The Ethical Foundations of Medical Scientific Writing

Abstract

Striving to be a better person, who lives more ethically today than you did yesterday, is the first and most essential step for writing better scientific papers. If you give only superficial thought and lip-service to the ethics of scientific research – i.e. if you simply think “yeah, yeah, yeah, I already know all this ethics stuff; let’s move along to the ‘real’ science” – then you will not know the right way to conduct and report medical research. And if you do not know the right way to conduct and report medical research, you will do it in ways that are wrong. Conducting and reporting research involves making dozens, or even hundreds, of little choices per day – most of them without much conscious realization that another little choice is actually being made. Even if one does stop to notice them, most of these choices seem to be only technical choices about methods or grammar or whatever else, but they are not only that. Viewed in another light, they are also moral choices about what to do and say, or not do and say, why, and how. If you do not recognize this deeper moral dimension of scientific research, or if you fail to respond to it appropriately, then you risk making choices that will seem appropriate for reaching your practical goals, but which may often run counter to the greater purposes of scientific medical research. When you spend time reading the ethical guidelines and earnestly reflecting on how they apply to your research, the quality of your research and reporting will improve. You will find yourself making subtle but important changes in your work. And you will find yourself prepared to make better decisions going forward.