重要研究課題與學術倫理的角色

Selecting Research Disciplines and Academic Ethics

郭家驊(Chia-Hua Kuo)

《大專體育學刊》 20卷2期 (2018/06) Pp. i-iii

https://doi.org/10.5297/ser.201806_20(2).0000

摘要

人類對於所處環境所知極為有限。缺乏知識為影響生存質量極重要的因素，從消極面看，缺乏知識使我們在面臨生存抉擇時，可能做出對自己生存不利的決定；從積極面看，知識進展影響我們改善生存環境品質的速度。相對其他生物，人類具有探索發現、記錄與累積知識、傳播知識的優勢，使我們重蹈錯誤機率隨時間減少、能修正行為與持續改善生存環境。因此，透過研究工作累積新知對社會具有重要價值。較進步的社會更能發現重要問題、強化探索知識的方法與技術，並更能以大眾能理解的表達方式散播知識。大多數人關心的核心課題圍繞在人類的生存質量問題。簡言之，就是人活得好不好的問題。對生存的擔憂是人精神品質下降的主要殺手。到目前為止，儘管當前的知識與應用已使人類生存時間延長、活得更好、需求品質提升。但我們對解決生存質量問題的知識仍非常貧乏，例如：什麼政治制度是最具可持續性的社會制度？什麼運動強度與頻率能營造最好的體能與身型？什麼方法能有效防止智能隨年齡退化？癌症如何有效治療？什麼方法可永久阻止戰爭？……目前都沒有好的標準答案。無論我們從事的學科是藝術、人文、社會與自然科學，脫離「活得好不好」這個核心課題太遠都難以對學科領域造成重要衝擊與影響。為了讓知識進展加速，學術界逐漸演化出一些準則，即我們常說的學術倫理。學術倫理有兩大目標: 一、確保新知識的正確性(accountability)；二、讓知識拓展的速度加快(expandability)。任何社會相對做好這兩大目標，都更有助於人民加速獲得更好的生存質量。簡言之，學術倫理規範存在的意義，必須是要有明確有利的目標。許多剛起步的學者容易困惑在什麼是好的與不好的學術行為？判斷標準是什麼？一定要跟著美國訂的規範走嗎？還是英國人說的算數？極少人能判斷與思考老師傳承下來的學術倫理規範說法是否有明確意義？事實上，人云亦云式的學術倫理規範，反而有可能偏離研究倫理的核心目標。有時，當研究者感受到學術倫理是一個人云亦云的抽象概念時，研究工作將容易被視為高風險行業，阻止一流人才投入，反而使知識拓展的速度無法極大化。因此，學術倫理教育必須為訓練研究人才的前置工作。

並列摘要

For humans, current understanding of our living environment is very limited. Ignorance can sometime be the major limiting factor to the quality of life. In particular, lack of knowledge can be life-threatening when we faces important decision and is regarded as a barrier to slow down our endeavor to improve the quality of our life. Relative to other living organisms, human-being owns the advantage in discovering, recording, accumulating, and disseminating knowledge to continuously improve the quality of survival by reducing risks. Therefore, we must value and appreciate the importance of research works that expand human knowledge further. Advanced societies are those that can identify important questions, produce methodologies to give scientific evidence, and disseminate the knowledge to wider population for the good of our society. The quality of survival is the primary goal of most individuals in human society. Any concern or anxiety to survival is often regarded as the major killer to the quality of life. Since far, we have accumulated massive amount of knowledge by documentation after scientific works. However, the most important questions on human survival remains to be solved. For example, what kind of social structure is the best for the quality of individual survivals? What exercise intensity and frequency can maximize physical fitness and body composition? What kind of interventions is able to stop age-onset dementia? Why cancer cannot be cured? Are there any effective way to definitely prevent war?... These questions are important but none of them have good answer. Regardless what academic disciplines we are centering to improving quality of our survival should be the core questions to ask in research task. Any question that could not directly or indirectly link to this issue would be regarded as irrelevant to the major interest. To accelerate expansion of human knowledge, academia has evolved some ethical rules. The aims of the academic ethics are: (1) To guarantee accountability of scientific evidence for evolving correct knowledge; (2) To expand knowledge at the greatest pace (expandability). Any society that can achieve these goals will gain greater chance to enhance the quality of life for their people. This means that the existence of academic ethics should have explicit purpose. It is imperative to understand these goals before judging all sorts of free academic behaviors. It is very often that people judges academic behaviors based on culture but not the true meaning of its purpose. When the judgment is based on culture instead of its goal of ethics, researcher becomes a risky job to prevent elites from entering this enterprise. This will in turn violate our purpose to expand knowledge at the greatest pace. Therefore, education in academic ethics should be a fundamental training during preparation.