SCIENCE AND ITS INSTITUTIONS: A FICTIONAL LOOK

Abstract

The sciences have long been inextricably linked with the institutions that regulate research, with their rules and codes of ethics. This does not mean that it is impossible to circumvent them, or that ethical problems do not arise. These links between ethics and institutions will be assessed here through two pieces of fiction: the novel Solar by English novelist Ian McEwan, which portrays a physicist and Nobel Prize winner whose honesty soon appears dubious; and the play W;t by American playwright Margaret Edson, which features a woman suffering from cancer who has a rather complex relationship with the doctors treating her.