Scientific Associations and Promotion of Professional Ethics in Science in Iran

Depending on their professional responsibilities, scientific associations can play an important role in promoting the ethics of science, but this role of scientific associations has rarely received attention. In this manuscript, we investigated the measures and activities taken by scientific associations to promote the professional ethics in science in Iran. We then evaluated the effectiveness of these activities by surveying among scientific associations in humanities, engineering, agriculture, basic sciences, art and architecture, and interdisciplinary majors. Results showed that apart from the diversity in their majors, scientific associations in Iran desirably evaluate the effectiveness of diverse association activities to be very high with regard to promoting the ethics of science. In practice, however, these associations do not possess adequate activity regarding the improvement of the status of ethics in science. The ethics of science for many scientific associations in Iran is marginalized in practice, although it is not unknown.