Thursday, 29 October 2020
ICN2 subscribes to the CSIC’s Ethics Committee declaration regarding ethical research in times of COVID-19
The CSIC’s Ethics Committee has published a statement to highlight and remind the value of the ethical and integrity principles that have to inform all scientific research. In this COVID-19 pandemic, ethics remain more important than ever. The ICN2 subscribed to this commitment and invites the research community to reflect on this essential subject.
On October 21, the Ethics Committee of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) issued a statement calling for a greater commitment than ever to ethical research, in a context as special as the COVID-19 pandemic. The ICN2 subscribed to it and invites its community to reflect on how to maintain the highest levels of ethical demand in the current context. This declaration aims to highlight the value of the ethical and integrity principles that should preserve any scientific research, regardless of the social, economic, and political urgencies of these difficult times.
To guarantee society’s trust in science, “we cannot and must not allow deception, plagiarism, theft, invention or exaggeration of results or conclusions to be used to unfairly obtain scientific notoriety”, according to the statement. Besides issuing this the ethical and integrity call, the CSIC committee also highlighted the need for coordination between different agents of the scientific system to optimize resources and increase the efficiency of research. Science will help humanity to emerge from this global health crisis.