The gray area for incorruptible scientific research
pp. 149-164
in: Mauricio Surez, Mauro Dorato, Miklós Rédei (eds), Epsa epistemology and methodology of science, Berlin, Springer, 2010Abstract
In this paper I try to contribute to the discussion about incorruptible professional behavior in scientific research. For this purpose I take Merton's famous norms as a point of departure, not in order to note that scientists do not always conform to them, but to conceive them as "default-norms' by raising the question which deviations may be defensible and which ones are not. The emphasis will be on the norm of disinterestedness. I conclude with a brief discussion of the possibility and usefulness of subsuming all this in a general professional code for scientific researchers.