Ensuring reliability and trust in quality of Research Ethics expertise in the context of new/emerging technologies

Projects are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes:

Ensuring the adherence to the highest standards of research ethics is a key element of national and EU research policy. Because of its universal impact on our society and its primary role in innovation, the need for ethics rigour, the pillar of public trust in the scientific endeavour, is essential. Overall, research ethics is the foundation of high quality research and a prerequisite for achieving excellence in research and innovation in Europe and beyond.

In order to ensure that the research activities meet these expectations, they need to comply with the relevant legislations (e.g. on personal data protection, clinical trials, animal research etc.) and ethics principles. Assessing the compatibility with ethics principles requires the involvement of ethics experts that usually provide, as an ethics committee/panel an opinion or an approval. These experts, including early career researchers, come from all disciplines in science, from the public and private sector, as well as from citizens associations and NGOs.

Reliability and trust in the quality and expertise of the ethics experts is therefore key. This requires beyond the questions related to the independence and the possible conflicts of interest, that the experts have the necessary knowledge and understanding of the issues at stake to be able to assess the activity under review.

The recent rapid development of new technologies with high potential socio-economic impact[1] constitutes in this regard an important challenge: ensuring that technological transformations go hand in hand with the protection and promotion of fundamental rights thus ensuring that people can prosper, enjoy their rights and freedoms and live without discrimination.[2] In this context, because of the continuous globalisation of the research activities involving those new technologies, the risk of ethics dumping, the exportation of unacceptable practices outside the EU is a growing concern.

The action proposed should address these issues in mobilising the research ethics community and develop the necessary education, awareness and training actions as well as propose possible adaptation of the ethics review process.