There is much debate on how social values should influence scientific research. However, the question of practical applicability of philosophers’ normative proposals has received less attention. Here, we test the attainability of Matthew J. Brown’s (2020) Moral Imagination ideal (MI ideal), which aims to help scientists to make warranted value-judgements through reflecting on goals, options, values, and stakeholders of research. Here, the tools of the MI ideal are applied to a climate modelling setting, where researchers are developing aerosol-cloud interaction (ACI) parametrizations in an Earth System Model with the broader goal of improving climate sensitivity estimation. After the identification of minor obstacles to applying the MI ideal, we propose two ways to increase its applicability. First, its tools should be accompanied with more concrete guidance for identifying how social values enter more technical decisions in scientific research. Second, since research projects can have multiple goals, examining the alignment between broader societal aims of research and more technical goals should be part of the tools of the MI ideal.

关于社会价值观应该如何影响科学研究存在很多争论。然而，哲学家的规范性建议的实际适用性问题却很少受到关注。在这里，我们测试了 Matthew J. Brown（2020 年）道德想象力理想（MI 理想）的可实现性，该理想旨在帮助科学家通过反思研究的目标、选择、价值观和利益相关者来做出合理的价值判断。在这里，MI 理想的工具应用于气候建模设置，研究人员正在地球系统模型中开发气溶胶-云相互作用 (ACI) 参数化，其更广泛的目标是改进气候敏感性估计。在确定应用 MI 理想的小障碍后，我们提出了两种增加其适用性的方法。第一的，其工具应附有更具体的指导，以确定社会价值如何进入科学研究的更多技术决策。其次，由于研究项目可以有多个目标，检查更广泛的研究社会目标与更多技术目标之间的一致性应该成为 MI 理想工具的一部分。