Dn the fight against breaches of scientific integrity, which range from fraud by invention or manipulation of data to breaches of lighter rules, France completes its panoply. From now on, doctoral students will have to take an oath at the end of their admission to the rank of doctor, to commit themselves to continuing to respect the principles of integrity that they have learned.
This system, provided for by the research programming law of December 2020 and published in a decree on August 26, is in addition to many others, such as the creation of the French Office for Scientific Integrity (OFIS), the appointment of integrity referents in each university or research organization, signing of reference charters, etc.
The text states, “Have completed my doctorate (…) and having thus practiced, in my quest for knowledge, the exercise of demanding scientific research, cultivating intellectual rigor, ethical reflexivity and respecting the principles of scientific integrity, I am committed, for what will depend on me, in the rest of my professional career, whatever the sector or field of activity, to maintain an honest conduct in my relationship to knowledge, my methods and my results”.
A “symbolic vocation”
According to the OFIS, which contributed to drafting this text, there are very few other initiatives of this kind in the world. Maastricht University has been imposing such an oath on integrity for two years, but specifying its content a little more: honesty, meticulousness, impartiality, verifiability, independence…
“I suggested this amendment to the law of 2020 by noting the distress of postdoctoral students faced with requests from their laboratory directors that they did not find ethically acceptable, recalls Pierre Ouzoulias, communist senator, co-author of a report on scientific integrity for the Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and Technological Choices. They would have liked to be able, like doctors of medicine, to argue the moral clauses of an oath in order to refuse to comply. In the event of litigation, I have the weakness to think that the oath could also serve the defense of the person who pronounced it. »
Not taking the oath of scientific integrity does not prevent you from having your thesis
“We were opposed to this oath, because we believe that it could not respond to the lack of integrity, which we rather attribute to the climate of competition, the drop in resources, the precariousness in the laboratories…”says Julie Crabot, president of the Confederation of Young Researchers association, for whom the reforms in the field of doctorates should relate more to remuneration and positions to be increased than to the oath.
The latter is not compulsory: not pronouncing it does not prevent you from having your thesis. But it is consistent with changes in recent years that have made training mandatory for doctoral students on these issues of scientific integrity. A doctoral students’ charter, signed by the student and his or her supervisors, will also be modified to take into account the oath and scientific integrity.
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