Abstract
In 2014, the UK-based Nuffield Council on Bioethics carried out a series of engagement activities, including an online survey to which 970 people responded, and 15 discussion events at universities around the UK to explore the culture of research in the UK and its effect on ethical conduct in science and the quality of research. The findings of the project were published in December 2014 and the main points are summarised here. We found that scientists are motivated in their work to find out more about the world and to benefit society, and that they believe collaboration, multidisciplinarity, openness and creativity are important for the production of high quality science. However, in some cases, our findings suggest, the culture of research in higher education institutions does not support or encourage these goals or activities. For example, high levels of competition and perceptions about how scientists are assessed for jobs and funding are reportedly contributing to a loss of creativity in science, less collaboration and poor research practices. The project led to suggestions for action for funding bodies, research institutions, publishers and editors, professional bodies and individual researchers.
Highlights
Background Paper for the NuffieldCouncil on Bioethics. 2013
Project origins In December 2014, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, an independent body that explores ethical issues in biology and medicine, published the findings of a series of engagement activities that explored the culture of scientific research in the UK
Most of those who took part in our activities were involved or interested in research being undertaken by higher education institutions (HEIs), which carry out around a quarter of UK research and development
Summary
Any reports and responses or comments on the article can be found at the end of the article. Project origins In December 2014, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, an independent body that explores ethical issues in biology and medicine, published the findings of a series of engagement activities that explored the culture of scientific research in the UK. It should be noted that the people who took part in the survey and discussion events were self-selecting participants and cannot be assumed to be representative of the wider researcher population Most of those who took part in our activities were involved or interested in research being undertaken by higher education institutions (HEIs), which carry out around a quarter of UK research and development. A large proportion of the survey respondents and event participants work in either bioscience or medicine and are earlycareer researchers, which is reflective of the demographics of the HEI research community Notwithstanding these limitations in the data, we believe some important themes and ideas emerged during the project that are relevant to many areas of academic research. When respondents were asked to select five words from a list that best describe their understanding of high quality research, the five most frequently selected words were:
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