Introduction to ethics and research: conceptual reference points

In this course, we will try

to clarify concepts and words that are frequently used today
in the context of the institutionalization of research ethics issues.
I’ll identify these areas:
first, research ethics, a term you will hear a lot
and that you’ve heard a lot already.
Second, scientific integrity, which is more recent,
and which is becoming institutionalized, particularly through
scientific integrity officers in every institution.
Third is the social responsibility of science, a concept that is
more established in Europe, especially in European research projects.
These three areas
research ethics, scientific integrity,
and the social responsibility of science,
are often confused with each other, and an effort isn’t always made
to clarify what differentiates them.
That is what we’ll try to do in this course:
give you the basics
so you can read the texts
in the right way and interpret them.
A minimal definition of these three areas states
that research ethics
is a reflective approach.
Remember this term. It’s a reflective process,
on the values and purposes of scientific research.
Scientific integrity on the other hand is a normative approach:
ethics is a reflective approach,
and scientific integrity is a normative approach
whose aim is to provide a framework,
or regulating the best practices of a community
by establishing standards and principles.
Social responsibility in science is a political approach,
in that it apprehends the context of scientific research
and tries to anticipate
the consequences of the production of scientific knowledge
on society.
So we have three areas that fall under three approaches
a reflective approach for research ethics,
a normative approach for scientific integrity,
and a political approach for the social responsibility of science.
We can understand that ethical reflection
about science is a form of variation
between reflective issues,
those that are linked
to a capacity for reflection that the scientific community
that scientists can have about themselves, about their practices.
There is a normative dimension: framing practices with standards
and finally a more political approach
about the environment and context in which science acts,
and about the consequences of scientific production
on society, future generations, and the environment.
This is the social responsibility of science.
So you see that these three areas have different objects.
I’ve mentioned the reflective, normative and political approaches,
and also used other words that we’ll define.
I said that research ethics
is a reflective process that focuses on values and goals.
Scientific integrity is a normative approach that deals with
standards and principles. Social responsibility
is a political approach that addresses the context and the consequences.
Here you have six concepts
which are crucial for understanding
what we are talking about when we talk about about ethics in science.
Six concepts: values, goals,
standards, principles, context and consequences.
Ethics is a bit like a craftsperson
we use materials
or like a mathematician who uses equations, axioms.
Or a physicist who uses technical measuring devices.
Finally, in ethics, we also have materials.
These materials are the values,
purposes, standards, principles, context and consequences.
It is with these materials that we will
work in ethics to reflect on science.
So let’s establish a minimal definition,
taking into account all the limits of creating a definition.
Let’s define these six elements.
We can say that values,
the concept of values, is the most commonly used concept in ethics.
As soon as we talk about ethics, we are talking about values.
But often, this concept of value is confused with, for example, a principle or a
norm.
But they are very different things.
Values enable us to give a meaning
to our actions.
To give you an image,
let’s say that values are
interpretive filters between a person and reality.
In other words, you can see reality,
the same reality, but from different points of view,
and with different values. Values give meaning to
the way you apprehend reality.
And of course,
between two people, between two groups,
the same reality won’t have the same meaning
according to the values you choose
to put between yourself and reality.
Values are an interpretive filter.
There are many values. By definition, when you consider
a value, you can find another that’s opposed to it, or will at least compete with
it.
The question of values isn’t one of lists or sets,
as in making a list of values that could define it.
Values are by definition,
as it were
unable to be characterized or enumerated; they are infinite.
So, for example, you can defend values
of efficiency, of comfort, of profitability,
of sustainability and social justice,
or to do with well-being and free will.
In fact values are
signals of the meanings
one mobilizes to give meaning to an action.
So, for a long time, we believed that science was free of values.
It was thought that science was neutral,
and didn’t contain the things we call values.
Now we realize,
and the whole history of science is there to document it,
that science also contains values. When a scientist acts
it is false to say that he or she acts in a perfectly neutral way.
He or she acts according to
the values he or she chooses to emphasize over other values.
Values are important.
Are really important.
It’s part of research ethics,
of the reflective approach I mentioned earlier.
Next are purposes.
What are they?
They allow is to give a direction to an action.
Values give meaning,
and purposes give meaning in terms of direction.
Where are we going?
Where do we want to go?
Why do this rather than that?
Finally, here it is.
The finality is the direction that we wish to take.
And there too,
often goals in science are implicit
and are often reduced to
the question of objectives to be achieved.
In science, we set goals to achieve.
For example when you write a research project
you seek to achieve objectives of knowledge
and often, we forget that behind this set of objectives that we are trying
to achieve, there is a purpose, a purpose that is much more general,
which is the direction that we ultimately
wish to take by looking in such and such a direction,
or by doing such and such research.
And the purpose is important. Why is it important?
Because the purpose is the horizon,
the end point of our actions.
It’s important to spell it out because
it’s often conflictual
because everyone doesn’t agree on the end points of our actions.
We must remember that in science there are multiple purposes.
We can have application purposes,
there can be production purposes, producing knowledge for the sake of knowledge,
We can have purposes that are linked to values
such as supporting sustainable development.
For example,
limiting climate change – a lot of research has this purpose.
There’s also research that supports military armament
or the economic profitability of certain industries.
Finally,
the purposes are the subject
of a conflictuality, and that’s why we must make them explicit.
The third kind of material we use
in the field of ethics is principles.
Principles are part of
scientific integrity, and therefore of a normative approach,
are often confused with the question of values.
Now it’s very important to differentiate principles from values.
Principles, unlike values, which are specific,
contextualized, related to a particular situation,
are more abstract categories.
These will be broad categories
that are like compasses for our actions.
For example we choose in a republic,
or in any case in France, to define
this compass around three principles:
liberty, equality and fraternity.
But you understand that these principles are abstract categories.
When we talk about the principles of equality or freedom, they are nothing
without values and actions behind them,
and which allow them to be embodied in particular situations.
But that doesn’t mean these principles are useless.
It's a common morality, as it were,
within a society or a community:
these are the principles we want to uphold,
which later are transformed by the defence of certain values.
Standards are very closely linked to principles.
They’re also part of scientific integrity, of the approach that is called
normative.
Standards are everything included within the framework of practices
in a community, though bylaws,
laws, decrees, an entire legal and reglementary structure
that tell you what is possible to do,
and not possible to do. In science
there are also a certain number of standards.
For example methodological or publication standards.
In science, for instance, one can’t
be the author of an article
if one has not taken part in the research that enabled the results to be
published.
This publication standard,
which specifies that the author must be authentic,
that is,
must really have participated in the research. This is something we must abide by.
If we don’t, we are
in the context of a breach of scientific integrity.
We will come back to this question of standards because it is important.
Norms are often the embodiment of principles
or values in a particular context.
Principles and standards are part of scientific integrity.
Then we have the consequences and the context.
Consequences are something that fall within
social responsibility, which may be taken for granted.
Consequences are taken for granted, of course;
we must study the consequences of our actions, of course;
but in fact there is nothing more difficult than studying consequences.
We can obviously
have control over the foreseeable consequences of our known actions,
but that’s only a very small part of the future,
and the controllable future in particular, which can be reached by calculating
probabilities
that allow us to predict
and to say in advance what will happen in the future.
Consequences of course have a much wider range than that.
Consequences are also
the unforeseeable consequences of our actions:
that which cannot be reduced to probability calculations;
that which is possible,
but not necessarily probable,
that is to say, computable.
The unpredictability of consequences, the consequences of our actions,
puts us in a particular situation of responsibility.
That is, we feel that we are responsible
for actions whose occurrence it is impossible to predict.
You see how difficult it is.
And then there are the unforeseen consequences of actions
that are not known or controllable.
Dimensions we can’t control in the present,
and that will impact the future.
So the issue of consequences
is characterized by a permanent tension between
what can be controllable and calculable - what is probable - and what is
unpredictable,
what is uncertain,
and in the end, by the incompleteness of our knowledge.
Responsibility is located within this tension,
and we must ask what exactly
we are responsible for.
The concept of responsibility invites us –
via the etymology of the word –
responsibility comes from "respondere,"
which means to answer or to answer to.
The question that is asked
of scientists is: to what should we answer?
We create knowledge, we create objects,
we design objects and devices,
and in the end, to what should we answer
in terms of creating knowledge, devices,
in terms of our knowledge of future consequences?
This is the fundamental question of social responsibility
which implies responsibility that is no longer simply retrospective,
related to acts in the past,
for which we may be found to be at fault –
this is the classic concept of responsibility.
The complexity of contemporary science
requires that we be responsible for the future.
That is, we are responsible for acts we have not yet committed,
and for which we can’t control the foreseeable consequences.
The sixth and final element
which will once more mainly focus on social responsibility
is the question of context.
Context in ethics, as you will see,
is not what it’s usually defined as –
like background noise that we can pay attention to or not.
We’re doing research, for instance,
on the climate, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer,
we are in a particular specialty, for example genetics
or botany, very particular things,
we go far and it is important
to go far in science in the specificity of this field.
And then you open your eyes and say, Oh yes, there’s a context.
Yes, there’s social and economic data,
there is a cultural state of society on these issues
that I should perhaps pay attention to, no?
It’s no longer possible to proceed like this today.
Ethics invites us to consider
that context is not background or something that comes later
to contextualize or historicize our knowledge.
Context is a dimension of our knowledge.
Today the question we ask of science
which is implied here, is
doing physics, mathematics,
botany, climatology
or genetics in 2021,
is it the same thing as doing it in the 18th or 19th centuries? The answer
that ethics provides is of course no.
It's not the same thing at all today
to do science as it was in the 18th century
because the context has changed, history has changed,
mentalities are not the same,
because the socio-cultural data, economic data are not the same,
because the emergencies are not the same.
Today we have to deal with
for example the combination of a pandemic crisis
and an ecological crisis.
This data is not background noise.
It’s not an option that we can
chat about over coffee with colleagues.
No, we have to deal with this data
and with simultaneous crises that are
unprecedented in the history of humankind.
This must be part of research projects from the outset, as part of the basic data.
We must take into account
that science today will be different, with this awareness
and sensitivity to context, from what it would be
if we were indifferent or insensitive to it.
So that’s it in a nutshell.
To sum up this conceptual clarification,
there are three areas of research ethics: research ethics,
scientific integrity, and the social responsibility of science.
They represent three different levels: the reflective level, the normative level,
and the political level. They employ different materials.
These are the six elements that are used.
Now in the second part of this course
I would like us to think about how
to articulate these three areas. It’s not a matter of juxtaposing them
or to say that they are completely independent and that the question,
for example, of standards has nothing to do with the question of values
or that the question of values has nothing to do
with the question of purpose or content.
So we need to find a principle
or principles of articulation between these three areas.
It’s very important to understand for concrete practices
for a scientist who wants to put him or herself in a position
that we can term “ethical”, in the sense that he or she wants
to include the ethical dimension in his or her work,
whether it's a thesis, post-doc work, or later as a researcher.
So,
I suggest a principle of articulation among these three domains
that places the ethics of research – the reflective approach
on values and goals – at the center. And even more, I...
I suggest, based on my analysis of the literature on the subject
of ethics in science, pivot point of reflection.
This pivot point - research ethics as a pivot point -
between scientific integrity,
which is a more community-oriented approach,
as we’ve mentioned, the community provides itself with general principles,
that sets standards for regulating these practices.
So, between scientific integrity which is more oriented towards the community,
and social responsibility on the other hand,
which is more oriented towards society.
And you see,
this is still within philosophy, within ethics, searching for a reference point
through a community approach,
among the community of doctors, lawyers,
scientists, and of society as a whole.
What is the articulation between the norms
that a community establishes for itself
and the values that society defends?
And so,
what I propose here,
is that the ethics of research is a pivot point of reflection
that allows us to standards and principles on the one hand,
the study of context and apprehending consequences on the other hand,
through reflection on values and goals.
So, the principle of articulation is the following:
an ethics of research that is a pivot point for reflection.
This pivot point has important functions.
In particular it allows scientific integrity,
the concept you’ll hear about most often
in your studies to become a researcher or as a young researcher,
working today.
It’s the word you’ll hear the most. You’ll hear it exactly as it is:
as something that is normative.
We'll give you regulations,
we’ll tell you that you can do this but not that.
We'll tell you that if you do that you are violating scientific integrity.
In short, scientific integrity will be a kind of normative territory
for your research.
You aren’t allowed to plagiarize,
you aren’t allow to use a result without citing your sources
or to be an author of a publication without having participated in the research,
or modify your curves.
You have a duty to publish raw data today, etc.
The question that arises to you and to us, as scientists is:
are these standards set in stone once and for all?
In other words
does this set of norms form a deontology, an ethics?
Ethics as you know is part of a code.
For example, doctors, they have a code of ethics.
There is a set of articles
and they must respect them, but without negotiation, without discussion.
If they step outside this code of ethics, what happens?
They have to deal with a disciplinary board,
which for doctors, operates under the aegis of a council of the Order of
Physicians.
This Order ensures compliance with the code of ethics.
If it is not respected by physicians,
they are held accountable and there are sanctions.
Does the same thing exist for science?
And to put it another way,
does scientific integrity,
this set of standards – publication standards,
standards of public/private partnership,
or to do with a conflict of interest –
does the whole of this normative framework in science
form a deontology?
Which would therefore be set out in a code punishable by sanctions
and to which we should be held accountable before a disciplinary board?
The answer is no.
This is a idiosyncrasy of science
in that
scientific integrity is not governed by a code of ethics.
In other words, scientific standards
are always,
- and in the whole history of science, this is demonstrated and demonstrable -
standards in science are always
restricted to the reflection of the community on itself.
In other words, these standards are constantly being discussed.
They can always be debated,
they’re evolving,
and they are more or less spelled out
according to the field we’re looking at.
One of the fundamental characteristics
of science; the fundamental ethical claim
of the scientist, is its pluralism.
Science is fundamentally characterized by plurality;
it contains disciplines,
but scientific pluralism
is not measured in terms of how many disciplines there are.
Obviously, there are disciplines
mathematics, physics, botany, climatology and in all these fields,
sub-disciplines, sub-specialties.
Scientific pluralism is much wider than that.
There are sciences and different styles of scientific reasoning
and different methodologies,
different ingredients and different approaches.
Some use models, others use simulations.
Some use qualitative and other use quantitative surveys.
Some use equations, others use history, etc.
Science is multi-sided through its methods,
by its style of reasoning, by its rationality, by its disciplines.
And because of this it is difficult to apply the same standards everywhere.
Certain standards are shared among disciplines,
but there also are many specific standards.
Standards evolve with the evolution of knowledge,
the development of the field,
the relationship the scientific field has with
the rest of the community, and with society and its modifications
and new requirements, for example.
Today a requirement that is strongly expressed
is for open science,
with the fewest possible filters between production and publication,
and access to the production and knowledge.
All this contributes to the evolution of methodological standards,
and the standards of science.
The specificity of scientific normativeness
is that it is always subject to ethics and to reflectivity.
You can see the importance of this articulation between these two fields.
It allows us to understand the place standards occupy in science,
and our need to discuss standards,
to share it with our community
so it isn’t just something
that is imposed on everyone once and for all
and in every situation.
Now we come to a concept that is important in research ethics
which is
the concept of reliability.
The concept of reliability,
is what everyone involved in science seeks.
Any scientist, whoever he may be,
whatever his discipline, seeks to built reliable knowledge.
But what does reliable mean?
Reliability is
the quality of something or somebody
that is trustworthy.
Reliability is the quality of something that is trustworthy.
So, behind the question of reliability
is the big question of trust.
How can we confidently build scientific knowledge?
How can we trust
in the scientific knowledge that is produced?
In short, can science be trusted?
Is science reliable?
It must be understood that this articulation
between scientific integrity and research ethics is really
at the heart of this question of reliability,
which must always be thought about
according to these two aspects.
Remember that reliability is a two-sided concept. One has more to do with
scientific integrity,
and the other with research ethics.
These two sides are on one hand solidity,
such as the methodological solidity
of an experiment, which is more connected with scientific integrity,
and on the other hand relevance,
which is more connected with research ethics,
and depends more on the values we choose
to uphold in a particular research project.
So this articulation between scientific integrity
and research ethics is the same articulation
that embodies the concept of reliability in science.
Reliability is like a cursor, a way of keeping track,
not an opposition or a choice between things:
a cursor that monitors the solidity
of the research and its ability of being in line
with epistemic and methodological standards of the discipline.
For example the editorial standards of a magazine,
etc., etc.
and the relevance of this research according to the values
and the goals that are targeted
by scientists and their institutions.
This is a concrete characterisation of the articulation
between scientific integrity and research ethics.
It’s highly concrete
in the evaluation of the reliability of research.
How can it be evaluated?
By defining criteria of both solidity
and reliability.
Reliability is the balance or the harmony
between the two.
To finish up
I’d say that we should think about an articulation
not simply between research ethics and scientific integrity,
as we’ve just seen, but also between research ethics
and the social responsibility of science.
Here you should understand
the importance of reflection
in research ethics, to open the field of consideration,
especially in terms of our social responsibility
with regard to the consequences of the production
of knowledge, and the context in which it will be used, where it will fit in.
And here the link is
the concept of implication.
For too long we thought of the link between science, technology,
and society as an application.
The thing that interested
scientists when they considered
ethics in science and society was its application.
They wondered: Will my knowledge be applied well?
Will it be applied in a context
that I find relevant or not?
And so, finally, ethical reflection
concentrated for too long on the products of science:
technical applications,
the ways science is used in different sectors.
For example, a geneticist who worked in transgenesis
only worked in transgenesis.
GMOs
are the application of transgenesis in an object like corn, for example.
The geneticist wasn’t interested in this,
but in applications his knowledge could have
in society.
Of course, for thirty years,
all the health crises and
the ecological and social issues that involve science have shown us
that the question of applications, which regulated relationships
between science and society, can no longer be the only element in play.
The issues of applications is more basic:
it implies implications.
That is, recognition,
of the fact that science fundamentally involves implications, whichever kind it
is,
from the most basic to the most complex,
and that all knowledge, whatever it may be,
even if it has no direct application, has implications.
These implications are of different degrees, but they are there.
And so, what is important in our consciousness
of the importance of our social responsibility
is to characterize
this link to implications that binds us to society,
that binds us to values,
to purposes, and to a context.
The concept of commitment has become central
- and I'm going to end on that -
this concept of implications
can be considered on three levels.
First there are ontological implications.
Second are epistemological implications.
Third are axiological implications.
Ontological implications are very easy to understand.
They mean that
all knowledge changes the world.
To know, for example, how the brain works,
even if you don’t have an application goal,
the knowledge you acquire
about neural functioning for example,
will change our representation of the human being
and the link between the mind and the body, and our representation
of understand, of the mind, and will therefore change the world.
Changing the representation of the world changes the world.
All knowledge has an impact on the way we act.
Here we can say that knowledge
is an action, whether we like it or not,
whether it's as theoretical and abstract as possible,
all knowledge is an action.
Therefore the ontological implications will of course be
stronger or weaker
depending on the scientific object we’re dealing with.
Of course, if you work in the field,
of Alzheimer’s disease, of the climate, of cancer, etc.,
the ontological implications will be very strong.
Your knowledge will change the way
in which we understand the world, and this will change the world.
The second level, that of epistemological implications,
is the awareness
of that the fact that
we have created new scientific knowledge,
we insert this knowledge into the existing epistemic landscape.
This knowledge adds something
rather than erasing something.
It doesn’t necessarily compete with previous knowledge;
it adds to the complexity of science.
So there are implications in that you insert
the knowledge into an existing landscape.
For example, you can choose
that the knowledge you create erases previous knowledge.
In this case you are in a mode of
epistemological implication
that competes with others.
We might say that it’s
related to the theory of paradigms.
A philosopher of science named Thomas Khun
thought that normal science is organized around
a paradigm. A revolution occurs that shakes up
some of the parameters of normal science,
which gives rise to a new paradigm.
This is not cumulative; it is substitutive.
One paradigm replaces another.
This is a fundamental epistemological reflection.
It will have implications on the way knowledge
fits into an existing landscape.
Implications will occur
depending on how much or how little you respect
scientific pluralism.
As far as axiological implications are concerned,
we always act according to values.
And therefore the stake here of the implications is
how we can clarify them, share them,
and finally acknowledge these values
in scientific processes in order to
build scientific processes that are
more democratic, more open.
Without going into details,
the three relationships implications can have
which create a framework
for the issue of the social responsibility in science.
I'm going to end here.
This is an introduction to clarify these areas.
We’ve seen some definitions and some principles of articulation.
As a complement to this course you will have
all the resources that will enable you to expand each of the definitions
and each of the areas we have touched on here.
Thank you for your attention.