Thursday 18 June 2015 I participated in the intense international conference on research ethics and integrity at the Erasmus MC. It covered research practices in many different fields. The message from invited speakers and workshops was that sloppiness is the major threat to research integrity, rather than fraud. It also became apparent that normative ethics has a limited appeal; Ann Tenbrunsel argued convincingly that integrity discussions are more profound when informed by psychological insights on habits, biases, memory and decision making. In comes Behavioural Ethics. The discussions of recent cases of sloppiness, misconduct or fraud in, for example, medicine, economics and the corporate world were particularly illuminating. And so was the Co-Science show by Pandemonia Science Theatre They successfully addressed multiple integrity issues in a playful manner.
