Tensions and challenges of the ethics of scientific health research: an open reflection
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25758/set.2264Keywords:
Ethical regulation, Health research, Social sciences, Scientific integrityAbstract
Ethics and research are dimensions that are increasingly interdependent, so the broad debate around the promotion of an ethical culture of rigor and demanding scrutiny corresponds to a concern that is effectively transversal to all areas of scientific knowledge. This article of theoretical reflection is intended to highlight the characteristics and trends underlying the evolution of ethical regulation in scientific research, but also to raise some critical questions in terms of the implications, tensions, and challenges that this reality entails. On the one hand, the demand for more robust ways of safeguarding scientific integrity and the credibility of research is well understood. But on the other hand, the emergence of a certain temptation to narrow the conception of research is notorious, since the reinforcement of regulation may carry the risk of some bureaucratization and normalization of ethical scrutiny. The challenge for ethical regulation is to establish more demanding forms of deliberation and better adapted to the new dynamics of scientific research, without, however, this implying the strangulation of innovative research or the establishment of uniform regulatory procedures that can, therefore, be maladjusted to the reality of scientific traditions distinct from clinical and biomedical research.
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