Baker Institute Rice Faculty Scholar | Herbert S. Autrey Chair in Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology
By Elaine Howard Ecklund, David R. Johnson and Kirstin R.W. Matthews
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In physics, extensive collaborations, access to colleagues’ data and rigorous peer review make it extremely difficult for individual researchers to bend the rules. Furthermore, physics does not harbor the types of ethical minefields characteristic of the biosciences. No thorny questions arise pertaining to human or animal life, nor do physicists commonly grapple with the ethical haze of intellectual property when patents and money are at stake. Things seem to be black and white in physics. But are they?
