Ethical issues associated with the integrity of academic science and engineering are increasingly in the public spotlight. These issues include the falsification of experimental results, fabrication of data, conflicts of interest in industry-funded research, plagiarism, vulnerability of whistleblowers, and improper attribution of authorship for collaborators. Since science and engineering are interdisciplinary endeavors, the public perception of impropriety quickly spreads to all of its fields. Since they are global endeavors, norms and expectations need to be broadly applicable, but cultural differences among practitioners, academic hierarchies, pressures to publish, and inattention to the social climate of research present significant challenges to agreement on ethical rules. Difficulties in establishing and enforcing ethical norms and expectations threaten the secure accumulation of knowledge, the public perception of the integrity of academic science and engineering, financial support for scientific research, and acceptance of scientific results.
The RAISE project seeks to engage graduate students through a pilot project that will result in a code of ethics and integrity for research at the university. The RAISE project trains advanced graduate students as ?ethics educators? across the science and engineering fields to provide this instruction. This training emphasizes the pedagogy of problem-based learning and using small groups will lead to a process of consensus building and codes of ethics and integrity. The codes developed by each small group will then be evaluated and adjusted through a process known in the philosophical literature on ethics as ?reflective equilibrium.? Special attention will be given to whether the code is sensitive to culture, gender, and disciplinary differences. Ultimately, the goal is to provide the basis for a university-wide policy on research integrity.
