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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 1996  > October  >
Chemistry Everyday for Everyone
Scientific Ethics in Chemical Education
Jeffrey Kovac
Department of Chemistry, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-1600
Cover
October 1996
Vol. 73 No. 10
p. 926
Abstract
Scientific ethics is a subset of professional ethics, the special rules of conduct adhered to by people engaged in those pursuits called professions. It is distinct from, but consistent with, both ordinary morality and moral theory. The codes of professional ethics derive from the two bargains that define a profession: the internal code of practice and the external bargain between the profession and society. While the informal code of professional conduct is well understood by working scientists, it is rarely explicitly included in the chemistry curriculum. Instead, we have relied on informal methods to teach students scientific ethics, a strategy that is haphazard at best. In this paper I argue that scientific ethics can and must be taught as part of the chemistry curriculum and that this is the best done through the case-study method. Many decisions made by working scientists have both a technical and an ethical component. Students need to learn how to make good decisions in professional ethics. The alternative is, at best, sloppy science and, at worst, scientific misconduct.

See Letter re: this article.
More Information
*  Citation
 Kovac, Jeffrey. J. Chem. Educ. 1996 73 926.
*  Keywords
 Curriculum
*  History
 Created:
Last Updated:		 September 22, 1999
February 21, 2006
Link to Letter added (May 2004).
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