conduct of research Science ethics Scientific virtues
Introduction
Science, like other well-established cultural practices, has an inherent normative
structure—a set of values, both epistemic and ethical, that guide and govern its
practitioners (Douglas 2009). Responsible conduct of research (RCR) training,
whether done in workshops or courses, covers only some of these values. For
historical and practical reasons, RCR training has tended to focus on a variety of
standard topics, including protection of human and animal subjects; data fraud,
fabrication and other issues of research integrity; authorship, credit assignment and
other issues involving researcher relationships; conflict of interest and other issues
&Robert T. Pennock
pennock5@msu.edu
1
Lyman Briggs College and Departments of Philosophy and Computer Science & Engineering,
Michigan State University, 919 E. Shaw Lane, Rm. E35, East Lansing, MI 48825-3804, USA
2
Department of Philosophy and AgBioResearch, Michigan State University, 536 South Kedzie
Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824-1032, USA
123
Sci Eng Ethics (2017) 23:243–262
DOI 10.1007/s11948-016-9757-2
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of institutional integrity; social responsibility and the like (Pimple 2002).
Traditionally, RCR training involves laying out rules and professional expectations
in these areas, often explaining these in terms of egregious cases of misconduct that
sensitized the profession to the need for explicit rules, and typically justifying them
philosophically in terms of rights and duties or utility (CITI 2015). As part of this
training, students are introduced to various legal or quasi-legal requirements and
procedures a researcher must comply with, including federal regulations, due
process, penalties for infractions, and the roles of the Research Integrity Officer and
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) (cf. Steneck 2007). Explanation of such rules
and procedures is often supplemented by case studies, real or hypothetical, that
illustrate examples of misconduct that should be avoided, confronted, or resolved
(cf. NAS 2009). RCR is eclectic to be sure, but we will argue that there remain other
topics that deserve to be taught under a broader heading of science ethics. Moreover,
we have observed some common difficulties when RCR training is done as
described above.
One problem is that it can give the false impression that science ethics is just a
matter of knowing and following a given set of rules. Worse still, when couched in a
compliance-based framework, RCR can appear reducible to a checklist of rules that
one simply must tick off. Such a view is simplistic, of course, for difficult cases
require ethical judgment, understood as the outcome of principled deliberation
among complex alternatives in which trade-offs involving competing values are
carefully weighed. Using real or hypothetical cases about ethical dilemmas can help
students better appreciate the complexities of rule-based choice, but these can often
swing them to the opposite extreme, making them think that ethics is relative or
unresolvable (Wolpe 2006). In a full course, instructors have the time to help
students make their way through ethical relativism and develop analytical skills for
adjudicating among prima facie rules (McGuffin 2008), but one-off RCR training
workshops mostly have to gloss over these difficulties.
A less obvious, but more serious issue is that, with its focus on compliance and
rule-following, traditional RCR comes across as legalistic (Pennock 2015a). There
are several problematic effects of framing RCR in this way. One all-too-common
effect of a legalistic model is that it makes RCR appear to be a burdensome
bureaucracy. Researchers too often come to view compliance-focused rules and
regulations as just more red tape that gets in the way of science. This can give rise to
a cynical attitude toward the IRB, for example, that its forms are annoying hoops to
jump through or to avoid if possible. A second, equally problematic effect is that
RCR may begin to feel to scientists like a police state; it not only emphasizes rules
and compliance, but also enforcement, procedures, and punishment. Researchers
come to see themselves as under scrutiny by the ethics police. The Research
Integrity Officer (even the name makes it sound like they will be in uniform) is
someone who enters the scene when possible rule-infraction or misconduct needs to
be investigated and prosecuted. Framed in this way, scientists who break the rules
are criminals.
Put more generally, the legalistic model makes RCR seem like something that is
imposed upon science from without. The unfortunate result of traditional compli-
ance-based RCR training is that ethics too often become seen as an interference with
244 R. T. Pennock, M. O’Rourke
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research or at best a necessary burden. It fails to motivate scientists to think about
their research in ethically responsible ways except perhaps as a defensive measure.
This is hardly a positive way to create an ethical culture.
What can we do to change this attitude? How can we teach RCR and science
ethics generally to make these problematic effects less likely to occur? We want
science students, as well as working scientists, to see values as part of the fabric of
science itself. Responsible conduct should not be viewed as something foreign,
imposed from without, but rather as something native and familiar, arising out of
science’s goals, methods and practices. In this paper we present one way to do this
based upon Pennock’s notion of scientific virtue (SV).
This is a hybrid notion that is neither straight virtue ethics nor philosophy of
science, though it draws upon both. Virtue ethicists ask about what character virtues
are conducive to being a flourishing human being, but the scientific virtues are those
traits that make for an exemplary scientific researcher. Philosophers of science have
gone into great depth about the qualities that make for better scientific theories, but
the SV perspective looks also at the qualities—especially the character traits—that
make for better scientists.
1
This is not a descriptive thesis about the actual traits of
all or even most scientists, but rather a normative thesis about scientific aspirations
and ideals—it is about the exemplary scientist. Scientists are exemplary to the extent
that they embody the virtues that dispose them towards the ideal practice of
science’s distinctive methods for achieving its goals. By focusing on the character
of the exemplary scientist in this normative sense, the SV approach embraces both
epistemic and ethical values, connecting them in a way that links the nature of
science to its responsible conduct (cf. Schienke et al. 2011).
The practical import of such ideals of scientific virtue has previously been shown
to play out both broadly, regarding requirements such as the general responsibility
to defend the integrity of scientific methods (Pennock 2006), and specifically,
regarding issues ranging from just authorship attribution (Pennock 1996), to
responsible research funding and conflict of interest (Pennock 2002), to approaches
to dealing with socially controversial subjects such as human cloning (Pennock
2001). Later in this paper we’ll note some additional connections to core RCR
topics such as fraud and fabrication, and to issues in science ethics that go beyond
traditional RCR, such as responsibilities scientists have with regard to broader social
issues, including biases based on gender, race and so on. The SV approach also
highlights the significance of epistemic values in science such as the importance of
attentiveness and the meticulous collection and analysis of data (cf. Steel 2011).
However, this is not the place to review or delve into philosophical arguments
about these in detail. We intend these initial considerations to motivate interest in
such an alternative, virtue-based approach to RCR and science ethics, and we will
henceforth proceed to describe how one might pursue such an approach. Thus, this
paper focuses on educational training, specifically on ways to integrate the scientific
virtues into RCR and science ethics. Drawing on the experience of our own
1
Here we will mostly focus on traits scientists should have as individuals, but the notion also
encompasses characteristics of scientists acting in a community, including labs, professional societies,
and other scientific institutions.
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experiments in developing courses and workshops using this approach, this paper
will describe three ways to do this—theory-centered, exemplar-centered, and
concept-centered—and discuss the relative merits of each. The concluding section
gives an informal general assessment of the advantages of an SV-based approach
and a brief discussion of a pilot assessment study that is currently underway.
Theory-Centered SV Approach
From a philosopher’s point of view, it is natural to begin developing a SV-based
approach to RCR and science ethics in light of ethical theory. Moreover, professional
ethics courses, whether taught by philosophers or not, are typically organized around
a systematized theoretical framework. Classic textbooks in medical and engineering
ethics, for instance, mostly follow this approach (Beauchamp and Childress 2012;
Whitbeck 2011). If an instructor aims to convey the full logic and justification behind
RCR and science ethics, this is clearly an excellent approach. Because RCR and
science ethics have not generally been conceptualized in a virtue-theoretic
framework, a theory-centered SV approach must first provide a general introduction
to virtue ethics, starting with its roots in Aristotle.
According to Aristotle, a character virtue is a habituated tendency or
inclination—‘‘a settled disposition of the mind’’ (Aristotle 1889)—to have
appropriate feelings, which in turn leads one to act in appropriate ways.
2
Specifically, the virtues of a human being are those that accord with human
purpose and function and so promote human flourishing. Happiness in its robust
Aristotelian sense is not just a mental state but also an activity—one must exercise
one’s distinctive human faculties to actualize them. In Aristotle’s view, the
actualization of potential is judged in terms of a thing’s purpose (telos). Put in this
way, virtues are what enable a person to function in a manner that will best achieve
the distinctive and highest human aims.
Virtue ethics emphasizes that it is not enough to know what one should do; one must
also care to do it. Possessing developed virtues means that one will feel emotionally
motivated to act in the right ways. Justice, courage, prudence, and wisdom are among
the virtues that Aristotle recommends as central to human flourishing. He also provides
a framework for analyzing virtue, noting that it is a balanced condition, being neither
excessive nor deficient in the requisite trait; moderation is the key. Virtue cannot be
acquired just by learning rules, but must be developed by practice and by following the
example of individuals who have already developed the practical wisdom (phroneˆsis)
about how to achieve such a harmonious balance.
3
2
More completely, Aristotle says that a moral virtue is ‘‘a settled disposition of the mind determining the
choice of actions and emotions, consisting essentially in the observance of the mean relative to us, this
being determined by principle that is, as the prudent man would determine it‘‘ (1889, 1106b36–07a2).
3
For classroom materials, excerpts from Aristotle are good as a primary source, but contemporary texts
require less interpretation. Rosalind Hursthouse’s On Virtue Ethics (1999) and Julia Annas’s Intelligent
Virtue (2011) are good options. Annas’s account has some advantage for a training course in that she
focuses on virtue as a learnable skill. Alasdair MacIntyre’s classic After Virtue (1981), which was the key
book that revived virtue theory in contemporary ethics, is especially useful.
246 R. T. Pennock, M. O’Rourke
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Pennock’s Scientific Virtues Account
Virtue ethics, of course, focuses on what it is to be a virtuous person, whereas our
more circumscribed interest is in the professional virtues, here on those of the
scientist. Thus, in a theory-centered SV approach to RCR and science ethics, instead
of beginning with human nature, one starts with the nature of science. Science is a
practice with its own goals and standards of excellence. The Philosophy of Science
works to explicate these standards, including notions of scientific explanation,
confirmation, methodology, and so on. An SV approach starts with a philosophy of
science but goes on to develop a philosophy of the scientist, looking at what may be
thought of as the scientific mindset or as scientific habits of mind. Scientific virtues
are those character traits—what we may think of in this context as practiced
dispositions which have a general biological basis, but which are given specific
normative content by, and must be learned through, scientific practice—that are
necessary for or conducive to achieving the aims of science. One may analyze the
goals of science in a more or less fine-grained manner, but its central aim is to
discover empirical truths about the natural world. The purpose of the scientist is
thus, at least on a first pass, much narrower than the general purpose of a human
being. There are a variety of traits that make one a better person, but this basic
scientific goal helps us focus on the distinctive traits that a scientist should cultivate;
because of science’s special aims, curiosity and intellectual honesty are the primary
scientific virtues on this account. Other virtues play important related roles.
For example, science’s methods involve empirical testability; hypotheses should
not be accepted merely on the basis of authority or personal preference, but must be
tested and confirmed in terms of observational evidence that is in principle public
and repeatable. Thus skepticism and objectivity are critical virtues. Repeatable em-
pirical testing is not easy, especially when one must quantify results, so
perseverance and meticulousness are also valuable qualities for scientists. One
may take an analytic approach to elucidate these and other scientific virtues, and one
may also find them exemplified in narratives or embodied in exemplars. We can go
on, but this is not the place to flesh out and defend a full list of scientific virtues.
Pennock’s account is built on a combination of philosophical reasoning and
historical research, supplemented by informal interviews with many scientists over
the last 15 years. His Scientific Virtues Project \www.msu.edu/svp[is now
investigating this further in a systematic national survey of scientists.
We do not claim that presenting a set of scientific virtues will be sufficient in and
of itself to produce ethical behavior in science. Even in a theory-based course one
cannot side-step the practical and political complexities that researchers must
confront in messy real world circumstances as well as external pressures that can
threaten even core scientific values. Ethical treatment of human subjects, animal
welfare, and other such issues in science and ethics will still require special attention
(Rollins 2006). A full ethical treatment must also cover how traits can tilt from
virtue to vice if taken to an extreme. A virtue-based approach does not assume that
scientists are saints—humility to evidence, for instance, does not preclude arrogance
or other forms of prideful behavior (Pennock 2015b)—and it will take thoughtful
intention to develop the necessary practiced dispositions. Nevertheless, we argue
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that an approach that highlights how exemplary character traits that arise from the
goals and methods of science can help overcome some common problems. As David
Hume pointed out, one may know rationally what one should do but simply not care
to do it (1983, Bk. II, Pt III §iii). Traditional rule-based ethics always has this
problem when considered in isolation. In a virtue-based framework, on the other
hand, the interconnections between the aims of a practice and the character and
motivation of someone pursuing that practice help alleviate this problem. It can be
helpful to think of the logical structure here as a kind of hypothetical imperative—if
one wants to achieve aim A, then do behavior B. If one wants to do B well, be a C
(i.e., have character C).
4
Having the kind of character traits that will incline one to
achieve scientific aims means that one is already motivated to behave in appropriate
ways.
With an SV framework in place, standard RCR topics may be presented in a fresh
light. To give just one example, consider the issue of data fabrication. A traditional
RCR workshop might present the rules against data fraud and fabrication in
professional codes of ethics, discuss cases when scientists violated these rules, and
explain the procedures for investigating suspected cases and the penalties for
violations, from paper retraction to job termination. Such information is useful, and
highlighting legal deterrents might scare some people into thinking twice before
fabricating data, but the SV approach is better than this kind of legalistic approach if
one’s aim is to cultivate a true culture of integrity. On an SV approach, the issue of
data fabrication could arise naturally as an outgrowth of a discussion about virtues
such as objectivity and intellectual honesty, but students get the point most directly
when they consider it in relation to the core scientific virtue of curiosity. The curious
scientist wants to discover something or find the answer to a question or test whether
some hypothesis is true—in short they want to know something about the world.
The very idea of fabricating data is inimical to this basic scientific attitude. It is not
that one shouldn’t fabricate data because you might get caught and punished for
violating a rule, but rather that the very idea of fabricating data violates what it
means to be a scientist. In this kind of way, an SV-based account of RCR reveals
behavioral implications that come from within the practice of science.
Difficulties
A theory-centered approach allows one to be systematic and to elucidate the logical
structure of RCR in science, but we should note several practical difficulties for
doing RCR training in this way. One temporary problem is that, because a virtue-
based approach to RCR training is still very new, there are almost no standard
4
Note that these are not deductive relationships, but pragmatic imperatives. In the order of causation,
character virtues make appropriate behaviors more likely, which in turn increase the likelihood of
achieving the given aims. The context of training does add a degree of complexity, in that one way to
acquire character virtues is to practice them, making B appear to be prior to C. However, what one is
typically doing in this case is copying the behavior of a role model, M, who already has the character trait,
so C remains causally prior in the larger picture. Pennock’s forthcoming book explains how the notion of
scientific virtues as practiced dispositions helps make the conceptual and pedagogically practical
transition from heritable, evolved tendencies to cultivatable scientific habits, but this is not the place to
lay out a detailed theoretical account.
248 R. T. Pennock, M. O’Rourke
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classroom materials. Pennock is completing a book on the topic, but otherwise few
materials are currently available.
A more general problem is that science students and faculty typically lack a
background in philosophical theory. What this means is that theory-centered RCR
courses have to start from scratch and provide an introduction to ethics just to get
things going. However, many science students lack that level of interest, and if the
faculty are not philosophers, they may lack the expertise necessary to teach the
material. Just as non-science majors opt for science courses that are taught without
the mathematics, so non-philosophy majors often want a course that sidesteps the
logical and theoretical foundations and complexities. Even though philosophers
would argue that theory must be primary, at least in a justificatory sense, we must
recognize that it is not appropriate for every audience and is not always the most
effective means of training.
While theory provides frameworks that students can use to organize the concepts
and issues that constitute RCR, it can seem rather abstract to those who are not
philosophically inclined. Approaching RCR in terms of cases first and then bringing
in theory to help resolve dilemmas is one good approach, but an SV-based approach
also allows another alternative—one that is centered on exemplary persons who
embody the relevant virtues. We now turn to a description of that approach.
Exemplar-Centered SV Approach
Virtue theory holds that one becomes a virtuous person in part by learning from and
modeling oneself after individuals who themselves exemplify human virtues;
someone who embodies the traits that make for human flourishing can serve as an
exemplar of their operation and effect. Acquiring the traits that make for exemplary
science is much the same. Although role modeling is probably best done in personal
mentoring relationships (Bird 2001), it can be approximated in the classroom by
what may be thought of as a virtual apprenticeship with exemplary scientists.
Pennock has presented elements of such an exemplar-centered approach in
introductory courses, but finds it to be especially effective in upper-division classes
after students have already completed a variety of science courses.
5
Here we will
describe implementations in senior seminars at Michigan State University in Lyman
Briggs College, MSU’s special residential program for the study of science and
society. Most Briggs students major in science and go on to graduate or professional
school in science or medicine.
Course Structure and Rationale
As in a theory-centered approach, the goal this course is to have students explore
science ethics and the scientific mindset, especially the character virtues of the
5
By extension, we believe that an exemplar-centered approach to SV ethics would be equally if not more
effective if employed in a class with graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, given that they
typically have an even more well-developed appreciation for the nature of science and scientific practice.
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exemplary scientist that they should try to emulate, and how these relate to
traditional RCR topics. The difference is that an exemplar-centered course is
organized around consideration of exemplary scientists, carefully selected to allow
students to explore the scientific virtues from different points of view in a wide
range of contexts.
To allow comparisons across scientific disciplines, it works well to include
scientists from fields ranging from physics and biology to computer science. It is
also revealing to compare and contrast science to other professions, such as
engineering and medicine, which emphasize different virtues (e.g., innovation or
compassion) because of their different aims and methods. Such a disciplinary range
also helps ensure that students have role models from within their own major fields.
In selecting exemplary scientists, it is valuable to pair historical and more
contemporary scientists in a field. There is much to be learned from scientific giants
like Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, but including less well-known figures such
as Barbara McClintock and Richard Feynman helps students see how the scientific
virtues are broadly exemplified. Historical sources reveal the roots of the scientific
culture, especially in the Scientific Revolution where these values are articulated
most self-consciously because natural philosophy is seen as a new movement. It
works especially well to start with Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography (1916), not
only for his historical significance, but also because Franklin explicitly wrote about
virtues, their significance, and how he tried to develop and fortify them in himself.
As a pioneering scientist, Franklin serves as a model himself of exemplary character
traits but he is unusual in also theorizing about the general development of virtues
explicitly and systematically.
As with any culture, science mostly takes its own cultural values for granted;
even those who are aware of those values rarely have occasion to talk about them
directly. Indeed, Franklin’s discussion, like Aristotle’s, is about the virtues of a
human being rather than those of the scientist, but it provides a useful introduction
to thinking in this way, and one may then ask students to look more closely at
Franklin’s (and other scientists’) work to try to discern what specifically scientific
virtues might be teased out. Having students do this as an inquiry-based exercise
gets them actively involved in thinking about virtues and how they are expressed,
and is another advantage of this exemplar-centered approach. The idea is to
encourage students to survey the contours of the scientific character on their own by
triangulating from different source materials. An exemplar-centered approach
allows a wide range of materials beyond the usual textbooks and articles, which as
noted above still remain few and far between in this area. On this model, the
primary texts are biographies and autobiographies of exemplary scientists, but may
also include eulogies, obituaries, commencement addresses, documentaries, and
even fictional depictions of scientists.
Both biographies and autobiographies have their own advantages. For Charles
Darwin, for instance, one has a wealth of biographies to choose from. Nothing
matches Janet Browne’s magisterial biography (1996, 2003) to give the fullest
picture of Darwin’s life, work, and times, and Desmond and Moore’s nuanced
biography (1992) is another excellent choice. In practice, however, students are
more engaged and get a better sense of Darwin’s character from reading his
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Autobiography (1958). Although autobiographies provide less historical context and
miss the measured judgment of a third person account, this is made up for by the
immediacy of first person narrative, which can be more important for our purposes.
One way that students absorb virtues is when the intellectual is linked to the
emotional. Autobiographies at their best are personal and even intimate—both
Franklin and Darwin were writing primarily for their family—so a reader can feel
the character of the writer. They make it easier for readers to identify with the
scientist. It allows them to think ‘‘I could be like that’’, which is a key intellectual
step in becoming virtuous, followed closely by ‘‘I want to be like that,’’ which is the
critical motivational step.
Richard Feynman’s autobiographical books are also excellent (1985,1988) for
just this reason. That Feynman was a genius and Nobel laureate gave him license to
be eccentric, but the overwhelming perception one gets is of someone who just lived
and breathed science and who could not help but share that passion. Feynman is an
engaging and likable character who personifies scientific curiosity. Even better than
the books are the filmed interviews with Feynman, which have been broadcast in
various forms over the years (BBC/PBS 1981). Indeed, these interviews have such a
high value from an SV perspective that they should be at the core of any exemplar-
centered SV course. Feynman is the modern epitome of the scientist role model. He
is a rare case of a scientist who not only embodied the core scientific virtues, but
also had thought about them explicitly and deeply and could articulate them both
directly and through anecdotes. He was a scientific storyteller and saw himself as
such. It is also easy to use Feynman’s discussions, for instance about honesty in
science or about the causes of the Challenger disaster, to highlight how scientific
virtues can help avoid some common RCR problems.
Whether one uses biographies, autobiographies or some other source material, it
pays to be pedagogically transparent about the process of triangulation one expects
students to do. Each time one introduces a new kind of source material it is useful to
devote up to half a period to consideration of its value and limitations, and how it
fits with an SV approach and illuminates our understanding of community norms.
There are a variety of excellent documentaries and docudramas about important
scientists, for instance, which can occasion fruitful discussion about how scientists’
character traits are portrayed in each.
6
Virtue theory holds that character is akin to a
dramatic role, and that ‘‘stock characters’’ in plays often are the way that particular
virtues are displayed (MacIntyre 1981, pp. 27–31), so docudramas can sometimes
be as revealing as documentaries once students are given the theoretical framework
to understand how to analyze them. Looking at the same scientist through different
source materials gives students a much richer appreciation of their character.
An exemplar-centered SV approach permits an eclectic range of modes and
methods. Because learning is especially effective when students can uncover and
explore the scientific virtues on their own through the lives of exemplary scientists,
6
To give just a few examples, the Nova video Einstein’s Big Idea (Johnstone 2005), which is based on
David Bodanis’ book E = mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation, is especially good,
and there are several excellent docudramas about Darwin, including Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Show 1 of
the PBS Evolution series (2001), and the National Geographic docudrama Darwin’s Darkest Hour
(Bradshaw 2009).
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student-guided discussion works well, punctuated by short lectures that introduce
philosophical concepts and theory as they become salient. Virtue theory holds that
one learns to embody the virtues in part by practice and habituation, so the challenge
is to structure the class accordingly. Instructors can encourage this in a variety of
ways, such as by asking students to intentionally practice one or other scientific
virtue for a day and then report upon the experience. It works well to have them
write daily blogs to reflect on their reading and discussion, and then have them work
in pairs to digest and present their understanding of the readings. Another novel
approach is to give students the option of putting on a dramatic performance as an
alternative to a formal class presentation. Not every student is equally at home with
such role-playing scenarios, but those who are play their parts with relish and the
exercise gives them a chance to try the characters on for size. One ambitious group
of students dramatized scenes from the life of Ada Lovelace. Another did skits
drawn from a novel about a scientist and followed it up, still in character, with a full
class discussion about some of the elements of the piece with the rest of the class
being asked to play along as though members of a debating society that had been
depicted.
As these novel-based skits illustrate, an exemplar-centered SV approach can
fruitfully draw from fictional as well as historical sources. Because our interest is in
the normative structure of science and character ideals, fictional narratives—plays,
novels, films and so on—can often be as informative as non-fiction. Brecht’s Life of
Galileo (2015), Lewis’s Arrowsmith (1925), and even Sagan’s Contact in book
(1985) or movie (Zemeckis 1997) form, can be shapers of scientific community
norms in part because the fictional form allows character traits to be exaggerated for
effect or exemplified in contexts that highlight their significance.
In addition, a few more unusual kinds of source materials turn out to be useful in
an exemplar-centered SV approach. As noted above, the deepest values of a culture
are often unarticulated precisely because they are taken for granted—one doesn’t
talk about them; one just lives them. However, cultures typically have special
occasions when it is deemed appropriate to speak directly about these deep values
and one may profitably look there to find them articulated. Not surprisingly, these
regularly occur as one enters or leaves some important life or professional stage, and
they often involve public addresses of some sort, because they are occasions whose
point is in part to affirm the values of the community involved. In disciplinary
contexts, these may take the form of initiation ceremonies of some sort, as well as
award speeches or memorial services. Phi Beta Kappa initiations always include a
‘‘charge to initiates’’ which admonishes them to follow the ideals of companionship
and zealous research. The initiation ceremony for Fellows of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science always includes a speech from a
notable scientist who talks about their research career. But unlike a talk at a
professional conference where one simply presents one’s data and findings, these
are occasions where the scientist typically tells the story of their career and reflects
upon setbacks, highlights, collaborations, and lessons learned along the way.
University graduation/commencement ceremonies participate in both, with the
completion of one’s college training and the beginning of one’s post-graduate
career, and here too the expectation is that the guest speaker will speak to the ideals
252 R. T. Pennock, M. O’Rourke
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that graduates have learned and are expected to exemplify going forward. It is easy
to be cynical about such speeches, filled as they often are with cliche
´s and
platitudes, but it would be a mistake to dismiss them. In part because they speak to
what everyone is already expected to know, addresses at such occasions can provide
a rich source of information about the values that a community holds to be
important and constitutive, in ways that are broader than RCR training typically
covers.
Probably the most significant occasion is at the end of life, as this is the point at
which individuals are presented in their best light; their qualities are named and
their life and character is celebrated. For this reason, obituaries and eulogies are also
interesting materials to examine. Although the practice has become less common in
recent years, in the past scientific journals regularly published scientists’ obituaries,
sometimes quite lengthy ones, that went beyond a summary of their research and
also spoke of their scientific lives and character. It works well, for example, to have
students to read one or more of the long obituaries that were published on Darwin’s
death and then have them find the obituary of some other scientist they are curious
about. Having students compare these makes for a lively discussion about what is or
isn’t highlighted by the scientific community as it reflects on the lives of departed
scientists. Again, for our purposes, it does not matter whether such accounts are
completely accurate from a descriptive point of view—perhaps the scientist did not
quite live up to the ideals as presented. For our normative investigation we do not
care so much about that as what those ideals are thought to be. A discussion of
scientific obituaries also provides an opportunity to talk about how to judge success
or failure in virtue terms. Solon said that one cannot judge whether a person is truly
happy until they are dead and one can see the full sweep of their lives. This long-
term perspective provides a useful vantage point from which to think about broader
notions of scientific integrity.
Another area that goes beyond traditional RCR topics is how scientists should
deal with broader social issues, such as religion, gender, sexual orientation, class,
and race. Our general heading of science ethics also makes room for consideration
of scientists’ social responsibilities and other topics that relate to what the National
Science Foundation calls the ‘‘broader impacts’’ of scientific research. An advantage
of the exemplar-centered approach is that it allows such issues to be examined
concretely rather than abstractly, through the experiences of real individuals. In this
way, to give just one example, social prejudices may be seen as objectively real and
also may be judged with more subtlety rather than simply in terms of stereotypes.
As the son of a prominent physician, Darwin’s social position provided him with
important advantages for someone who was proposing such a revolutionary view,
but other scientists had to overcome class barriers. Michael Faraday, a bookbinder
whose scientific mindset led him to the highest levels of scientific achievement and
recognition in his period, is a useful exemplar for examining these issues. For a
closer comparison, one could refer to Alfred Russel Wallace, who needed to sell
exotic beetles to collectors to help to fund his research. Darwin’s class and
connections also helped buffer him from the religious fallout of his discovery
(Desmond and Moore 1992), but the conflicts between scientific and religious
values and virtues are not easily overcome. One could examine many of these issues
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using Galileo as the exemplar. Moving to the 20th century allows one to look at
more recent examples where scientific values met religious and other social
challenges. Einstein was only the most famous of physicists in his time who faced
anti-Semitism and had his ‘‘Jewish science’’ dismissed out of hand. Lise Meitner’s
scientific research was abruptly interrupted because of such prejudice.
Meitner’s life also serves as a way to explore scientific virtue and gender issues,
as does that of Marie Curie, whose two Nobel prizes put her in the most rarified of
scientific company, but there are plenty of other female scientists who could also
serve this purpose. Barbara McClintock is a particularly useful exemplar for such
discussions as she clearly articulated how her virtues as a scientist ought to
dominate any biases she faced because of her gender (Keller 1983).
Alan Turing works well as an exemplar to highlight pioneering work in computer
science. Sitting as he does at the border between basic and applied science, Turing’s
scientific life provides a way to examine the different goals and thus different
virtues of a scientific versus an engineering perspective. He also serves as another
point of reference in considering scientific values in the broader societal landscape;
Turing’s science was only a temporary refuge against the social prejudice he faced
as a gay man. Similar issues have arisen for scientists who have had to deal with
racism, and an exemplar-centered SV approach allows students to think about
interpersonal and institutional biases that might hinder scientists who are members
of under-represented groups and thereby hinder the progress of science.
Such cases show the value of an expanded notion of science ethics that goes
beyond traditional RCR topics and incorporates a scientific virtue-based perspec-
tive. Especially illuminating is how such cases highlight common scientific values,
such as truth-seeking and objectivity, that hold steady even in the face of different
social challenges, and supply a useful antidote to philosophical views that discount
these values. Power analysis as an explanation of dynamics in science tends to
overlook and underappreciate basic scientific values such as these, which function
as explanatory factors that are reflective of scientific practice more generally.
Science is not exempt from the usual cultural prejudices, but such examples show
how scientists have a value system based on curiosity and other distinctive virtues
that provides a counter to those biases. In the end scientists do have a moral
compass, based in their shared purposes, that should return them to the path of
evidence and help them follow where it leads.
Difficulties
An exemplar-centered approach works well when an instructor has both the luxury
of time to allow students to slowly come to see the virtues through their own
exploration of the lives of exemplary scientists and the expertise required to
facilitate this exploration. Some majors require a professional ethics course, but
others do not. In the latter case, even students with a deep interest in the subject may
find it hard to fit a whole class in their schedule and seek to fulfill their RCR
requirement in extra-curricular workshops. But time is at a premium in a workshop
setting, and one must cut to the chase more quickly, especially with an audience of
graduate students, postdocs, and faculty. For such a workshop setting, we now turn
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to a third approach that is centered around direct exploration of scientific virtue
concepts.
Concept-Centered SV Approach
Our hypothesis is that one can demonstrate how a good working understanding of
the goals and methods of science implies an ethical structure. This is the sort of
understanding that faculty typically have and graduate students and post-doctoral
researchers in the sciences are acquiring. What this audience needs is an ethical
vocabulary and a conceptual toolbox plus some thoughtful guidance to help them
draw out these implications. Here we describe such a concept-centered approach
that we have been developing and pilot-testing since 2011 at BEACON, an NSF
Center for the Study of Evolution in Action at Michigan State University.
For this approach, we organize a dialogue-based workshop around particular
scientific virtue concepts, each of which is the focus of a module comprising
statements, or ‘‘prompts’’, that are crafted to stimulate thoughtful discussion among
the participants. Together, these modules constitute what we call the Scientific
Virtues Toolbox (or SV Toolbox) instrument. This workshop approach is inspired
by and modeled upon the structure of the Toolbox Project (O’Rourke and Crowley
2013). The original Toolbox instrument was conceived as way for interdisciplinary
science teams to explore tacit assumptions about the epistemic and metaphysical
foundations of scientific research (Eigenbrode et al. 2007). It includes prompts such
as:
•Scientific research must be hypothesis driven.
•Validation of evidence requires replication.
•Objectivity implies an absence of values by the investigator.
7
Participants are asked to indicate the degree to which they agree or disagree with
each prompt using a standard Likert scale, which helps prime the dialogue.
The workshop dialogue structured by the original Toolbox instrument does not
aim to teach a particular way to think about these issues; rather, it is a discovery
mechanism that is intended to create a context within which a team can identify,
examine, and negotiate among themselves the different assumptions they may
have about scientific research. The SV Toolbox, on the other hand, does have
content goals. Its prompts aim to guide participants towards a better understanding
of the values that give structure to science and how these relate to RCR topics.
8
For instance, the module on honesty in science includes prompts like the
following:
7
For the complete instrument, see the online materials associated with Looney et al. (2013).
8
While there are differences in emphasis between the original Toolbox approach and the SV Toolbox
approach, the two are similar in that they aim to enable workshop participants to enhance both self and
mutual understanding, which can increase the cohesiveness and functionality of the group. We thank
James Foster for pushing us on this point.
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•An honest scientist will not omit relevant data.
•Overselling the importance of a research project is as dishonest as fabricating
data.
•Honest scientists are not required to act when they suspect another scientist of
dishonesty.
•There are situations where one must be scientifically dishonest to do the right
thing.
Each prompt articulates a relevant, normative perspective on the nature of
intellectual honesty in science, and our goal in developing these is to cover a broad
range of relevant issues while representing a number of different perspectives. We
design some prompts (e.g., the fourth in this list) to be provocative, since their
function is to generate discussion; further, we vary the valence of the prompts to
encourage different reactions from prompt to prompt, a strategy that motivates
participants to go slow and reflect on the prompts as they work through the
instrument. We have been developing and pilot testing two modules per year and
currently have sets on the purpose of science, curiosity, honesty, courage,
perseverance, and humility to evidence, with others on the way.
Workshop Structure and Rationale
The SV Toolbox prompts form the core of a workshop session that brings the
scientific virtues concepts to the foreground and allows participants to explore their
meaning, implications, and interconnections. The prompts are sometimes worded
ambiguously so that participants have to disentangle different senses of terms on
their own. As in the original Toolbox, participants are first asked to rate the degree
to which they agree or disagree with each prompt on a standard 5-point Likert scale
(ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree). This primes the discussion by
giving them a chance to first introspect. The scores also provide a way for
participants to identify what may be unexpected patterns of similarity or difference
in their initial opinions, which also makes for fruitful discussion.
The initial open-ended discussion of the prompts for a single module ideally lasts
about 30 min and is lightly facilitated, allowing participants to work out and
coordinate their own views on the issues. This is followed by more heavily
facilitated discussion that can vary in focus with facilitator goals. Some important
connections to bring out include how the scientific virtues arise out of science’s
aims and methods so that participants come to appreciate the relationship between
epistemology and ethics in science. Science is not just a way of knowing, but also
necessarily a way of being. Facilitators should make it clear that these discussions
are not focused on empirical claims about whether scientists descriptively have one
or another virtue in greater or lesser degree than others. Rather, the focus is on
normative questions about what we value in science—what we strive to be like and
what we ought to do as scientists.
Often we find that key ideas, such as ways that scientific virtue relates to
behavior, have already begun to emerge in the workshop dialogue, which provides a
sufficient basis for subsequent guided discussion. In other cases, we take the general
256 R. T. Pennock, M. O’Rourke
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ideas that the prompts elicited and have the group explore their implications for
action, specifically action that exhibits responsible research conduct. The curiosity
module, for example, includes a prompt (‘‘Fabricating data is compatible with
scientific curiosity’’) that often generates RCR-related dialogue in the workshop and
can serve as a springboard for guided discussion of fraud and fabrication along the
lines laid out above.
9
We also encourage participants to consider ways that the
scientific virtues function for scientists as individual researchers as well as for
members of a research team and for the scientific community as a professional
whole.
Additionally, we are beginning to make use of information from Pennock’s
national survey. For instance, having workshop participants compare their own
views to data from a representative sample of scientists helps them see whether their
pre-reflective individual views coincide or diverge from the measured norms of the
scientific community. We also can at this point present stories and anecdotes
collected from the interviews with scientists. These are stories that researchers tell
based on their own experience to illustrate the significance or the application of
particular virtues in science. As noted previously, virtues are often conveyed and
absorbed through narratives, so having a discussion around such stories exemplifies
and reinforces their importance as community norms. They also often stimulate
workshop participants to tell stories from their own experience, which provides
another opportunity for reflective discussion.
Again, one advantage of this is that RCR and other issues of science ethics are seen
as arising from within rather than being imposed from without. The SV Toolbox
prompts are designed to stimulate participants to reflect upon science’s inherent aims
and values beginning with their own understanding followed by its relation to the
scientific community as a whole. We think that it is through this sort of information
and through these kinds of interactions that an ethical culture is developed.
In the past 3 years we have conducted over two dozen workshop sessions, mostly
for mixed groups of graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and faculty, plus a
few just with undergraduates. Typical group size is between 8 and 12 participants,
but we have run groups as small as six to as large as fifty. For large workshops we
have breakout groups of five or six participants for discussion of the SV Toolbox
prompts, bracketed by whole-group instruction and discussion. Most of our
workshop sessions last 90 min, which is sufficient for an introductory talk plus two
modules back-to-back, but we have also done single modules in a standard 50-min
class period.
Although three to five people tends to be an ideal size for small group discussions
for most kinds of topics, we find that it works best to have slightly larger groups for
SV Toolbox RCR discussions. Eight to ten seems to be ideal for a workshop group.
Part of the purpose of SV RCR sessions is to create circumstances where
community values can be teased out and then reinforced. If groups are too small, it
is hard to recognize the patterns of values or see when a position is an outlier. There
9
Note that the prompt is phrased in a way that conflicts with the relationship between curiosity and
fabrication described above, illustrating the point we made above that some prompts are written with
different valences to motivate different reactions.
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can of course be outlier views in any group—someone who thinks that lying on a
grant proposal is acceptable so that one can fund one’s research, for instance—but
these are more easily recognized as anomalous in a group of ten compared to a
group of three.
For similar reasons, discussions are richer if one can include a mix of participants
at different career stages in a group. Graduate students benefit from the practical
wisdom of senior researchers, and faculty benefit from being reminded of the
perspective of the novice and having the opportunity to be mentors and to pass along
lessons they have learned. Of course, for these mutual benefits to arise naturally in
discussions of the shared values and experiences of the scientific community, it is
important that these be balanced discussions, with all participants feeling free to
speak. The downside to a mix of faculty and graduate students is that the graduate
students can remain silent and defer to the faculty; facilitators should be on guard
for this possibility and work to ensure balanced participation from all members of
the workshop.
We have experimented with different degrees of facilitator involvement in the SV
Toolbox discussions themselves. In many cases we find that it works well to allow
the participants to discuss the prompts in an open-ended manner in whatever order
they wish with minimal interruption, which is the typical Toolbox facilitator
approach (Looney et al. 2013). In addition to helping participants feel the sense of
ownership that arises when people explore concepts in their own way, this also
makes it much clearer that scientific values truly come from within the community
rather than being imposed from without. However, depending upon the facilitator’s
learning goals for the session and the makeup of the group, it is sometimes helpful to
take a more active role even at this stage to guide the discussion—in much the same
way that Socrates would be a ‘‘midwife’’ in a dialogue—to help key ideas emerge.
Finally, we recommend having workshops that are long enough to do two
modules back to back. While there is certainly value even from focusing on a single
virtue and its connection to some RCR topic, there is a greater benefit when
participants can explore virtues in relation to each other. We intentionally construct
modules so that prompts in one may link directly or indirectly to prompts in another.
A major reason for this is that virtues have interconnections and are mutually
supportive. This is related to the thesis, articulated variously by Socrates and
Aristotle, of the ‘‘unity of virtue’’ (Plato 2009, Aristotle 1889). In one sense, this
could mean that all virtues are actually just aspects of a single trait, but in another
sense it could mean that the virtues are so tightly integrated that a person could not
really have one without also having the others. Either way, the point is that virtues
cannot fully be understood in isolation from one another. By having workshop
participants consider at least two modules, they begin to recognize these
interconnections. A second reason for pairing modules is that it starts to give
participants practice with the balancing of virtues and the development of ethical
judgment. For instance, perseverance is necessary to keep a research project going
in the face of the usual experimental setbacks every researcher encounters, but a
scientist must be ready to give up a line of research if the evidence accumulates
against a hypothesis. Juxtaposing modules on perseverance and humility to evidence
allows participants to explore how these values fit together.
258 R. T. Pennock, M. O’Rourke
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Difficulties
A concept-centered approach begins with smaller units of analysis than theory-
centered or exemplar-centered approaches, and as a result lends itself to delivery in
relatively brief but intensive workshops. This is useful for those who do not have the
time to take a course in science ethics, but the concentrated nature of this experience
has its downside. First, the brevity of the experience gives those who are new to the
scientific virtues little time to reflect on what they are and how they relate to their
lives as scientists. This can be offset to some extent by follow-up experiences,
which is part of the approach as we have implemented it—those who pursue RCR
training in BEACON will participate in at least one of these workshops per year,
with subsequent workshops introducing them to new virtues as we indicated above.
Second, there is a risk that a 90-min exposure to this approach will leave the
connections between RCR concerns and the scientific virtues underdeveloped. In
general, of course, the challenge for those engaged in RCR education is to enable
students to take what they learn and have that shape their actions in ethically
complex situations. To help address this difficulty, we have included more heavily
facilitated, guided discussion designed to connect the dots between individual
insights about the scientific virtues and responsible research conduct. We do
acknowledge, though, that designing and delivering robust follow-up experiences
will be more difficult for those who lack familiarity with the scientific virtues.
Conclusion
We have described three ways to implement a virtue-based approach to RCR and
science ethics, centered in theory, exemplars, and concepts. Of course, these three
approaches do not exhaust the possibilities. Approaches centered on case-based
modules or role-playing scenarios, for instance, are other options. Role-playing is
not necessarily a comfortable mode for introverted scientists, but if that resistance
can be overcome, it does have the advantage of fitting with the idea that virtues are
passed on through narratives and are made visible through their embodiment in
characters. Such possibilities deserve to be developed and investigated. For the
moment we will continue to focus on developing curricular materials and assessing
the three models we have described in this paper. Each has its own advantages,
depending upon the audience and circumstances.
In addition to its use for the science students on which we have focused, a theory-
centered SV approach can be valuable for philosophy majors and other students who
want to delve into the logic and philosophical justification of the scientific virtues
and how they are connected to both epistemic and ethical values in science. For
science majors and others who are not inclined to get into the details of philosophy
of science and ethical theory, an exemplar-centered approach provides a novel
entrance into the scientific character virtues through an exploration of how they are
embodied in the lives of exemplary scientists. We do not mean to suggest that one
can or should dispense with theory in an exemplar-centered approach. Theory is still
useful, of course, but it is brought in only after students have first begun to explore
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the ideas on their own through the lives of these scientists. Finally, we discussed a
concept-centered approach that works especially well for intensive RCR workshops
to train graduate students.
All three of these SV-based approaches appear to avoid some of the difficulties
that we noted about traditional rule-based RCR training. One major benefit is that
the scientific virtues are seen as arising from within science with philosophy helping
to organize and explicate them, so science ethics becomes recognized as part of
what it means to do science, rather than as something imposed from without. We are
now assessing this formally. Specifically, testing is underway to compare participant
reception of this scientific virtues approach to traditional RCR training. We are also
testing specific SV Toolbox modules, looking at pre-post workshop data to
document whether and how participants’ views and attitudes change. We will report
on these formal effectiveness studies in future papers.
Our goal here was to introduce the scientific virtue-based approach as an
alternative that we can recommend as a promising new way to teach science ethics
from the inside out. Informally, we can report a very positive response from
participants. For example, in our pilot tests of the concept-centered approach, one
representative participant had this to say in a post-workshop survey: ‘‘The (SV
Toolbox) exercise was much more motivating than traditional RCR. It made me
want to be a better scientist immediately.’’ If a scientific virtues-based approach can
consistently foster this sort of attitude, it will be a worthy complement to other
methods of science ethics training and help promote a culture of scientific integrity
grounded in ideals that are part of the very fabric of science.
Acknowledgments This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science
Foundation under Cooperative Agreement No. DBI-0939454 and by the John Templeton Foundation
under Cooperative Agreement No. 42023. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National
Science Foundation or the John Templeton Foundation. We thank James Foster and two anonymous
referees for helpful comments.
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, dis-
tribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original
author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were
made.
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