Ethics among Physicists in Cross-National Perspective

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This study seeks to find out how physicists in the United States, China, and the United Kingdom approach the ethical issues surrounding research integrity and their relationships with industry. The primary data collection will consist of 225 interviews with a sample of physicists at various stages of their careers who work in research universities or research institutes in the three national contexts. We will ask: How do physicists perceive the meaning of research integrity and misconduct? Under what conditions is one obliged to act when research misconduct has occurred? What are the potential conflicts of interest (if any) of industry's role in research? Is the ideal of a borderless scientific community consistent with the national character of research, and is this relationship relevant to issues of research integrity among physicists? Do physicists perceive the ethics training they receive (if they receive any) as relevant to the ethical issues they face? The study begins to fill the lacunae of data that exists on how scientists understand ethical issues in relation to science, and how such views differ across local and national contexts. Intellectual Merits: The research will specifically explore the relationships among science, ethics, and society in a way that complements recent studies of science in national and international contexts. Existing laboratory studies are foundational to understanding how scientists view ethics, yet few broadly examine scientists? own ethical views. The study is a cross-sectional interview-based study rather than a case study, meaning it will complement existing research while significantly expanding upon it. The research will provide a snapshot of pan-communal attitudes, which can be integrated at the aggregate with the wealth of existing microscale perspectives provided by social science studies of the natural sciences. A large qualitative study like ours will contribute to a better understanding of how physicists perceive and gain clarity on what constitutes research integrity and the appropriate relationship between research and industry. Other work highlights the constantly shifting ways scientists overcome uncertainty. Sociologists once thought scientists deployed well-articulated norms - i.e., a bureaucratic-rational approach - to overcome uncertainties about proper scientific conduct. But closer examination reveals that even at the forefront of modern research fields (and perhaps especially here), we find extensive appeals to charismatic authority to foreclose, or at least bracket, such uncertainties. In the natural sciences especially, where research often involves extensive international collaboration, it is important to understand how varying approaches to research integrity might contribute to the success or failure of collaborations, yet there is scant research on this topic. In addition to remedying this knowledge gap, the results of our research will guide and advance specific changes in ethics education for physicists in different national contexts.Educational and Broader Impact: Study findings will be widely disseminated via lectures based on our results, a website, and publications for both academics (particularly those in the ethics community) and general audiences. This study will also involve extensive mentoring of undergraduate research assistants, and insights from the research findings will be used in courses for graduate-level physics students and science policy students. In particular, the PI and co-PIs will provide undergraduates and graduate students training related to science ethics and the development of science policy, during which students will acquire a better understanding of research methods and social science approaches to studying ethics among scientists. Public policy briefs based on our findings will be created (in both English and Chinese) and used to interact with the scientific community and science policy makers in order to demonstrate how varying approaches to science ethics (especially issues of research integrity) might influence international scientific collaborations.