Ethics

Scientific research is a collective, massively collaborative, international activity based on a set of values relating to ethics and integrity that underpin the requirements enabling scientific communities to function.

• These rules help to avoid consequences of poor research practices: for example, the ban on fabricating, falsifying or distorting research data promotes the advancement of knowledge by preventing researchers from reaching dead ends after basing their work on falsified data.
• Ethics and integrity promote values that are essential for collaborative research: trust, responsibility, mutual respect and fairness. For example, the rules on authorship, data sharing and confidentiality in peer reviews encourage cooperation, by making everyone’s contributions secure.
• Complemented by legal, regulatory and institutional provisions, these rules give concrete form to the system of values and responsibilities that scientists and their institutions entertain towards society, for example in terms of preventing and detecting conflicts of interest, protecting personal data or using animal models in research.
• They help to strengthen society’s confidence in research, its quality and its integrity. In this way, they express and reinforce the essential values of democratic life: social responsibility, human rights, respect for the environment, public health and safety, etc. Distrust on the part of society and its political bodies is a poison for scientific research, for its funding, and for the use of its results, particularly in public decision-making processes.
• In this way, they express and reinforce the essential values of democratic life: social responsibility, human rights, respect for the environment, public health and safety, etc.