Abstract
Even if the “value-free ideal of science” (VFI) were an unattainable goal, one could ask: can it be a useful fiction, one that is beneficial for the research community and society? This question is particularly crucial for scholars and institutions concerned with research integrity (RI), as one cannot offer normative guidance to researchers without making some assumptions about what ideal scientific research looks like. Despite the insofar little interaction between scholars studying RI and those working on values in science, the overlap of topics and interests make collaboration between the two fields promising for understanding research and its ethics. Here, we identify—for the use of RI scholars—the non-epistemic reasons (societal, political, professional) for and against the VFI considered in the literature. All of these are concerned with the beneficial or detrimental consequences that endorsing the VFI would have on society, policy-making, or the scientific community, with some authors appealing to the same principles to argue for opposite positions. Though most of the reviewed articles do not endorse the VFI, it is generally agreed that some constraints have to be put on the use of non-epistemic values. Disagreement on the utility of the VFI lies both on the different epistemic-descriptive positions taken by different authors, and on the scarcity of relevant empirical studies. Engaging critically with the reasons here identified and more in general with the values in science debate will help the RI community decide whether the VFI should be included in future codes of conduct.
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Notes
There are many different interpretations of the VFI. The one we employ here comes very close to Heather Douglas’ (2009).
The very distinction underpinning the VFI, that between epistemic and non-epistemic values, has been criticized by authors like Phyllis Rooney and Helen Longino (Longino, 1996; Rooney, 1992, 2017). However, scholars involved in the debate have been keeping using this distinction, or similar ones. As we aim at offering an overview of the debate, we keep using it in our study, with no pretentions to vindicate it.
While virtues and values do not–strictly speaking–coincide, they are very much related. For instance, Rik Peels and colleagues claim that some of the principles of codes of conduct such as honesty “can be understood generally as a value—some good-making property that actions, studies, people, events, or instruments can have—or as a virtue, that is, as a moral or intellectual character trait of researchers or perhaps even teams and organizations.” (Peels et al., 2019, p. 4). In addition to this, the scope of the values in science debate has been so broad, that Justin Biddle has proposed to talk about “non-epistemic factors” rather than values (Biddle, 2013). Given these considerations, the virtues discussed by Pennock can be considered non-epistemic factors. We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing to this ambiguity.
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This research is part of a project funded by the FWO, Research Foundation – Flanders (Grant Number: G0D6920N).
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JA performed the literature search, data analysis, and drafted the article. KD and HD conceived the original idea for the research, revised the literature search, the data analysis, and the draft. All authors contributed to the definition of the research question and the design of the research, and approved the final version of the article.
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Ambrosj, J., Dierickx, K. & Desmond, H. The Value-Free Ideal of Science: A Useful Fiction? A Review of Non-epistemic Reasons for the Research Integrity Community. Sci Eng Ethics 29, 1 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-022-00427-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-022-00427-9