When does Normative Scientific Behaviour Start?

Abstract

A questionnaire study (Nott and Wellington, 1997) had found that a majority of the science graduates on a teacher training programme conducted some practical work in schools in a fraudulent manner, i.e. they ‘conjured’ to get the right empirical results. During post-questionnaire interviews trainee science teachers claimed that they had also frequently made up results for their practical exercises as undergraduates. This raised the question as to whether it was only the deviants who entered teaching after graduating. An equivalent sample of science graduates on a doctoral programme was interviewed to determine if they had conjured as undergraduates. It was found that the majority of both groups had conjured results for practical exercises as undergraduates. All the doctoral research students could understand why their fellow graduates would need to conjure with and in front of children. None of the doctoral students said that they conjured as researchers although some were convinced that other researchers may do. In conclusion we argue that normative scientific behaviour may be inculcated through investigations and open ended activities where the audience to be persuaded is one’s own peers; counter-normative scientific behaviour may be encouraged by the current systems of university laboratory work where the sole audience to be persuaded is one’s assessor.