Ethics is for losers, and other fun misconceptions.

I posted a reply to a reply over at Janet's Adventures in Ethics and Science, but it had typos and I guess I'm supposed to traffic these things back to the home base here anyway. So, here's the non-typoed version of my reply to a reply to the topic: "reasons scientists give for not thinking about ethics."

It's always fascinating to me when students -- engineers, mostly, for me -- use the "ethics is anti-individualist" response that Lab Lemming gives (to the original post, which I already gave you the link to, above): "The idea of group ethics requires assent to some sort of group-think, which many ruggedly individualistic scientists dislike."

Yet scientists are quite willing, all the time, to assent to group think in terms that are not generally cast as negative: of the agreed upon social value of science, the formation of labs and universities and institutes and agencies, the belief in funding requirements, the need for autonomy from political persuasion, the trust in peer review, the perceived merit of independent confirmation, and so on.

So does it all come back, basically, to the first excuse given above: "I'm not trained in ethics"? Because that then stands as an excuse to not address ethical issues, not as an excuse to do questionable or less valued things.