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A New Breakthrough In The Annals Of Academic Ethics

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A new definition of research misconduct:

My previous post illustrated numerous ethical conflicts that can arise for researchers. But when it comes to conflicts between your conscience and your colleagues, or the public and your colleagues, any perceived responsibility to your colleagues has to take a back seat.

But it seems that in academic science, responsibility to your colleagues and their opinions, their declarations of consensus, their reputations, is apparently regarded by many researchers as the paramount consideration, viz. the circling of the wagons that occurred in Climategate.

This concern about ‘responsibility’ to your colleagues seems only to extend to colleagues who happen to agree with you.

Academic science, and academia in general, is very, very sick.

2 thoughts on “A New Breakthrough In The Annals Of Academic Ethics”

  2. A good scholar’s first responsibility to their colleagues is truth and honesty. Allowing them to continue blindly with an error is doing them no favors in the end. This should have no conflict with conscience or duty to the public.

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