  Many scientists view science as value-free, despite the fact that both
epistemic and non-epistemic values structure scientific inquiry. Current ethics
training usually focuses on transmitting knowledge about high-level ethical
concepts or rules and is widely regarded as ineffective. We argue that ethics
training will be more effective at improving ethical decision making if it
focuses on connecting values to science. We pull from philosophy and psychology
to define ethical decision making using the Four Component Model. This model
states that in order to make an ethical decision someone must consider four
components: moral sensitivity, moral reasoning, moral motivation, and moral
implementation. We formed a moderated fellowship of fourteen science faculty
from different disciplines who met for ten sessions over the course of a year,
where they discussed the values embedded in different scientific norms. We then
conducted interviews before and after the year-long fellowship that involved
guided reflection of scenarios where there was some kind of ethical misconduct
where the scientific practice required value judgements (e.g using unpublished
data in their own work). We looked at how the fellowship affected the
scientists' ability to recognize ethical dimensions regarding the scenarios. We
found that this fellowship improved moral sensitivity, but their moral
reasoning does not improve. We outlined our approach on how to look at
scientists' ethical decision making and made recommendations on how to improve
our approach. This work can inform future ethical training to align better with
what scientists value and introduce useful concepts from philosophy and
psychology to education research in physics.
