Scientific normative dissonance: A large-scale survey of researchers’ subscription to scientific norms and counternorms across academic fields

We investigate the extent to which researchers hold morally competing ideals related to scientific norms, which we refer to as scientific normative dissonance. Researchers (n = 11,050) indicated their agreement with four general scientific norms (communality, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism) and counternorms (individualism, particularism, self-interestedness, and organized dogmatism). Results indicate systematic differences in the relative norm–counternorm subscription (i.e., scientific normative dissonance) across academic fields, academic seniority, and genders. Specifically, normative dissonance was higher among researchers in the medical and health sciences (vs. researchers in social sciences, humanities, or natural sciences), more senior researchers, and male researchers. Our findings have implications for fostering ethical research environments and aligning research practices and incentive structures with scientific ideals.