Research Ethics

Abstract

Research ethics is a type of applied (or professional) ethics that addresses the questions, dilemmas, and issues related to the ethical conduct of scientific research ( see professional ethics ; dilemmas, moral ). Topics that fall within the domain of research ethics range from practical problems, such as assigning authorship, to more abstract questions, such as resolving conflicts between normative principles. Though ethical issues have always arisen in science, research ethics began to emerge as a distinct academic discipline in the mid‐1980s, when scientists, humanists, and policymakers came to terms with well‐publicized scandals in research, such as data fabrication and falsification in federally funded science, abuses of human and animal research subjects, and conflicts of interest in clinical trials. These and other events drew the attention of journalists, who published front‐page articles on scientific fraud and other problems with research; Congressional leaders, who held hearings on misconduct in science; and federal agencies, which issued new ethics regulations and training requirements (Shamoo and Resnik 2015). During the 1990s, governmental and scientific organizations released a number of influential reports on integrity in science, professional associations held conferences and workshops on research ethics, and scholars published textbooks and anthologies on research ethics (National Academy of Sciences 1992; Resnik 1998; Macrina 2014). New scholarly journals, such as Science and Engineering Ethics and Accountability in Research , were founded to address ethical, social, and legal issues in scientific research. By the beginning of the twenty‐first century, social scientists, psychologists, and other empirically oriented researchers had gathered considerable data concerning ethical behavior in research and developed explanatory models ( see explanations, moral ).