Several widely publicized incidents of academic research misconduct, combined with the politicization of the role of science in public health and policy discourse (e.g., COVID, immunizations) threaten to undermine faith in the integrity of empirical research. Researchers often maintain that peer-review and study replication allow the field to self-police and self-correct; however, stark disparities between official reports of academic research misconduct and self-reports of academic researchers, specifically with regard to data fabrication, belie this argument. Further, systemic imperatives in academic settings often incentivize institutional responses that focus on minimizing reputational harm rather than the impact of fabricated data on the integrity of extant and future research.
This study begins by pointing out the role of character in discourse as seen by theorists in the Classical, British/Continental, and Contemporary periods. It then develops two primary arguments. The first suggests that the negative image that has been generated pertaining to President Clinton's private and public ethics over the past 4 years has prompted Republican leaders in general and Senator Dole in particular to introduce forcefully into the campaign a series of claims describing what they believe to be fatal flaws in the president's character. Since this strategy has not worked, the second argument advanced in this article asserts that American citizens are responding to another interpretation of character—that expressed by a group of political scientists and historians. Character, as pointed out by these scholars, is reflected in a president's choices, sense of history, caring attitude, communication ability, and sense of optimism concerning the present and future.
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