Ethics in Science
Ethics in science - Mark Hocknull 29/10/25
The seminar begins with 2 case studies on scientists that took widely different approaches Daniel Bolnick and Jan Schon. Both involve the scientists discovering errors in their own papers, Daniel Bolnick choosing to retract his paper and Jan Schon choosing to publish his paper despite knowing his paper involved fraudulent data. Daniel Bolnick chose to retract his paper when he found an error in it. The one choosing to publish the fraudulent data leading to a large scandal while the other leading to a success.
The main portion of the seminar goes over 3 different ethical theories: kantian ethics, utilitarian ethics and virtue ethics. Kantian ethics is about following the rules correctly. Utilitarian ethics is about the needs of the many over the means of the few. Virtue ethics is about being a virtuous person rather than basing your actions on that. All branches of ethics try to decide right and wrong, however since the world is not simple each of the ethical theories have flaws in them.
Kantian ethics is largely about moral law. Kant believes that to be ethical people should act in a way that follows a common moral law. “In Kant’s terms, a good will is a fundamental commitment to always do what one’s deepest convictions demand or, as he often refers to this, to do what is required by the Moral Law.”[1]. Basically saying that Kant believes that to act justly you should act in accordance to the moral law. One major flaw with this is that if the moral laws are flawed then the morally just actions would also be flawed.
Utilitarian ethics is mostly about the good of a large population over the good of the user of the ethics. “Utilitarianism is also distinguished by impartiality and agent-neutrality. Everyone’s happiness counts the same”[2] overall this means that when following utilitarian ethics you act impartially to all people and prioritise taking the actions that benefit the largest number of people. One major flaw of utilitarian ethics is that some actions that benefit a large number of people may be harmful to a single individual. This could be seen as a downside by some as harming another person would be seen as widely unethical by most other ethical theories, even if the harming leads to a better outcome for others.
Virtue ethics is not necessarily about actions, but instead trying to be as virtuous as possible then taking the actions that the virtuous person would take. “The fully virtuous do what they should without a struggle against contrary desires; the continent have to control a desire or temptation to do otherwise”[3], overall this states that virtuous people make the right choices despite what they would otherwise usually want to do, leading the virtuous person to make the more morally just choices.
Overall there are many ethical theories, none of which actually 100% concrete. However while they are all flawed in a way I believe that someone trying to act ethically is inherently doing the correct thing and the act of attempting to be ethical is, by itself usally enough to be ethical.
[1] Johnson, Robert and Adam Cureton, “Kant’s Moral Philosophy”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2025 Edition), Edward N. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2025/entries/kant-moral/
[2] Driver, Julia, “The History of Utilitarianism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2025/entries/utilitarianism-history/
[3] Hursthouse, Rosalind and Glen Pettigrove, “Virtue Ethics”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/ethics-virtue/
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- The overall presentation of the blog is ok, you’ve got the name of the speaker and date and title. There are some cases where you could use better grammar to help your sentences flow a bit better to make it more readable, and you’ve misspelt Jan Schon’s name, although this might just be a copy/paste error with Blackboard.
Overall: Good
- You covered the main bit of the lecture with the ethics theories, but nothing past that. Arguably, the take home message of the lecture was how to be an ethical scientist, and you don’t really cover when Dr Hocknull was talking about this. I think for an accurate representation of the take home message, you at least need to go through the 6 values of a virtuous scientist and what these mean.
The retelling of the case studies is a bit misleading as well. You’ve almost implied that Bolnick’s success came from the fact he chose to retract his paper, but he was already a success scientist before this. It may also be worth explicitly noting that Bolnick’s error was a genuine error, he wasn’t aware of it until someone tried to replicate his data, but Schon’s was fraud.
Overall: Poor
- There’s not much contextualisation other than the examples given in the slides, but I think this is sufficient enough to give the reader an idea as to why this is an important topic. To further improve, you could put some hypotheticals about what fraudulent data can lead to (distrust in scientists, research based off flawed results, etc.).
Overall: Good
- Your external sources are very good, and help explain the three ethical theories presented in the lecture.
Overall: Excellent
- The writing style and technical level is appropriate for a layperson, but the writing could be made a bit more engaging.
Overall: Good
Overall, this is a good first draft and I love the use of quotes to explain the different ethical theories. I do, however, think you need to rewrite some sections to make them more readable and engaging, and add the section about how to be an ethical scientist to accurately cover the lecture’s take home message.