The term scientific ethics may refer to the ethics of doing science (Is one free to inject unwilling subjects with a pathogen so as to gain valuable scientific insights? or What role should animal experimentation play in biology?). In that sense, scientific ethics is a branch of applied ethics. The term may also refer to whether or not the methods and assumptions of science can be applied to the subject matter of ethics. The present entry is concerned with scientific ethics in the second sense—Can there be a science of norms?

Scientific ethics in this sense is often argued to be an oxymoronic term. Science deals in empirical facts, discovering what is the case, while ethics deals in normative matters, uncovering what ought to be the case. A scientific ethics would thus commit the naturalistic fallacy of confusing what is with what ought to be...