Systemic Explanations of Scientific Misconduct: Provoked by Spectacular Cases of Norm Violation?

Abstract In the past two decades, individual explanations of scientific misconduct (‘bad apples’) have increasingly given way to systemic systems’). Where did this interest in factors (publication pressure, competition for research funding) come from? Given that ethicists often present their interventions as responses misconduct, article tests hypothesis these were triggered by high-visibility cases norm violation. It does so examining why Dutch scientists 2011 explained Diederik Stapel’s grand-scale data fabrication largely terms, whereas only fifteen years earlier, René Diekstra affair (1996), such had been close absent. Drawing on a wealth historical sources, suggests like do not explain early 21st-century commentators exchanged ones. Only against background an existing discourse criticism science system, developed 1990s and 2000s response rapidly increasing funding, could Stapel achieve notoriety example how provoke bad conduct.