Scientific Integrity: A Pragmatist Examination of Theory and Practice in the Ethics of Inquiry

Scientific Integrity:A Pragmatist Examination of Theory and Practice in the Ethics of Inquiry Catherine Legg

Overview The Problem: Ethics of Inquiry as Theory or Practice? Clarifying the Ethics of Inquiry Peirce on Ethics Peirce on the Ideal of Truth An Initial Peircean Solution A Charge of Naivety and Impending Disaster A Peircean Response

In the 1970s and 80s some rather shocking examples of scientific misconduct were widely publicised. • Elias Alsabtiwas an Iraqi medical student who somehow obtained a reputation as a cancer researcher, moved to the US and held a series of jobs at cancer research institutes, moving on when his lack of knowledge became apparent. • He published over 50 articles which were entirely plagiarized from lesser-known journals. • Some of the journals failed to retract the publications even after Alsabti was exposed. • Later a report surfaced that Alsabti had died in S. Africa. But there was some suspicion that this report came from Alsabti himself, and given his publishing history…

William Summerlinworked at the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, and claimed to have invented a new method to transplant tissue from genetically unrelated animals without rejection by the recipient. This would have been invaluable for transplant medicine. • As evidence, Summerlin presented white mice with black patches on their backs, claiming skin had been transplanted to them from black mice. • However he was observed in the workplace lift, late for a meeting, drawing black marks on white mice with a felt pen. When confronted he admitted fraud. • He said his behaviour was due to “work-place stress.”

These early scandals were harbingers of a wave of cases worldwide, which seemed to many to show that the halls of research harboured serious misconduct, which urgently required fixing. • It therefore seems that there is such a thing as ethics of inquiry. But how should it be demarcated and understood? And how does it relate to general ethics? • A particularly important question: Should correction of scientific misconduct come from insideor outside science?

‘Inside’ and ‘Outside’ Science • By inside is meant: allowing scientists to deal with such cases as they see fit. • By outside is meant: introducing greater external regulation of science, from sources such as government or the general public (crucially: including people not scientifically trained).

The Relation between Ethics and Ethics of Inquiry • The late C20th saw a gradual spread of applied ethics across the professions. We now have medical ethics, journalistic ethics, engineering ethics…. Professional ethicists have been instrumental in setting up these new fields. • In this framework, it seems to many that the ethics of inquiry is merely a special case of whichever general (‘normative’) ethical theory one holds. The ethics of inquiry is deducible from the theory plus the particular circumstances of seeking the truth. • We might see this as an ethical analogue of Hempel’s deductive ‘covering law’ model of explanation in science: PARTICULAR FACTS PREDICTION

The Relation between Ethics and Ethics of Inquiry • In ethics, the model is arguably applied something like this: • I will call this a deductivist relation between ethical theory and practice. NORMATIVE MORAL THEORY SPECIFIC SITUATION RIGHT ACTION Ensure the greatest utility for the greatest number of people 1 fat man on bridge, heavy enough to stop runaway trolley about to run over 5 people Push man off bridge into path of runaway trolley PARTICULAR FACTS PREDICTION

The Relation between Ethics and Ethics of Inquiry • I believe that when it comes to research, to inquiry, this deductivist model of ethics is simplistic, and also damaging to professional life. • But to explain why this is so is not easy under our current philosophical framework. • I believe that Peirce’s pragmatism gives us unique and valuable tools to analyse why it might be so. • In particular, we need to think carefully about the relationship between theory and practice – something that is pragmatism’s particular specialty.

Why the nature and ground of the ethics of inquiry is a particularly deep question • Consider the ethicists tasked with working out the ethics of inquiry. • One activity these ethicists might engage in is to design courses which budding researchers are all required to pass as part of their training, before they are let loose on real-world research. • But ethics is itself a branch of inquiry. • So…shouldn’t ethicists be forced to take and pass their own courses before being trusted to inquire…into the ethics of inquiry? • There seems to be something paradoxical here. • Recognition of this goes back at least to Plato’s Meno, with its talk of the “paradox of inquiry”, and its raising of the great question: Can virtue be taught?(And if not, then what?)

Why the nature and ground of the ethics of inquiry is a particularly deep question To put the same point another way: • Inquiry is something we can talk about, take as a subject matter (try to put in propositional form, ‘make it explicit’) • But inquiry is also something we do. It governs how any propositions about inquiry that we might manage to capture are interpreted, and used. • (We’re doing it now…) • To guarantee ‘good epistemic behaviour’, it seems that we would need to make that interpretation and use explicit also. I think that Dewey may have had something like this in mind when he famously remarked that all philosophy is philosophy of education.

Untangling the issues: The way forward • Define and delimit ethics of inquiry (from near rivals) • Explore how Peirce understood ethics as both the study and the development of ideals. • Explore the ideals of inquiry. • Draw on Peirce’s account of the ideals of inquiry to defend a purely internal approach to controlling scientific misconduct (with regard to the ethics of inquiry, so defined) • Consider a charge of naivety and impending disaster • Answer a charge of naivety and impending disaster

Define and delimit ethics of inquiry • What issues one considers to fall under / be guided by the ethics of inquiry is not neutral as to the philosophical position one takes on these matters. • I want to distinguish ethics of inquiry as I am considering it from research ethics as now widely discussed in philosophical literature. • The matter will be subtle as there are some issues in common to both, but other issues outside the purview of each, as it considers itself. • So let’s look at some issues:

Define and delimit ethics of inquiry ISSUES OF “RESEARCH ETHICS”: • Falsifying and fabricating data • Plagiarism • Conflict of interest (e.g. refereeing) • Treatment of research subjects • Meeting democratic ideals (e.g. researching 3rd-world diseases, avoiding racially inflammatory hypotheses) Heather Douglas Peircean ethics of inquiry Philip Kitcher Ethics of inquiry as I will define it pertains strictly to one’s conduct as a seeker for truth. So if a researcher sells equipment from his lab to feed his gambling addiction, but otherwise performs well-designed and fruitful experiments there, this is morally egregious but not qua ethics of inquiry.

Peirce’s Understanding of Ethics • Peirce’s ethics is sketchy and only touched on in a long life which was, “from the moment when [he] could think at all… diligently and incessantly occupied with the study of methods [of] inquiry” (CP 1.3). • But it is nonetheless rich, and shows the uniqueness and distilled originality characteristic of his thinking. • I am going to take as my guide to Peirce’s mature ethics a remark he made in the 1902 Minute Logic: “…ethics has been, and always must be, a theatre of discussion for the reason that its study consists in the gradual development of a distinct recognition of a satisfactory aim. It is a science of subtleties, no doubt; but it is not logic, but the development of the ideal, which really creates and resolves the problems of ethics.” (Peirce, 1902)

Peirce’s Understanding of Ethics • Peirce’s thinking on ethics evolved through a number of stages (ably charted by, for e.g. Massecar, 2013) • I will discuss two main positions: • In the 1898 Harvard Lectures, Peirce suggests that ethics is a purely practical endeavour, guided only by instinct (sentimentalism). • So here the model of ethical deductivism is decisively rejected • In the 1902 Minute Logic and 1903 Harvard Lectures, Peirce gradually developed a new recognition of the importance of ethical theory. But his understanding of the nature of that theory is very different than supposed by current “normative theories of ethics” • So the model of ethical deductivism is here again rejected

1898: Peirce’s ethical Sentimentalism • Here Peirce argues important decisions about right and wrong should be left to instinct, as it has been bred into creatures over countless years of evolution, but it is only very recently that we have developed the ability to consider questions from a theoretical point of view, and such capacities are correspondingly more fragile, as well as confusing in their potential breadth. • Thus Peirce is a sentimentalist about morality. The opposing view he calls philosophical rationalism. • The danger of ethical rationalism is not just excessive conservatism, or clinging to one’s prejudices. It is equally exposed to too much wild fluctuation in ethical belief. Peirce here presents an interesting (somewhat searing) example from sexual morality: “We do not say that sentiment is never to be influenced by reason, nor that under no circumstances would we advocate radical reforms. We only say that the man who…would precipitately change his code of morals, at the dictate of a philosophy of ethics – who would, let us say, hastily practice incest – is a man whom we should consider unwise…”

1898: Peirce’s ethical sentimentalism • At the same time Peirce acknowledges that instincts do shift over time under the influence of reason. • However, this process more closely resembles organic growth than a deductive argument. Its results cannot be anticipated in advance of lived experience: “Instinct is capable of development and growth – though by a movement which is slow in the proportion to which it is vital…” • In attempting to shortcut this process, ethical ‘rationalism’ can do profound damage to human mores.

1902-3: The emergence of ethical theory • In the Minute Logic Peirce writes that he has only recently realized that logic is only the third of the normative sciences, being “preceded by Esthetics and Ethics”(CP 2.197). • Although for many years he “doubted very much whether [ethics] was anything more than a practical science”, he is now beginning to understand the purpose of ethical theory, and to place it in “all the intimacy of its relation with Logic” (CP 2.198). • In his 5th 1903 Harvard lecture, he states firmly, “Normative science is not a skill, nor…an investigation conducted with a view to the production of a skill” (CP 5.125). • He also clarifies that the scientific purpose of Ethics is not pronouncing things to be right and wrong, but understanding what rightness and wrongness are:

1902-3: The emergence of ethical theory • To define ethics as the science of right and wrong is like defining physics as, for example, the science of measuring gravitational forces. • This would be a mistake because: a) it doesn’t make any sense without an account of what gravitational forces are, which can only be given in physics, b) it forecloses on physics being able to develop any more sophisticated concepts with which to study the mutual attraction of massive bodies. “We are too apt to define ethics to ourselves as the science of right and wrong. That cannot be correct, for the reason that right and wrong are ethical conceptions which it is the business of that science to develop and justify. A science cannot have for its fundamental problem to distribute objects among categories of its own creation.” (CP 2,198)

1902-3: The emergence of ethical theory • This thinking led Peirce to develop some criticisms of the mainstream ethics of his day which still apply today. • Here is his view on ‘vulgar utilitarianism’ (consequentialism): “The Utilitarian’s fault does not lie in his pressing too much the question of what would be the good of this or that. On the contrary, his fault is that he never presses the question half far enough, or rather he never really raises the question at all. He simply rests in his present desires as if desire were beyond all dialectic. He wants, perhaps to go to heaven. But he forgets what would be the good of his going to heaven. He would be happy there, he thinks. But that is a mere word. It is no real answer to the question.” (CP 5.158)

1902-3: The emergence of ethical theory • How is ethical theory to be developed then? He suggests that we need to develop a much deeper understanding of norms by looking at what a norm is. This understanding, far from being provided by the practical application of Ethics: • In other words, Peirce does not think that such a science of ideals is something we can understand now, although he never says that we can’t understand it. “…may equally have its origin in the circumstance that the science which presents it is so very abstract, so alien to any experiential lineage, that ideals alone, in place of positive facts of experience, can be its proper objects.” (CP 2.46) Let us now turn to Peirce’s account of the specific ideal of science

The Ideals of Science • Peirce understands science very broadly, as the process of finding out the truth about any subject matter. (Not just the natural sciences). • So in order to know how Peirce understands science, we need to know how he understands truth. The two terms are duals for him. (Obviously, this is ‘science’ understood normatively not descriptively) • This raises the following interesting questions: What is an account of truth meant to do? What questions are we trying to answer? What problems are we trying to solve? And if we were to solve them, what would it look like on the other side? • Is the concept of an account of truth even coherent? (Rorty)

Truth • Criterion of truth: a desideratum that we could apply to our beliefs and thereby determine whether those beliefs are true (or, failing that, are more likely to be true). • E.g. A belief is true if and only if it is...sufficiently well justified / caused by the things that it is ‘about’ / self-evident / socially accepted ... • What I see as one of the biggest lessons of pragmatism: Give up the search for criteria of truth. It is a pipe-dream. • But does that mean we should stop talking about truth altogether, as philosophers? • Some pragmatists have taught that, e.g. Rorty: “‘[I]t is true’ is not a helpful explanation of why science works, or of why you should share one of my beliefs”(1985, p.286) • Peirce’s pragmatism, however, shows us another way.

Peirce’s definition of truth and what it means • Peirce famously defined truth as follows: • In other words: Truth is what lies at the limit of inquiry. • Note how this definition: The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth (1878).

Peirce’s definition of truth and what it means • Peirce famously defined truth as follows: • In other words: Truth is what lies at the limit of inquiry. • Note how this definition: • links to a community – the community of inquiry The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth (1878).

Peirce’s definition of truth and what it means • Peirce famously defined truth as follows: • In other words: Truth is what lies at the limit of inquiry. • Note how this definition: • links to a community – the community of inquiry • links to a process – the process of inquiry The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth (1878).

Peirce’s definition of truth and what it means • Peirce famously defined truth as follows: • In other words: Truth is what lies at the limit of inquiry. • Note how this definition: • links to a community – the community of inquiry • links to a process – the process of inquiry • links to the future As Peirce reached the end of his life, he softened this idea of fatedness from ‘will-be’ to ‘would-be’: “If Truth consists in satisfaction, it cannot be any actual satisfaction, but must be the satisfaction which would ultimately be found if the inquiry were pushed to its ultimate and indefeasible issue” [1901] The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth (1878).

Fallibilism • Inquiry is a process. We never reach a point where we have the entire truth and inquiry can cease. • Given that we manage to negotiate the world without too many nasty surprises, we can assume that many of our beliefs are true. • However, we can never be sure which of our beliefs are the true ones. This is Peirce’s commitment to fallibilism. • This commitment to fallibilism is ‘operationalized’ in the way Peirce defines the community of inquiry as containing infinitely many inquirers and stretching across infinite time. • This allows that no matter how wide a consensus exists on a given belief, it is always possible that another inquirer will come along, at a later time, and manage to overturn it. “…out of a contrite fallibilism, combined with a high faith in the reality of knowledge, and an intense desire to find things out, all my philosophy has always seemed to me to grow” (1902).

The End of Inquiry • Peirce’s definition of truth is often summarised in the slogan: Truth is the end of inquiry. • This is correct but the phrase is crucially ambiguous. • This is not ‘end’ in the sense of finish: some utopian future time where all questions are settled. • It is ‘end’ in the teleological sense of aim or goal. • It is merely an idealised continuation of what scientific inquirers are doing now, namely settling questions about which they genuinely doubt. • This answers the profound misunderstanding of Bertrand Russell in his critique of Peirce that because “the last man on earth”, “will presumably be entirely occupied in keeping warm and getting nourishment, it is doubtful whether his opinions will be any wiser than ours” (1939, 145)

Epistemic Managerialism • We have seen Peirce’s fallibilism teaches that there is no criterion of truth. • This means that the solution for poor opinions is not necessarily, as one would naturally assume it be: attempting to dictate methods that must be followed to avoid error. • One might dub this: Epistemic Managerialism. • We avoid epistemic managerialism by recognising that: The solution for poor opinions is more opinions.Apply more perspectives to the problem and trust the process of inquiry. • As pragmatists we trust that as we are all located in the one world, and interacting with it, false beliefs will be found to have uncomfortable consequences, which will motivate us to correct them. • If a belief is never found to have uncomfortable consequences by any person across all time, what does it mean to say that the belief is false?

A communicational conception of science • Joseph Ransdell makes the same point by claiming that the norms of science may be fully understood through its norms of publication. These, as he understands them, are the following: • Interestingly, this reconceives objectivity in a way that is not metaphysical (as it is so often understood to be in mainstream realisms of various forms) but logical. A discourse is “object-ive” insofar as it is organized around and controlled by an object (and not some other desideratum). Scientific publication proper…is (1) communication that occurs within a special public (2) which consists of all persons – living dead and as yet unborn – with a common interest in a certain subject matter…and (3) the common interest being to come to a better understanding of that subject matter…and (4) who understand that what binds them together in a communicational community is not their personal affinities and likenesses but their common concern that that subject matter should be increasingly well understood by all who are similarly concerned. (Ransdell, 1998)

A communicational conception of science • Only steadfast focus on such an object can enable us to engage in self-correction, which otherwise is a something of a contradiction in terms. • This is so particularly as, as Michael Polanyi has noted, “It is part of [the scientist’s] commission to revise and renew by pioneer achievements the very standards by which his work is to be judged” (Polanyi, 1974, p. 16) • In the 1970s Richard Feynman delivered a famous commencement speech at Caltech on the topic of “Cargo Cult Science”. He defined this as science which follows “all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation”, but gathers no truth because it is “missing something essential”. What is missing, he claims, is something that is never taught explicitly but “We just hope you’ve caught on by osmosis”: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that. (Feynman, 1974).

A communicational conception of science • He explicates the “missing essential” further as: …a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty – a kind of leaning over backwards…Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them…the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution, not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another. The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson Oil doesn’t soak through food. Well that’s true…but the thing I’m talking about is not just a matter of being dishonest, it’s a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will – including Wesson Oil. (Feynman, 1974).

Inquiry Grows • When the right object is found, self-correcting inquiry will grow: • Peirce means this organic metaphor literally. • In a paper written 6 years earlier he explored the idea that bringing about growth in those things that are capable of growing is a form of love, the highest form of love – “evolutionary love”. [I]nquiry of every type, fully carried out, has the vital power of self-correction and of growth. This is a property so deeply saturating its inmost nature that it may truly be said that there is but one thing needful for learning the truth, and that is a hearty and active desire to learn what is true. If you really want to learn the truth, you will, by however devious a path, be surely led into the way of truth, at last. No matter how erroneous your ideas of the method may be at first, you will be forced at length to correct them so long as your activity is moved by that sincere desire. [Even] if you only half desire it, at first, that desire would at length conquer all others, could experience continue long enough. [1898]

Inquiry Grows • These organic metaphors contrast with the mechanism of a rule-based approach to ethics. (A bureaucracy is arguably a machine whose parts are persons.) • For Peirce aficionadoes: Peirce has an explication of the difference between these two approaches in terms of his categories of Thirdness and Secondness respectively. That what are effectively two different forms of necessity have been conflated in Modern philosophy has been arguably a source of much confusion and distress in our approach to ethics. • Given the essentially communal nature of science, Peirce suggests it is not too much of a stretch to think of it as a living organism, which reproduces itself, and grows. • So scientific integrity is more than just the integrity of scientists, whether they behave well or poorly, taken as individuals. • Scientific integrity is the integrity of science, the health of the living organism, taken as a whole.

We will now bring what we have learned so far back to the issue of how best to deal with scientific misconduct.

Scientific Misconduct: A Problem of Theory or Practice? Peirce’s ethical framework creates a split between: • a general theory of norms which underlie inquiry. This is theoretical but very abstract. It doesn’t speak directly to our issues, e.g. what to do about Elias Alsabti. • real lived scientific practices. These do speak directly to our issues, but have no clear link to universalizable rules. It points us towards consulting scientists’ rich practical instincts about right and wrong conduct when doing research, which cannot be fully captured in any set of general instructions.

A PeirceanInternalist Ethics of Inquiry • Insofar as the institution of science is slipping ethically, it should be allowed to amend itself from the inside via scientists’ instinctsabout right and wrong research practice, developed communally through the history of the discipline. • This communal heritage does not need justification via codified rules, but it arguably needs a lot more institutional support. • Slippage in such institutional support is arguably part of the reason that the kinds of abuses discussed at the start of this presentation apparently escalated when they did. • The 1970s in the so-called “hard” sciences were the early days of our now near-universal regime of research funding through competitive grant applications. • Already in the early 70s a senior Physics Professor famously remarked that his job was not to do science himself but to “feed his research students’ children”.

A Charge of Naivety and Impending Disaster • How realistic is this beautifully pure vision of a self-correcting community of individuals motivated only by the desire to further the cause of truth? • There is much evidence that it is how scientists do (or did) genuinely think. Inthis regard, the story of what actually happened in 1980s in US re. cases of scientific misconduct mentioned earlier is interesting. • Congress’ oversight committee got involved and issued a warning to the scientific community that it needed to stop such cases occurring. • Scientists paid no heed. They came out with statements which may be construed on Peircean lines: the problems come from just a few ‘bad apples’. Science is self-correcting and we should keep the status quo. • Congress, and the American public, saw this as arrogant and got angry. They saw scientists as setting themselves up as a “professional peerage” or “priesthood”, with no accountability to wider society.

A Charge of Naivety and Impending Disaster • Marcel Lafollette (Associate Research Professor of Science and Technology Policy, George Washington University)comments, somewhat darkly, “Although Americans want a continuance of the economic affluence attributed to science and technology and are still willing to support University research to achieve it, they are increasingly demanding a more predictable return on their investment…” • One might argue that the need for external governance is inevitable now that there is so much income (both grants and IP) and prestige generated by science • In fact, it is the very purity of spirit possessed by the scientific organism provides the argument that it must be protected from the baser motives that often drive humans. • Why would any human being devote their energy to disseminating the truth purely for its own sake, in the absence of external rewards, and external mechanisms to ensure that they are conforming to “the right way” of behaving in research environment?

Answering the Charge of Naivety • Why would any human being devote their energy to disseminating the truth purely for its own sake, without external “carrots and sticks”? Is the scientific organism unable to fight off its own cancers and viruses? • Let us examine some recent innovations in the online world:

Retraction Watch • Retraction Watch (http://retractionwatch.com)is a blog that reports retractions of scientific papers, and discusses related issues. Motto: “Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process” • Begun in April 2010 by Ivan Oransky (managing editor of Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News and Anesthesiology News) and Adam Marcus (medical journalist and global editorial director of MedPage Today). • Goal: to increase the transparency of the retraction process, previously unannounced, with the reasons never publicised. Some journal editors have resisted the bloggers’ request for their reasons for retraction. (“It’s none of your damn business,” and “if you get divorced from your wife, the public doesn’t need to know the details”) • Interestingly the blog has overseen a notable increase in retractions, from 2010 when they “wondered if we’d have enough material” to now at 500-600 per year:

Retraction Watch April 20, 2016 April 21, 2016

Retraction Watch April 22, 2016 April 23, 2016…and so on

Retraction Watch • The bloggers pay particular attention to citation statistics for retracted papers:

PubPeer • PubPeer is a website set up to allow scientists to engage in “post-publication peer review” (under their own names or anonymously). Even newer than Retraction Watch, it was set up in 2012 by a coalition of early career researchers. • It has already received considerable uptake by the scientific community as a forum for reporting errors and alleged fraud which slip past the limited resources of pre-publication refereeing. • It has led to a number of high-profile retractions reported in Retraction Watch (e.g. two recent Nature papers by Haruko Obokata, that falsely claimed to detail a new way to create stem cells.) • As such it has drawn some legal heat. Fazlul Sarkar, a professor in cancer research at Wayne State University claims that anonymous comments posted on PubPeer about his research led to the withdrawal of a $350,000 p.a. job offer by the University of Mississippi. Sarkar has subpoenaed to demand the identity of the commenters so that he can sue them. PubPeer has refused to comply.

PubPeer • There seems to be a considerable fear amongst certain senior academics of being targeted by a less-powerful person with a grudge who will use anonymity to escape accountability for their comments. • It’s interesting to ponder this issue from a Peircean perspective. • The fallibilist maxim: “The solution for poor opinions is more opinions”would seem to suggest that if the anonymous reviewing is genuinely open, it should be allowed to run its course. • PubPeer has defended its anonymous reviewing as follows: “Abusive comments with no substance are both ineffective and easily spotted. Conversely, if a comment makes a valid point, the motivation for posting it is irrelevant. The worst we see is misguided comments made because of some misunderstanding – but, in that case, the authors or other users can explain, and it is probably beneficial for such explanations to be available to all.” (cited in THE, Nov 13, 20124)

PubPeer • It is very interesting to read PubPeer’s own commentary on the legal case on its blog. (*Note extensive worldwide communications)

Conclusion • Ransdell has drawn on his communicational conception of science to argue that scientific integrity cannot be lost as long as the scientific community continues to communicate scientifically with each other. In that sense, scientific integrity can only be lost ‘from the inside’: • This is the good news, and the bad news. • Michael Polanyi, makes a similar point: ….the sciences need not worry about the attempts of the academic politicians to politicize science; for this will typically take the form of attempting entry into the professional communication loop and interrupting the normal flow of communication by diverting it to preoccupation with matters with which it has no proper concern, and the interlopers cannot do this without the unwitting concurrence of the scientific community itself. (Ransdell, 1998)

Scientific Integrity: A Pragmatist Examination of Theory and Practice in the Ethics of Inquiry