title: Six Challenges for Ethical Conduct in Science.
abstract: The realities of human agency and decision making pose serious challenges for research ethics. This article explores six major challenges that require more attention in the ethics education of students and scientists and in the research on ethical conduct in science. The first of them is the routinization of action, which makes the detection of ethical issues difficult. The social governance of action creates ethical problems related to power. The heuristic nature of human decision making implies the risk of ethical bias. The moral disengagement mechanisms represent a human tendency to evade personal responsibility. The greatest challenge of all might be the situational variation in people's ethical behaviour. Even minor situational factors have a surprisingly strong influence on our actions. Furthermore, finally, the nature of ethics itself also causes problems: instead of clear answers, we receive a multitude of theories and intuitions that may sometimes be contradictory. All these features of action and ethics represent significant risks for ethical conduct in science. I claim that they have to be managed within the everyday practices of science and addressed explicitly in research ethics education. I analyse them and suggest some ways in which their risks can be alleviated.
authors.affiliation: Secretary of the Ethics Committee of the University of Jyväskylä, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35 (Y33 465), 40014, Jyväskylä, Finland. petteri.i.niemi@jyu.fi.|Methodology Centre for Human Sciences and Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35 (Y33 465), 40014, Jyväskylä, Finland. petteri.i.niemi@jyu.fi.
authors.forename: Petteri
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Niemi
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D032984:Ethics, Research; D006801:Humans; D012586:Science / Q000193:education / Q000941:ethics* / Q000592:standards
keywords: Ethical decision making; Ethical guidelines; Ethical pluralism; Ethical reviews; Ethical situationism; Heuristics; Human agency; Moral disengagement mechanisms; Research ethics; Research ethics education