In general, research ethics or integrity and philosophy of science are distinct fields. As academic pursuits, they have different journals and congresses. While philosophy of science is primarily a domain for academic philosophers, research ethics is considerably more diverse regarding the disciplinary background of its practitioners, something that holds for other fields of applied ethics as well (cf. Sandin 2015). Research ethics is institutionalized in various degrees and frequently subject to oversight by IRBs and similar bodies. In a teaching context, the topics are typically done in separate courses, using separate textbooks – e.g. books like Johansson (2016) or Chalmers (2013) for philosophy of science and Shamoo and Resnik (2022) for research ethics. However, this does not have to be the case. In fact, there are some notable benefits with combining the subjects and teaching them in an integrated way, but also come challenges. In this paper, I will share my experiences of teaching research integrity, ethics and philosophy of science in one and the same course for PhD students at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).

Swedish PhD programs are typically four years, and the candidates are required to write a thesis, but also to partake in a number of PhD courses, some of them in the subject area of the thesis work, and others that provide general or ‘transferable’ skills. Those skills are supposed to be part of the general education of an academic. At my university, the ‘transferable skills’ courses include academic writing, information retrieval, science communication, and several courses in statistics. They are offered to all PhD students, regardless of subject. The courses in ethics and philosophy of science belong in this category.