1: Introduction

Case 1.1: Knowledge or Opinion?

In a courtyard, an analytic chemist presents the results of a report that investigates the ground water contamination in a wildlife sanctuary that is most likely originating from a nearby lacquer and paint manufacturer. These findings shall serve as evidence for the company violating environmental regulations. To his surprise, the chemist's evidence-based arguments are countered by the defence as ‘one of many opinions’. The company's lawyers claim that the ultimate proof that the contamination is coming from the factory is lacking (‘correlation is not causation!’), and that science, ‘merely based on theory’, would not be able to contribute much to this case that is about the usefulness of legal frameworks, about desirable economic social benefits, and about the quality of life of the consumer.

Case 1.2: Truth or Dare

In the research group of Prof. X, two Master students A and B, a PhD candidate C, and a postdoc D share a lab. Prof. X asks postdoc D to supervise student A while the PhD student C is asked to take care of student B. Student A often feels ridiculed and even bullied by D who regards students as immature foolish kids, looking down upon them. Thus, A's trust in D is low. At the same time, A observes that PhD student C encourages B to manipulate experimental data (“It is just for your thesis! Like this it looks more beautiful! Don't worry, X won't notice it!”). Yet, A knows that C would use at least parts of B's experiments for a research paper. A plans to talk to Prof. X about this after a group meeting. In this meeting, however, Prof. X expresses his admiration for his “best students” B and C. Since A's own work, partly due to the poor supervision and support from D, is lagging, she doesn't dare start the conversation, worrying about being judged as a troublemaker and risking her grade.

Case 1.3: Not My Business?

A chemist who is working for a globally operating trade organisation is processing a tricky case: several tons of thiodiglycol were ordered by a company in a country recently riven by civil war. The company claims to operate in the textile industry. Yet, its origins and structures appear hidden and dubious. The trader's chemical background knowledge is good enough to tell that thiodiglycol is, at the same time, a precursor for mustard gas and nerve gas. The seller of the chemical, excited by the excellent business prospect, claims that it is not his or the trader's responsibility to question the communicated application of the chemical (textile manufacturing). Yet, given the low trust in the credibility of the country's regime, the trader has severe pricks of conscience in agreeing to this transaction.

Case 1.4: The Moral Finger

In a class on research ethics, a student raises concerns about the empiric rigidity of ethical claims. “Science is truth, but ethics is just opinion, kind of random!” Thus, he claims, a course like this is useless, because it can't teach knowledge like a chemistry class, but only doctrine and ideology, like the morality finger that warns us not to do wrong. As he doesn't enjoy the class at all, he stands up and leaves.

Before a book is published, it goes through a review process. The reviewers of this book's initial conceptual proposal welcomed it and expressed that such a book was timely and necessary! The only point of controversy was (and maybe still is) the book's title: Good Chemistry. Why not Ethics in Chemistry? Isn't this a book about ethics?

No, it is not! Not primarily, at least. It is as much about ethics as a book about materials in construction engineering is about chemistry. Here, we want to apply ethical reflections – which is significantly different from ethics, as we will see soon – for a very practical purpose: as chemists we wish to do a good job, to do something meaningful and impacting, and to have a somehow positive or beneficial impact on the world and the people in it. This motivation is presupposed, here. Some may have other core motivations to pursue a career as a chemist, for example good income, a Nobel prize, or the intention to synthesise a powerful pathogen that will eradicate mankind and free the planet from this plague. These attitudes are not this book's business! This book addresses all those who, at least from time to time, wonder what it means to be a good chemist, and all those who got in touch with conflicts and dilemmas in the context of chemical activity that can only be solved in non-chemical ways, that means with strategies that are not taught in typical chemistry textbooks.

If good is an adjective that may legitimately be attributed to chemistry, then there must be something in chemistry as such that justifies this kind of judgment. The book title hints at this justification when we read the word good as a noun: chemistry as a public good, a common good, an endeavour that a society undertakes and affords because it is believed that it somehow pays off. The good_noun chemistry is something we would not want to miss because it increases our life quality, facilitates innovation, creates business opportunities and jobs, or greatly advances humanism by enlightening our knowledge of the world we find ourselves living in. Yet, all these missions can, potentially, fail: chemical progress may have adverse effects on society and environment, chemical industry's labour force may encounter safety issues, or a scientistic-technocratic worldview may undermine the values that constitute our cultural and societal integrity and cohesion. The interpretation of what makes chemistry a common good determines what we define as good_adj chemistry.

The reader may brainstorm for a minute on what comes to mind when thinking about what is good chemistry, or what is chemistry done well, or what is a good chemist. This could be done in the form of the following exercise that is not as childish as it may sound:

Experiences with this rather loose and open question answered by chemistry students (or students of other sciences) indicate that it is very likely that your ideas fit into one or more of the following three categories (see also for ref. 1):

1. Methodology – Good knowledge and competence: “What is it that I am doing, and why am I doing it THIS way?” Accordingly, a good chemist is someone who understands the theoretical foundations of his/her profession, who knows how to apply the scientific method properly and adequately, and who is aware of the special position that scientific inquiry has in a society that affords such an expensive endeavour. This also includes practical hands-on competences like experimental and technical skills.

2. Professional Integrity – Good attitude and conduct: “What does it mean to do my job well?” This field covers questions of research ethics, scientific integrity, and what kind of behaviour is permissible within the guidelines of professional conduct. For other chemical professions outside academic science and research, analogous principles of professional ethics, work ethics, or economic and business ethics apply.

3. Chemistry and Society – Good impact and progress: “How does my work impact the life world of society, and what is within my responsibility to do about it?” In this understanding, chemistry is good when its impact on the environment and society is sustainable, when it supports a reduction of risks and a maximisation of benefits, and when chemists with their competence and expertise engage in science and technology (S&T) discourse and governance.

Table 1.1 shows some exemplary statements, sorted into these three categories. It also indicates how the mentioned aspects represent the chapters of this book (more about this in Section 1.5).

Without a doubt, a good chemist is certainly someone who is good at chemistry, someone who knows chemistry. This includes know-that and know-how: textbook knowledge of all fields of chemistry, plus specific knowledge of the particular area of research or professional practice; and hands-on competence in laboratory work, experimental design, scientific writing and presenting, teamwork, and professional expertise. Usually, chemists – we will see in Section 1.3 below who is addressed with this term – have studied chemistry and obtained an academic degree related to the discipline, like Master and PhD degrees. Knowledge acquired in lectures, from books, in study groups, or in long overnight sessions in the university library in the days before important exams, gives the chemist the ability to make proper judgment in chemical contexts. Lab courses and the research work done for theses increase the chemistry student's practical skills and the ability to apply the theoretical knowledge in activities that manifest ideas in something materially real. Chemistry, more than physics or biology, is a creative endeavour (while, admittedly, the disciplinary borders become more and more blurry). Even though most chemistry students pursue a career outside academia and outside laboratories, the study years determine and shape their thinking and their attitude when applying the gained chemical competences in their jobs.

In this view, in order to be (or become) a good chemist, one must study well and work hard. We may trust that university curricula in chemistry departments ensure that students have all the necessary resources and opportunities to acquire chemical knowledge and competence (if not, this may be an ethical issue itself). This book can't help much with that. Yet, there are methodological and theoretical aspects in doing chemistry and applying chemical knowledge that, reportedly, many chemistry students never learn formally. This concerns some philosophical issues like knowledge, truth, or logic, and judgments concerning the meaning and implications of chemical statements as the result of interpreting data. Here, we see that this category is not only of relevance for chemists as academic scientists or private sector researchers, but also for all those who make chemical judgments in the context of scientific testimony, for example in court, in public governance, in agencies like environmental bureaus or patent offices, or in other forms of public service. In these contexts, chemistry is applied as an interest-driven science in which the right application of chemical methodology and the right use and analysis of scientific insight is of crucial importance for the credibility of the chemical expert and for the fair and just treatment of those who are affected by the decisions that are made based on these judgments.

Case 1.1 provides an example of how science theory and the proper justification and application of its claims play an important role even outside of the academic scientific realm. Chemical expertise provides the means to inform decision-making and judgment in business, governance and society with evidence-based information that, in the right context, may be used as knowledge to persuade or convince people of the plausibility or meaningfulness of certain claims. Yet, in recent years, post-factual trends undermine the legitimacy and credibility of science as a reliable and most objective source of knowledge. Science as a social institution or sphere, represented by scientists (another blurry term), is under scrutiny and needs to stand its ground against opinionated dogma and ideology. Not everyone is familiar with the concepts of scientific inquiry and reasoning (like the defence lawyers in case 1.1), so that it may not be clear how empirical evidence is not mere opinion. At the same time, the explanatory power of scientific insights has clear limits. A chemist is able to enlighten our understanding of evermore sophisticated aspects of the material world, but may not be qualified to make judgments on the economic or environmental sustainability of a chemical process because that requires an assessment of non-naturalistic elements: human values and norms. In this respect, understanding science theory means finding the right position between epistemic confidence (defending the strengths of scientific inquiry) and humbleness (knowing what our methods are not able to inform about).

There is a huge amount of literature on science theory and research methodology. Some, or maybe most of that, is not targeted at practical chemists. In Part 1, this book attempts to cover all those aspects that are either of direct practical relevance for doing good chemistry, or deliver important insights for other chapters in Parts 2 and 3. For more insightful elaborations and a detailed description of strategies for practical application, the mindful chemical scientist is advised to read the excellent books by Pruzan²  and Shrader-Frechette.³ 

Among the three different understandings of good chemistry, the second category is the best elaborated and most often discussed one. Case 1.2 is a good example that touches fraud, mentoring and, perhaps, publishing issues. Indeed, in view of countless cases of misconduct, fraud, betrayal and violation of codes of conduct that chemists are entitled to comply with, a demand for raising the awareness of research ethics may be identified. Fabrication and falsification of data, cases of plagiarism or other improper publishing practices, conflicts of interest and unscientific handling of intellectual property rights issues, academic freedom, that is at risk in view of contemporary funding and collaboration practices, all motivated by non-scientific goals and dispositions like careerism, financial benefits, greed for fame and power, but also systemic and organisational stress and pressure, are reported on a daily basis (see, for example, the online platform Pubpeer, or the blog forbetterscience.com). Insightful overviews with manifold researcher's possible real-life cases to practice one's scientific integrity are provided by Macrina,⁴  Shamoo and Resnik,⁵  Greer,⁶  and particularly for chemists, by Kovac.⁷ 

As in Section 1.2.1, it needs to be pointed out that issues of professional conduct for chemists are not limited to academic scientific research and its ethos. Chemists working in the private sector have to fulfil organisational obligations and contracts while, at the same time, are part of a much wider network of various interest groups (or stakeholders), like business, management, marketing, trade, labour force, or clients and customers. Professional integrity, then, is not only a matter of research ethics and the virtues of good scientific practice, but also business and economic ethics, and perhaps environmental or even bioethics. Whereas chemists-by-training seldom work with human research subjects (like, for example, medical researchers, psychologists, or social scientists do), many do perform animal experiments, for example as toxicologists or analytic chemists. Yet, for all the issues in this section that may arise sooner or later in a chemist's daily professional practice, there is a connecting theme: the guidelines for good conduct are more or less clear, well-defined, and societally justified. Everybody would agree that stealing, cheating, lying or mistreating living beings are wrong. Thus, these guidelines as orientations for action are a matter of compliance rather than ethical evaluation.

The connection of chemical activity with society and the environment – the third category in our list – is often overlooked in the context of academic chemistry and, thus, also in the education of young chemists (since that is done at academic institutions). Too complex are the various responsibility attributions; too uncertain are the causal trajectories of scientific and technological progress; and too far seem the actual impacts from the chemist's lab. Yet, there is an obvious impact of chemistry on society and culture; on the one hand, it facilitates a significant increase in quality of life through new products, processes and possibilities; on the other hand, at the same time, it contributes to environmental pollution, increased risk exposure (workers in factories, consumers through the food chain and global water cycles), creating challenges for the regulation of new compounds and chemical procedures.⁸ 

This inherent potential of dual use of the manifestations of chemical progress is, arguably, the most obvious ethical aspect in terms of the societal impact of chemistry.⁹  A reflection on the role of chemists in S&T progress and its societal and environmental impact must be pragmatic and goal-oriented: in view of the duality of desirable and undesirable effects of chemical activity, what is in our power to do about it? Chemistry, from basic science to engineering, is not only part of the problem, but, above all, part of the solution. That is why it is not only a matter for engineers and the chemical industry, but – in specific ways – also an issue for chemical researchers and scientists. Emerging sub-disciplines like green chemistry or sustainable chemistry are devoted to the identification and development of compounds and processes that facilitate efficient and sustainable human activity, ranging from mobility, energy, healthcare, infrastructure, and communication to consumption and recycling of products. Chemists in industry are in touch with the environment, health and safety (EHS) regulations, the principles of responsible research and innovation (RRI), value co-creation in industry 4.0, or corporate social responsibility.

Many chemists with academic degrees occupy positions with high responsibility and power, making decisions and judgments that have direct and indirect implications for society or the environment. Case 1.3 illustrates the political and humanitarian dimension of a trade decision. Indeed, this case is very similar to a real case that we will revisit in Chapter 12: In the 1980s, chemist Frans van Anraat sold thiodiglycol and other chemicals to the Iraqi regime that fabricated chemical weapons from it and used them against their own people. Later he was convicted of complicity in war crimes and was sentenced to 17 years in prison because with his chemical background his claim that he didn't know what could be done with the chemicals that he traded was not convincing. In other words, he could be held responsible for what he did in his competence as a chemist.

Chemistry is good_adj or a (common) good_noun when its impact is positive (for example, beneficial, sustainable, desirable) and when it facilitates scientific and technological progress in the form of either enabling knowledge or useful innovation. But what about the good chemist question? What is expected from a socially and environmentally friendly chemist? Are researchers on green chemistry or sustainable materials better chemists than those who developed polymerisation reactions that enabled the large-scale industrial production of plastics that now pollute the water cycles? This definition would be misleading and unfair. Moreover, it would be wrong to shift all responsibility for S&T development to engineers and product designers, claiming that scientific research as such is always neutral. A good chemist in this category would be one who is aware of and concerned about the role that chemical progress plays in the wider network of technology, innovation, global trade and exchange, governance, consumption, and culture.¹⁰  Here, we close the circle with the first category; a mindful chemist is aware of the power that chemical knowledge and competence has, but humble enough to admit that this can't answer the question of how we want to live. A good chemist is the one who doesn't back off from this perhaps more difficult question, but who engages with the multitude of stakeholders to figure it out by sharing the strengths of chemistry – creating the material means to provide a higher life quality – and connecting it with the discourse on values, needs and demands.

The headline question may be understood in two different ways:

• Who has an interest in chemistry being good in one or more of the abovementioned ways? Answer: Chemical practitioners and the society at large.

• Given the educational purpose of this textbook, who is addressed with the claim that chemists should try their best to be good chemists? Answer: Chemists in (i) academia, (ii) industry, and (iii) public service.

The first understanding concerns the call for methodological, ethical and socially responsible integrity. We may ask, of course, whether it is justified to claim that chemists should care about normative aspects of chemical activity. Isn't it enough when other experts and stakeholders (social scientists, ethicists, regulators, suppliers and appliers of chemistry, etc.) do that? It is important to see that knowledge and awareness of the normative dimensions of chemistry pays off, indeed, in various forms. The insights from Part 1 on methodology, hopefully, will increase the reader's professional skills and competences as a scientist and researcher. It may stimulate academic creativity and improve the quality of scientific output. It is also hoped, of course, that an awareness of the ethical pitfalls in research practice helps to increase professional integrity and compliance with the ethos of science. The benefits are a bit more difficult to realise in the case of Part 3 on the social implications of chemistry. An ethical chemist, generally spoken, has a higher credibility whenever it comes to chemistry-related discourses, be that community-internal (with other chemists, scientists, colleagues, etc.), with other stakeholders, or with the general public. Scientists' powerful position in factual knowledge-based discourses is challenged nowadays, so that a sense for normative aspects of science and the ability to articulate these in communication is an important skill of chemical practitioners. This will increase societal support and acceptance, which is of existential importance for the institution of chemistry. Moreover, with ethical chemists in important and influential positions in society, the goal of sustainable progress can be reached more easily. Last but not least, in the form of green and sustainable chemistry as an academic research discipline and economic strategy, ethical competence even has the potential for economic profitability.

Chemistry as such – justified or not – is under special scrutiny by the public. Take the Seveso and Bhopal disasters, for example: they are coined chemical accidents, whereas nobody would call an airplane crash a physical accident. Furthermore, the Contergan (thalidomide) case, chemical weapons, or the pollution of the oceans with plastic particles are often attributed to chemistry, often without any differentiation into academic chemistry, chemical engineering, chemical industry, manufacturing and trade. We can, of course, ignore public concerns as irrational, but as a matter of fact, this has a recurrent negative effect on chemistry as a science and as an industry. The future of the chemical profession stands and falls with societal acceptance and support. This goes far beyond the argument that a large part of public academic chemical research is funded by tax money and, thus, should pay off for the society in one or another way. It is a question of trust and public education.

Now that we have clarified the justification of the should-claim itself, we may figure out the details of who exactly should. Assuming that the reader of this text is a chemistry student, he or she may feel addressed directly, of course. Your interest is to finish a thesis successfully, to publish your first papers and to lay the basis for a professional career. Most likely, you have had your first experiences with lab research and, possibly, have encountered issues of research ethics and scientific integrity. You know chemistry as an academic scientific discipline. However, it is important to widen that scope. Where do we usually find chemists after completing their higher education and academic studies?

First of all, of course, we think of academic chemistry at universities and in other research institutes. In the former, besides basic and applied research, also the education of the future generation of chemists plays an important role. Chemists who pursue an academic career often do that for a particular reason: the academic freedom to ask interesting and creative questions for the main purpose of knowledge generation, perhaps out of pure curiosity, with an Einsteinian mastermind, or with the noble goal of doing something good for society. Some may also feel dedicated to teaching the next generation of chemists and form a team of motivated young Master and PhD students. The main activities are the design and conduct of experiments, interpreting the data to form scientific statements, and communicating these new insights to the larger scientific community and, perhaps, the wider public.

Then, there is the big field of chemical industries. Many companies have research and development (R&D) departments in which chemists do scientific research, but with motivations and goals that are different from those of academic institutions. More importantly, chemists working in industry deal with the production, storage, and transport of chemicals. Moreover, marketing and sales of chemicals may be part of the job activities in this field, too. For the purpose of the message of this book, we won't exclude chemical engineers from our list of ‘chemists’. It is important, though, to keep in mind that the job profiles of chemistry majors and more technical chemical engineering graduates are overlapping more and more. As we will see in greater detail in Chapter 10, it is not the case that chemists populate science jobs and engineers occupy technology jobs, that chemists do basic research while engineers do applied research, or that chemists work in academia and engineers dominate the industry sector. Questions of good chemistry are not so much a matter of degree or title, but rather of professional work environment and particular tasks and responsibilities. Chemical scientists are as much a part of R&D and innovation as chemical engineers are.

An often-overlooked field of profession in which chemical competence is required is the public service sector. Examples are environmental protection agencies, food and drug administrations or other governance and regulatory bodies that deal with the assessment and regulation of chemicals and their impact, but also patent offices, science consultancy, auditing, science writing, or analytic services. Chemical R&D often plays only a minor role in these jobs. Yet, as explained in Section 1.2, chemical risk assessments, scientific testimonies, or any other publicly communicated chemical information that serves as a basis for decision-making require competences in making judgments concerning the value of chemical knowledge and progressive potentials. Some of the virtues of science that inform our concept of research ethics (like objectivity or truthfulness, see Chapter 5) also play an important role for agency staff, consultants or regulators with chemistry background, complemented further by questions of legal and social justice. Many chemical experts working in this realm work at the intersection of chemistry, industry and society on a daily basis. Therefore, those readers who consider a career in this direction should not put this book aside as it matters for their professional judgment and discourse skills as much as for basic and applied chemical researchers and scientists.

Table 1.2 summarises the considerations of Sections 1.2 and 1.3. It outlines, with broad examples, how all three categories of good chemistry have implications for all three fields of occupation in which chemistry graduates find their jobs.

After this initial reflection on the facets of chemistry and the people involved in it, it is now necessary to clarify some of the non-chemical terminology used in the previous two sections. Words like normative, ethics, values, or discourse may be unfamiliar to this book's chemical target group. Also, in this section, we will elaborate in further detail what kind of competence this book tries to equip the reader with. Hopefully, with the information from this section, the student in Case 1.4 would not have left the class.

The English word ethics has two meanings. As a plural term (many ethics), it is a synonym for morals and stands for the moral guidelines and rules that a society commits itself to. Ethical, in this respect, means in accordance with the common-sense morality. This idea of ethics is applicable in the field of research ethics and good scientific practice: we don't need sophisticated philosophical reasoning to understand that cheating (fabrication and falsification of data), theft (plagiarism) or betrayal (hiding financial interests) are immoral. Here, ethics is a matter of compliance with established and unquestioned morals. As a singular term, ethics is the philosophical discipline that is dealing with a systematic and analytic approach towards what is good and/or right (to do). The result of ethics as a rational inquiry may be morals (the plural ethics), or a clarification of ethical dilemmas, conflicts, and clashing viewpoints. The impact of science and technology on society often results in such cases, in which compliance with morals is insufficient and ethical reasoning and argumentative discourse is required. In contrast to often expressed viewpoints, ethical assessment is not a matter of opinion and preference – thus, arbitrary and unscientific – but an academic field of expertise with established methodologies, tools and practical applications. Yet, it doesn't deal with factual knowledge as elaborated by the natural and engineering sciences, but with normative knowledge. Normativity, here, refers to all forms of evaluative judgments like good/bad, right/wrong, desirable/undesirable, beneficial/harmful, and so forth. Normative knowledge is not generated by observation and empiric investigation, but by argumentation and reasoning. This may best be explained by having a look at the general form of an ethical argument as shown in Figure 1.1.

Ethical arguments usually consist of two or more premises and a conclusion. We are interested in an acceptable and somehow correct prescription on what to do, which of several options to choose, or how to evaluate and judge a given or hypothetical situation – a should-conclusion (C_s). A valid argument needs so-called is-premises (P_i) that describe the situation that is given (or hypothesised, “If…”) and ought-premises (P_o) that introduce a value or normative orientation. Arguments that lack the ought-premise are called naturalistic fallacies as they base what should merely on what is. A standard example is the statement “Smoking damages your lungs! You should stop smoking!”. In order to make this prescription valid, it needs to be introduced that an important value is at stake, for example health (with the additional is-premise that there is a relationship between smoking-affected lung capacity and one's health state, or increased cancer risks). Arguments may also lack necessary is-premises. Without the respective real-world case, ought-premises leading to should-conclusions may be accused of speculation and irrelevance. Respectively, if one wants to refute an argument, one can either attack the is-premise (“What you assume here is not true/valid!”) or the ought-premise (“Your value ascription is not tenable!”), or the relationship between the two (“The proposed value is not relevant for this case!”). The smoker may argue that he or she values pleasure higher than health (refuting P_o), or point at studies that show that moderate smoking does not increase lung cancer risks to a larger extent than, for example, breathing polluted city air (refuting P_i).

In professional fields, the clarification and validation of both is- and ought-premises are necessary elements of assessments and discourses. Evaluating the impact of chemistry on society needs a thorough investigation of development pathways and trajectories (what is and will be), as well as a normative investigation of possible affected values and norms and the desirability of possible futures (what ought). The predominant role of chemists is, therefore, to feed the is-premises with input (knowledge, expert-based estimations). The discourse on the ought-premises involves other experts (ethicists, sociologists, regulators, etc.) and sometimes non-experts (political decision-makers, businessmen) or even laymen (citizen, general public). In Chapter 14, we will have a closer look at how such discourses are organised and put into practice. In any case, chemists are not expected to have a special competence in normative judgment (deciding on P_o). Yet, in interdisciplinary discourses like those on S&T progress, chemists need to be aware of the distinction between P_i and P_o and that both need careful analysis and validation. This may sound like a trivial statement. Yet, in practice, there are still many obstacles and methodological difficulties to overcome in order to make such assessments fruitful and efficient, one of them being scientific experts who refuse to participate in normative discourses with the argument that ethics is not their competence. Hopefully, this book can show that scientific expertise is a crucial element in tackling the big normative questions of our times.

These considerations show, once again, that good chemistry is not simply a matter of ethics, neither as compliance with morals nor as normative decision-making expertise or even philosophical skill. Many approaches to teaching research ethics understand it as the facilitated cultivation of a moral character: It is basically assumed that, after pointing out the virtues of good scientific practice, the young chemist will surely act in accordance with these virtues, either intrinsically motivated to be good or extrinsically incentivised by rewards and sanctions. If this was the case, the best choice would be case-based learning in order to acquire experience as orientation for action at hand whenever a similar situation arises in the context of one's own work. Unfortunately, empirical studies could show that training in research ethics doesn't prevent misconduct.¹¹  It cannot diminish a predisposition to being susceptible to committing fraud or being biased. Being a good chemist by making the right choices is, as is assumed throughout this book, predominantly a matter of attitude and discourse rather than character and knowledge of ethical rules and principles. Intra-community discourse is the most efficient mechanism to protect against misconduct. Inter-community (or interdisciplinary) discourse ensures that facts and norms (see Figure 1.1) are sufficiently enlightened. Extra-community discourse that reaches out to the public and various other non-expert stakeholders enables sustainable S&T progress. Therefore, rather than teaching ethical guidelines or preaching virtues, the main goal of Parts 2 and 3 of this book is to equip the reader with discourse skills and, directly linked to that, the ability of critical thinking.

Discourse is a crucial element of all sciences. Insights and knowledge are generated and verified by critical scrutiny in communicative exchange among different experts with respective competences. Discourse can, very broadly, be understood as communicative action. It may be characterised as a form of conversation that is more controversial than a chat or small talk but less aggressive than a discussion, debate or even quarrel. In a discourse, two or more participants exchange viewpoints on a topic, disagree about them, but try to figure out whose viewpoint is more plausible in view of parameters that need to be clarified as well. It is goal-oriented (finding a common ground or agreement) and content-based (in contrast to personal or emotional). However, we need to be more precise in order to classify the discourse type that is promoted by the approach of this book (see Figure 1.2).

In such discourses, different fields of inquiry need to be distinguished. When I tell you “A whale is a fish!”, you might disagree and inform me that whales belong to the group of mammals. When I try to support my argument with reasons like “But it is swimming in the water, so it is a fish!”, you will insist that this is an irrelevant factor, but instead we need to look at evolutionary pathways and the development of certain anatomic features to see that whales are mammals. This kind of discourse is a cognitive or epistemic one; we need factual knowledge (often delivered by certain branches of science) to find correct answers. In principle, we can solve our dispute by going to the library where we find what we need to know. In contrast to that, there are discourses on topics that no factual knowledge and no library can solve, namely those on norms and values. We may call them evaluative discourses. Ethical discourses fall into this category (being aware that descriptive ethics has a cognitive component which is not our concern here).

We still need to be more precise. There are many things we value, and not all of them have an ethical character. When I say, “I prefer to buy a red car!”, while you favour blue cars, it would be pointless to argue which of us is right. We need to distinguish preferences, opinions and personal desires from ethical argumentation and normative prescriptions. It is the latter that we are interested in! Moreover, we need to separate arguments that matter primarily in the private sphere from those that occur in a professional realm. You may argue with your partner about what would be the right thing to do, also in an ethical sense, but that is not necessarily anyone else's business. In this book, we will focus on those kinds of discourse that take place in a professional arena, in the public domain, or in a context that affects a larger circle of stakeholders.

Chemists see themselves and their professional impact in the epistemic discourse field. Clearly, chemists produce knowledge about matter and its exploitation. Yet, normative decisions and evaluative judgements are made in all stages of chemical inquiry, for example in grant proposals, choice of research topics, introduction sections of essays, statements in public communication, decisions in teams in industrial research, when making risk estimations, when choosing statistical models for inductive reasoning, and so forth. Moreover, the political and societal discourse on the impact of S&T progress – clearly an ethical question on how we want to live – is more and more entering the scientific realm itself.

The student depicted in Case 1.4 succumbs to a common misunderstanding: ethics is expected to serve as a tool with which we can figure out the right thing to do or to decide in case of a dilemma or a situation that challenges our normative judgment capacity. This is sometimes depicted as an ethical lens that helps us focus on the quintessential solution that gives us advice or a recommendation on what to decide and how to act (Figure 1.3A).

This image of ethics is misleading. Unlike many approaches in the natural sciences in which experimentation and investigation aims at identifying universalizable and generally acceptable claims, ethics as an applied methodology (not the philosophical discipline) is better understood as a strategy to disentangle argumentative and logic relationships between premises, clarify the consistency and plausibility of evaluations and judgments, and allow discourse participants to understand each other's arguments. Thus, the image of an ethical prism is more suitable: in the case of normative unclarity, ethical reflection allows one to refract the variety of views, identify overlaps and differences, or systematize and categorize types of arguments and their underlying worldviews. This may sound highly unsatisfying for empirically and analytically thinking natural scientists. Yet, if dogmatic or ideological attitudes concerning the truth of moral, ethical or legal claims are to be avoided, there is no other choice than regarding the decision on what is good or right to be the result of a discourse in which the participants express their views reasonably coherently, under scrutiny, and without outer influences that would undermine the power of the best argument. The example cases in the following chapters will provide many opportunities to understand this statement and put it into practice in the real-life situations that chemists typically face in their professional careers.

In very simple terms: this book won't tell you what good chemistry is. It will give you the practical competence to figure out in respective situations what you should do so that you deserve the label ‘good chemist’. This should be a good reason to keep reading rather than stand up and leave.

The three thematic fields elaborated in Section 1.2 – methodology, research ethics, social and environmental impact – serve well as an orientation for the structure of this book (see Table 1.1). We will first learn about the nature of scientific inquiry and its methods and strategies (Chapters 2–4). Then, we will discuss important aspects of good scientific practice and the daily pitfalls of research conduct and lab practice (Chapters 5–9). Chapters 10–15 deliver concepts and practices in managing the social implications of chemical activity, with a focus on the role of chemists themselves in this process. Chapter 16 summarises all these topics and illustrates, at the same time, how they overlap and connect in the daily life of chemical practitioners.

Every chapter starts with a summary of the content and an overview of the themes and learning objectives. This allows the reader to decide at one glance whether that chapter is relevant to their personal learning goals or not. Some may not be interested in animal experiments or public communication of chemistry; others might know that scientific publishing won't ever be an issue for them. Thus, it is intended to give every reader a chance to select the content efficiently.

After this abstract, the reader is confronted with introductory cases that provide an idea of what type of problem is addressed. It is advised to think of solutions or answers before continue reading. Comparing one's initial thoughts to that at the end of a lesson is always very insightful and a good way to identify the learning progress. Moreover, it gives the book a touch of inductive learning (from cases and observations to cognitive reflections to general principles and conclusions).

Throughout the book, the number of references is kept small. Wherever necessary, stated facts are backed up by reference to contemporary research and state-of-the-art knowledge. Yet, as this is not a research report, the main purpose of referencing should be to give the interested reader a chance to find further reading material to advance their understanding of the presented topics. The references are all provided as actual reading recommendations, not as back-up or proof of claims. Referencing papers and books that students wouldn't read anyway just makes the text more confusing and occupies space. Some of the listed books and essays include extensive reference lists that highlight specific topics for particular interests. Moreover, it is recommended to find material that is written in the reader's mother tongue. This is not only a language aspect, but also one of regional relevance. The mentioned books on scientific integrity,^4–7  for example, mostly refer to regulations and guidelines enacted in the USA, which might be irrelevant in some cases for chemists in the EU.

Every chapter ends with 20 exercise questions with multiple-choice answers (except for the shorter Chapters 5 and 6 that have 10 questions and the longer Chapter 8 that has 25). This gives readers a chance to check if basic concepts and ideas of each topic have been understood and are ready at hand for application in professional practice. Moreover, the questions and their suggested answers serve as examples that may clarify the addressed topics further.

The content presented in this book shall equip the readers or – if used as course material in a curricular course – the learners with competences and skills in basic research methodology and its philosophical foundations on the one hand, and in overseeing, understanding, evaluating and assessing contemporary ethical and social issues arising from chemical activity as part of scientific and technological progress on the other hand. The book is designed and planned in particular for chemistry students and their related fields, requiring no philosophical or ethical background knowledge. The content is strongly related to chemists' typical daily professional activity: science conduct, logic and theory of science, experimentation, writing publications, dealing with uncertainty, assessment of innovation and R&D, and the social and environmental impact of chemistry's creative potential. Applying the fundamentals in philosophy of science and research ethics to the particular conduct of chemical research and its internal and external domains of responsibility is expected to sharpen and solidify the learners' awareness of the theory of research practice, their knowledge of scientific integrity, and their ability to apply critical thinking for the assessment of the social sphere of science and technology as a field of human activity that impacts the quality of life of people all over the planet. As a major field in applied ethics, S&T ethics touches the domains of bioethics, medical ethics, environmental ethics, profession ethics and business ethics. With the help of countless examples from chemistry, science in general, research, engineering, R&D, and so forth in the history of societies worldwide, the reader will get a sense for the ethos of science conduct on the one hand, and for the ethical and social implications of S&T on the other hand. While the former is a matter of internal responsibility of individual researchers and their institutions, the latter topic on external responsibility will address risk issues, sustainability, multi-stakeholder discourses on S&T development, and the social construction of technology. The overall objective of this book is to contribute to a more complete education of young researchers and scientists as important enactors of progress and influential decision-makers in the future. It shall provide them with the skills to reflect on and deal with the major contemporary challenges in society and the environment with a higher degree of sustainability.

To summarise, this book is intended to support chemists and chemists-to-be in:

• Understanding basic science theory and applying it in daily research activity.

• Increasing knowledge on theory, conduct and communication of chemical science.

• Applying ethics to scientific practice and science assessment.

• Learning concepts of responsibility and sustainability in the context of chemistry.

• Acquiring skills for interdisciplinary normative discourse.