Standards of Scientific Conduct: Disciplinary Differences

Standards of Conduct for Mediators

Desirable scientific conduct.

M any scientists are aware of the subtle influences on their own scientific conduct, but many others are not. Sydney Brenner, the joint winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine, delightfully described a slide in which data points were scattered very close to a straight line— but a large mysterious black object lay in one corner. By degrees, the onlooker realizes that the object...

Building a Disciplinary Metadata Standards Directory

The Research Data Alliance (RDA) Metadata Standards Directory Working Group (MSDWG) is building a directory of descriptive, discipline-specific metadata standards. The purpose of the directory is to promote the discovery, access and use of such standards, thereby improving the state of research data interoperability and reducing duplicative standards development work. This work builds upon the ...

On Disciplinary Fragmentation and Scientific Progress

Why are some scientific disciplines, such as sociology and psychology, more fragmented into conflicting schools of thought than other fields, such as physics and biology? Furthermore, why does high fragmentation tend to coincide with limited scientific progress? We analyzed a formal model where scientists seek to identify the correct answer to a research question. Each scientist is influenced b...

Promoting scientific standards.

www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 327 1 JANUARY 2010 7 COVER Crystal structure of a molybdenum oxide nanowheel, 2.6 nanometers in diameter, around a smaller molybdenum oxide cluster. Miras et al. (page 72; related Perspective page 38) used a controlled-flow reactor to show that the central core serves as a transient template for the self-assembly of the nanowheel and is ultimately ejected to yield...