The Morality of Scientific Openness
by: Christian Munthe & Stellan Welin
Science and Engineering Ethics, vol. 4, no. 2, 1996, pp. 411-428
Reprinted in Junker, K & Ott, K 1998 (eds.), Science and the
public. More than just 'doing what's right': Ethics and science, London
1998: The Open University.
Abstract
The ideal of scientific openness - i.e. the idea that scientific information
should be freely accessible to interested parties - is strongly supported
throughout the scientific community. At the same time, however, this ideal
does not appear to be absolute in the everyday practice of science. In
order to get the credit for new scientific advances, scientists often keep
information to themselves. Also, it is common practice to withhold information
obtained in commissioned research when the scientist has agreed with his
or her employer to do so. The secrecy may be intended for ever, as in the
military area, but also temporarily until a patent application has been
made. The paper explores to what extent such secrecy is undesirable, as
seems to be suggested by the ideal of scientific openness. Should this
ideal be interpreted as having certain exceptions which make the above-mentioned
practices acceptable? Are there, on closer inspection, good arguments for
the ideal of scientific openness, and for officially upholding it? Possible
versions of the ideal of scientific openness is explored and the issue
is found to be rather complex, allowing for wide variations depending on
the acting parties, beneficiaries, types of information and moral requirements
involved. We case that the arguments usually given in favour of this ideal
are weaker than what seems to be generally believed, and that, on closer
inspection, they leave plenty of room for exceptions to it. These exceptions
only partly cover the actual practice of withholding scientific information,
and there may still be good reason to advocate, teach and enforce the ideal
of scientific openness within the scientific community.
Key words: scientific information, scientific openness, scientific
secrecy, research ethics, ethics of science, science policy.
Back to the bibliography, please!