What you do not know about ethical science practice

Why should you have anything to learn about ethics in research if you are a good person who learned early about proper behavior? You know not to take things that belong to other people. You know not to cheat. You know all the clichés, so you do unto others as you would have others do unto you, and you give credit where credit is due. So, what else is there? Can’t we say that honest people will produce honest research?

Unfortunately, it is not that simple. We are complex creatures who may bias things in ways we don’t realize. Some people make a career studying this to fascinating effect, like Dan Ariely. The rest of us ignore their work and the implications for our own research to our peril, even if we are good, honest, fair people.

I suppose we can break it down to three areas: be fair…