‘Notifier’ is the person who submitted a notification about possible violations of recognized research ethical norms. ‘Notified’ is the one such a notification is directed towards.
The case derived from Notifier's belief that Notified was active in a religious community. Notifier thought that Notified should have disclosed this as a potential conflict of interest before contributing to a scientific work that included advice on alcohol consumption.
Notifier also doubted the research ethical legitimacy of the conclusion that there is no safe lower limit for alcohol consumption and meant it was neither sufficiently defined nor grounded. Notifier questioned whether this constituted a violation of the ethical norms regarding verification, openness, and documentation, and whether it involved distortion and concealment of relevant sources.
Notifier forwarded these claims for consideration to the Research Ethics Committee at UiO (REC). Since Notified had an affiliation with UiO, the case was admitted. Notified stated that he strongly disagreed with Notifier’s claims and believed that there had been no breach of research ethics either before or during the relevant scientific work.
REC divided the case into two factual questions: one concerning the alleged conflict of interest and potential impartiality, and another regarding the research ethical credibility of the conclusion about alcohol consumption. REC first had to assess whether there had been any breach of research ethics at all, which is the first condition for scientific misconduct.
REC found that there was no ethical obligation to disclose a possible religious affiliation, even if a scientific work is dealing with alcohol consumption and the relevant religious community has a pronounced view on this. It was relevant that it was a special category of personal data with a particular legal protection. REC believed that a possible ethical duty of transparency about sensitive personal data must generally be balanced with other considerations, where a researcher’s wish to protect such information should weigh heavily. In addition, they found that the requirements for systematic objectivity and control were well methodologically maintained in the relevant work.
Furthermore, REC believed that the conclusion about alcohol consumption was made by a concordant, broad, and meritorious scientific community. Therefore, criticism of this was an academic, not research ethical, question.
Based on this, REC found no violations of recognized research ethical norms, and no signs of systemic errors. The conclusion was unanimous.
References
- The Norwegian Research Ethics Act (2017) § 8
- The Regulations of the Law to The Norwegian Research Ethics Act (2018) § 7 last paragraph
- The Norwegian National Committees for Research Ethics (FEK): General guidelines (2014) Sections 1, 6, and 8
- The Norwegian National Committee for Research Ethics in Science and Technology (NENT): Guidelines for Research Ethics in Science and Technology (2015) Section 18
- National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (NESH): Guidelines for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (2021) Section 12
The text has been translated and improved by UiO GPT.
More statements and summaries from the Research Ethics Committee at UiO