Professional ethics and scholarly communication

Science (or, more generally, the procurement, propagation and dissemination of knowledge) has not always been a profession based on the transmission of written materials. On the contrary, when Western science originated in ancient Greece some twenty-five centuries ago, dissemination usually took the form of verbal exchange and personal tuition (Zwart 2001). In the context of schools, scientists would share their (more or less secret) knowledge with a limited number of pupils by means of immediate verbal interaction. In those days, the transmission of knowledge was not a writing profession. The use of texts implied the risk of losing control over one’s ideas. Moreover, the use of textual information was not really necessary. The emphasis was on principles and method. The teachings conveyed by teachers to their disciples basically consisted of a limited set of ideas that could be transmitted and elucidated orally, while brief expositions of principles would alternate with sessions of exercise. This applied to disciplines like philosophy and mathematics, and more generally to the scientific practices of investigation that emerged within the ancient schools of Physicists and Pythagoreans. The situation changed, however, when a new generation of teachers, the Sophists, stepped forward. They initiated a different kind of investigation called ‘history’ (Zeller 1980). Besides history in the present sense, this new branch of learning included ethnographical, sociological and geographical studies as well. A different kind of knowledge was produced, namely factual knowledge. And the wealth of materials collected by generations of ‘historians’ had to be filed somehow, in order to prevent their loss, and thus the use of texts became important. Sophists took great care, moreover, in developing their rhetorical skills, both as orators and as writers. This was due to the fact that for Sophists knowledge was a commodity to sell and the way it was presented affected in a substantial way its (practical) relevance. Some of these ‘stylistics of knowledge’ can still be found in the way modern scientists disseminate their results. The significant difference between philosophy in a strict sense (as the ‘unwritten’ science of principles) and sophistry (as the art of producing elegant prose) is still noticeable in the case of Plato. While in his written dialogues he entered into competition with the Sophists, notably in terms of literary style and narrative composition, he abstained from the use of textual materials as a teacher in the context of his own school (Wippern 1972). This had to do with the ‘propagandistic’ character of his dialogues. They were aimed at publicly refuting the Sophists’ positions. Indeed,