Interfaces between science and ethics are multifaceted: it is now the time to leave Merton’s ethics behind

[Autom. eng. transl.] The study of the health effects of emissions from the Valmadrera incinerator (LC) published in the last issue of E&P, the letter of the Coordination Lecchese Rifiuti Zero and the response of the authors have stimulated reflection broader on the integrity of science. Indeed, despite an incessant theoretical reflection on the ethics of science has been underway for over half a century and despite the emergence and consolidation of articulated perspectives of public ethics and bioethics, the prevailing vision of the ethos of science is still the hagiographic representation proposed in the mid-twentieth century by the American sociologist Robert Merton.