ABSTRACT
Good practice in science has long been a topic of discussion among scientists, professional scientific organizations, ethicists and philosophers of science, university administrators, governments, as well as the general public. This chapter begins by making a few clarifications regarding the scope of the ideas. First, arguably producing knowledge is the job of people working in academia in general and not only in the natural sciences. The dropping of the atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 marked an important point in the contemporary discussion on the responsibility of scientists and of the scientific community. The magnitude of the loss of lives and of the material destruction that had been caused in the events kindled a feeling of deep unsettlement, which became widely shared by the scientific community and the general public. The chapter explores some aspects of responsibility that surface in the context of knowledge production in academia.
