The Influence of Graduate Department Quality on the Sanctioning of Scientific Misconduct
The academic profession, like other professions, claims a high level of autonomy in the performance of professional tasks [12, 27]. In the academic profession this claim is uniquely embodied in the notion of "academic freedom" [25, 27]. The larger society is ordinarily willing to grant autonomy to professions that control the work of members in the interests of their clients [21]. Thus, autonomy is granted to those professions that are self-regulating. Such social control is exercised through the community of the profession [7, 20, 22]. Formal and informal codes of conduct serve to exercise control by providing guides that identify appropriate and inappropriate professional behavior. These control mechanisms define the parameters of professional behavior with respect to the larger community, colleagues, and clients [20]. In the academic profession, the norms of science identified and described by Merton [36, 38] are such informal social control mechanisms. I