Abstract

I want to argue for two propositions. First, I suggest that what some researchers may take to be a simple trade-off between minor violations of the truth for the sake of access to far greater truths represents a profound miscalculation with far-reaching and cumulative reverberations. Second, I submit that today's research environment, as demanding, competitive, and sometimes bewildering as it is, offers genuine scope for what Murdoch calls truth-seeking, for imagining and questioning, and for relating to facts through both truth and truthfulness; but that, in so doing, it presents hard choices with respect to methods, and, in turn, to personal integrity—not only in particular research projects but also with respect to that fragile research environment in its own right.