The nineteenth OSCR ReproducibiliTea journal club will take place on May 12th at 14:00 CEST. Our special guests will be Prof. Jeroen de Ridder, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and Dr. Tamarinde Haven, postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Responsible Research, Charité Berlin.

Jeroen and Tamarinde will guide us through one of their papers1:

Peels R., Ridder de J., Haven T., & Bouter L. (2019). Value Pluralism in research integrity. Research Integrity and Peer Review, 4 (18). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-019-0076-4

In this paper, the authors explore the values, norms, and principles in and behind codes of conduct for responsible conduct of research. They show that these codes contain substantial pluralism. First, there is metaphysical pluralism in that codes include values, norms, and virtues. Second, there is axiological pluralism, because there are different categories of values, norms, and virtues: epistemic, moral, professional, social, and legal. Within and between these different categories, norms can be incommensurable or incompatible. They also argue that value pluralism is not just a contingent feature of extant codes, but an inevitable feature of specifying research integrity. The significance of these observations comes into focus when we need to apply codes of conduct in practice to render judgments about violations of integrity and to propose sanctions. Codes of conduct typically do not specify how to handle situations where different norms pull in different directions. Hence, the application of codes needs careful reasoning and judgment together with an intellectually humble attitude that acknowledges the inevitability of value pluralism.

An invitation via Outlook calendar has been sent to all subscribers of the OSCR mailing list2. This invitation includes a link to join the meeting using Zoom. Click on the link, insert the password provided in the invitation mail, and you will join the call.

During the Zoom meeting, please follow these guidelines:

  • wear headphones
  • mute your microphone
  • video is optional (in case of connection issues, you may be asked to turn it off)
  • pay attention to the moderator (which will be Eirini)
  • if you have questions
    • click on the Raise Hand button and the moderator will unmute you; or
    • write down your question in the chat and the moderator will read it

Please remember that attendees of every OSCR event (in-person or online) are required to follow our Code of Conduct.

Take care,

Jeroen de Ridder, Tamarinde Haven, Eirini Botsari, and Antonio Schettino

  1. The materials will be available on our OSF repository.↩︎

  2. If you are not part of the OSCR mailing lists but would like to join, please contact Antonio.↩︎