Even though integrity is widely considered to be an essential aspect of research, there is an ongoing debate on what actually constitutes research integrity. The understanding of integrity ranges from the minimal, only considering falsification, fabrication and plagiarism, to the maximum, blending into science ethics. Underneath these obvious contrasts, there are more subtle differences that are not as immediately evident. The debate about integrity is usually presented as a single, universal discussion, with shared concerns for researchers, policymakers and ‘the public’. (...) In this article, we show that it is not. There are substantial differences between the language of research integrity in the scientific arena and in the public domain. Notably, scientists and policymakers adopt different approaches to research integrity. Scientists tend to present integrity as a virtue that must be kindled, while policy documents and newspapers stress norm enforcement. Rather than performing a conceptual analysis through philosophical reasoning and discussion, we aimed to clarify the discourse of ‘scientific integrity’ by studying its usage in written documents. To this end, large numbers of scientific publications, policy documents and newspaper articles were analysed by means of scientometric and content analysis techniques. The texts were analysed on their usage of the term ‘integrity’ and of frequently co-occurring terms and concepts. A comparison was made between the usage in the various media, as well as between different periods in which they were published through co-word analysis, mapping co-occurrence networks of significant terms and themes. (shrink)

Following publication of this article [1] it was brought to our attention that we omitted to provide credit for Table 1. While the content of the table and the systematization of blinding in review have been referenced in the text as coming from [2], the credit line for Table 1 should have been added as follows: “Reproduced with permission from [2] licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 License”. The original publication of this article has been corrected accordingly.

Between 1787, and the end of his life in 1832, Bentham turned his attention to the development and application of economic ideas and principles within the general structure of his legislative project. For seventeen years this interest was manifested through a number of books and pamphlets, most of which remained in manuscript form, that develop a distinctive approach to economic questions. Although Bentham was influenced by Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he (...) neither adopted a Smithian vocabulary for addressing questions of economic principle and policy, nor did he accept many of the distinctive features of Smith's economic theory. One consequence of this was that Bentham played almost no part in the development of the emerging science of political economy in the early nineteenth century. The standard histories of economics all emphasize how little he contributed to the mainstream of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century debate by concentrating attention on his utilitarianism and the psychology of hedonism on which it is premised. Others have argued that the calculating nature of his theory of practical reason reduced the whole legislative project to a crude attempt to apply economics to all aspects of social and political life. Put at its simplest this argument amounts to the erroneous claim that Bentham's science of legislation is reducible to the science of political economy. A different but equally dangerous error would be to argue that because Bentham's conception of the science of legislation comprehends all the basic forms of social relationships, there can be no science of political economy as there is no autonomous sphere of activity governed by the principles of economics. This approach is no doubt attractive from an historical point of view given that the major premise of this argument is true, and that many of Bentham's ‘economic’ arguments are couched in terms of his theory of legislation. Yet it fails to account for the undoubted importance of political economy within Bentham's writings, not just on finance, economic policy, colonies and preventive police, but also in other aspects of his utilitarian public policy such as prison reform, pauper management, and even constitutional reform. All of these works reflect a conception of political economy in its broadest terms. However, this conception of political economy differs in many respects from that of Bentham's contemporaries, and for this reason Bentham's distinctive approach to problems of economics and political economy has largely been misunderstood. (shrink)

We apply an online optimization process based on machine learning to the production of Bose-Einstein condensates. BEC is typically created with an exponential evaporation ramp that is optimal for ergodic dynamics with two-body s-wave interactions and no other loss rates, but likely sub-optimal for real experiments. Through repeated machine-controlled scientific experimentation and observations our ’learner’ discovers an optimal evaporation ramp for BEC production. In contrast to previous work, our learner uses a Gaussian process to develop a statistical model of the (...) relationship between the parameters it controls and the quality of the BEC produced. We demonstrate that the Gaussian process machine learner is able to discover a ramp that produces high quality BECs in 10 times fewer iterations than a previously used online optimization technique. Furthermore, we show the internal model developed can be used to determine which parameters are essential in BEC creation and which are unimportant, providing insight into the optimization process of the system. (shrink)

Hume's 'Natural History of Religion' offers a naturalized account of the causes of religious thought, an investigation into its 'origins' rather than its 'foundation in reason'. Hume thinks that if we consider only the causes of religious belief, we are provided with a reason to suspend the belief. I seek to explain why this is so, and what role the argument plays in Hume's wider campaign against the rational acceptability of religious belief. In particular, I argue that the work threatens (...) a form of fideism which maintains that it is rationally permissible to maintain religious belief in the absence of evidence or of arguments in its favour. I also discuss the 'argument from common consent', and the relative superiority of Hume's account of the origins of religious belief. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe published research articles that were named in official findings of scientific misconduct and to investigate compliance with the administrative actions contained in these reports for corrections and retractions, as represented in PubMed. Between 1993 and 2001, 102 articles were named in either the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts ( Findings of Scientific Misconduct ) or the U.S. Office of Research Integrity annual reports as needing retraction or correction. In 2002, (...) 98 of the 102 articles were indexed in PubMed. Eighty-five of these 98 articles had indexed corrections: 47 were retracted; 26 had an erratum; 12 had a correction described in the comment field. Thirteen had no correction, but 10 were linked to the NIH Guide Findings of Scientific Misconduct , leaving only 3 articles with no indication of any sort of problem. As of May 2005, there were 5,393 citations to the 102 articles, with a median of 26 citations per article (range 0–592). Researchers should be alert to Comments linked to the NIH Guide as these are open access, and the Findings of Scientific Misconduct’ reports are often more informative than the statements about the retraction or correction found in the journals. (shrink)