Abstract
A “no ethics” principle has long been prevalent in science and has demotivated deliberation on scientific ethics. This paper argues the following: (1) An understanding of a scientific “ethos” based on actual “value preferences” and “value repugnances” prevalent in the scientific community permits and demands critical accounts of the “no ethics” principle in science. (2) The roots of this principle may be traced to a repugnance of human dignity, which was instilled at a historical breaking point in the interrelation between science and ethics. This breaking point involved granting science the exclusive mandate to pass judgment on the life worth living. (3) By contrast, respect for human dignity, in its Kantian definition as “the absolute inner worth of being human,” should be adopted as the basis to ground science ethics. (4) The pathway from this foundation to the articulation of an ethical duty specific to scientific practice, i.e., respect for objective truth, is charted by Karl Popper’s discussion of the ethical principles that form the basis of science. This also permits an integrated account of the “external” and “internal” ethical problems in science. (5) Principles of the respect for human dignity and the respect for objective truth are also safeguards of epistemic integrity. Plain defiance of human dignity by genetic determinism has compromised integrity of claims to knowledge in behavioral genetics and other behavioral sciences. Disregard of the ethical principles that form the basis of science threatens epistemic integrity.
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Notes
In Dorothy Nelkin and Susan Lindee’s (2007) words, Watson himself “has… promoted a new eugenics. In publications, lectures, and interviews over the last two decades, he has repeatedly emphasized the promise of new genetic technologies that could enhance personal control over reproduction” (p. 203).
In Autonomy and Trust in Bioethics, Onora O’Neill (2003) has particularly stressed that Kant “never speaks of an autonomous self or autonomous persons or autonomous individuals, but rather of the autonomy of reason, of the autonomy of ethics, of the autonomy of principles and of the autonomy of willing” (p. 83, original italics). She argued that this non-individualistic view of autonomy provides a stronger basis for an approach to ethical problems not only in medicine, but also in science and biotechnology, than the conceptions of individual autonomy.
Left–wing eugenicist Julian Huxley (1963) admitted in 1962 that evidence for this postulate was “mainly deductive” (p. 289). This concession came in response to biologist Jacob Bronowski’s protest that he “knows no evidence for” deterioration of populations (Wolstenholm (Ed.) 1963: 285). For Huxley (1963), nevertheless, the alleged deduction was based on a fact: “that we are preserving many more genetically defective people than before, and are getting a lot of radioactive fallout” (p. 289). But assumption of such a “fact” of genetic degeneration was soon to be “dispelled by the new concepts and the theories of genetics” (Roll–Hansen 2010: 86).
A critical evaluation of the existing literature on epistemic integrity is beyond the scope of this paper.
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Ackowledgments
The authors are particularly grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments. Some of the arguments of this paper were first developed by the authors in two earlier papers in Turkish: Bilim ahlakının etik temellendirilmesi: Hakikate ve insan onuruna saygı ilkeleri (Ethical justification of the moral codes in scientific research: Respect for truth and for human dignity), Yükseköğretim ve Bilim Dergisi/Journal of Higher Education and Science, 5(2), 2015, 109–124; Bilim insanlarının bilime yönelik sorumluluklarının etik temellendirilmesi (Ethical justification of scientists’ responsibilities towards science), to be published by the same journal.
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Aközer, M., Aközer, E. Basing Science Ethics on Respect for Human Dignity. Sci Eng Ethics 22, 1627–1647 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-015-9731-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-015-9731-4