Ethics in Science

Knowing the giants on whom we stand.

Posted on by substantiafup

In a world where the main keywords are money, power, visibility, updates, fast and quick – possibly with as low reasoning as possible – we wonder what kind of cultural background and interests should have a young researcher in science.

Just to clarify the point, let me observe that when we read the list of references at the bottom of a research paper we often instinctively check “how old” those references are: the more recent the better. Like in a perpetual rush.

A good antidote against this short memory syndrome is to take some time in reading about history and philosophy of science (in our case Chemistry). And maybe care about ethics as well.

In his editorial to the third issue of Substantia, Joachim Schummer points out the essential reasons why this is so important (1). It is not just the matter of impressing colleagues on a nice topic during the gala dinner at an international conference.

Instead it is a matter of being a real scientist, i.e. someone who is able to challenge well-set scientific (provisional) theories and beliefs.

Philosophy is necessary because it prompts the scientist to ask for uneasy questions, such as “what is the goal of my research”?

History of Chemistry is crucial to understand the flow of discoveries and theories, as nobody has ever got up from the bed to write down some strange equation, but research and discoveries are a slow and often painful process of trials, errors, deceptions and intuitions (2).

Ethics will hopefully help us understand what the consequences of a new chemical, or of a new process will be for our community.

By the way, science came out of philosophy. And the acronym PhD means Philosophiae doctor.

 

  1. Schummer, Substantia 2018, 2, 5.
  2. G. De Gennes, Substantia 2017, 1, 37.

Open Access and Public Engagement

Posted on by substantiafup

Science plays an important part in our society and Open Access can help improving the general public’s understanding of it by increasing the visibility, and popularity of academic research and making it easily accessible.
We need to create a link between specialists and the public, based on the interpretation, simplification and rewriting of scholarly communication under the oversight of our scientific community.
We need to improve the public’s comprehension of scientific articles in order to make our readers more aware of the achievements and advances of science and the efforts made to earn them. To do so, we need to make the source, the original articles and data freely available.
Hence, Open Access will spread knowledge and new technologies in scholarly communication, while being the instrument that will encourage the usage of such material, breaking down the barriers that have always divided science from society.
In fact, researchers are looking for technical, specialist journals with a high “impact factor”, but are also willing to offer their work to the greatest possible number of readers. There will be benefits for both the communities and the participation of the general public in scientific literature will be incited.
Open Access is a powerful instrument for the democratization of science. Its spread is even making us reconsider the nature itself of science, because it is assuming a more ambitious meaning, it is evolving into something open and publicly involved. Still, a lot of work has to be done and the concept of “public” has to be revised as it should be an active part in a broader debate starting from the reflection on the importance and value of a public for science itself.
We can involve members of the public in research in a variety of ways such as:
– identifying and prioritising research topics;
– identifying outcome measures
– commenting on sheets and other documents which are used to communicate with research;
– commenting on the feasibility of the design undertaking research projects;
– commenting on or helping to develop summaries of research findings.
– making research more relevant so that the research results are more likely to be useful;
– improving the communication of findings to the wider public providing information on the progress of the research as well as the final results.
We think that crucial could be a impact of public involvement on the ethical aspects of research to make research more ethical and produce better outcomes.  We need the public involvement in research projects and journals ethics committee to offer guidance on public involvement himself within ethical review.