Kadri Simm

Whilst research has always been political and politicized, an emerging theme in the area of research ethics and integrity (REI) is the increased politicization of REI itself in areas of scientific and/or political controversy such as climate change, gender dysphoria treatment, the management of pandemics and women’s reproductive rights. One aspect of this trend is the ‘weaponization’ of research misconduct allegations and findings to discredit individuals, institutions or intellectual or scientific positions (Bruckner, 2024). Such politicization has been amplified by the increasing role of online and social media as a platform for public discourses on REI, and for airing whistle-blower complaints and accusations of Research Misconduct (RM) against both research-performing institutions and individual researchers. This shift has implications for the temporality of REI reporting and investigations, since traditionally such processes are slow and deliberative to ensure transparency, objectivity, fairness and thoroughness. However, this meticulous approach is inimical to the fast pace of online media discourse (including social media), which plays an increasing role in RM cases and adds pressure on institutions and researchers to accelerate the speed of judgments in RM cases and to make their investigations and findings more publicly transparent. This piece will discuss three cases that highlight multiple aspects of the politicization of REI, which were identified through a qualitative case study exercise carried out by the Horizon Europe-funded BEYOND project to assess novel and emerging issues related to REI discourses.

There are various theoretical models of disagreement in ontology, logic, epistemology and ethics, but the practical consequences of these models have received much less attention. This special issue of ‘Trames’ aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice, examining the implications of theoretical positions for real-life disagreements. The contributions to this volume investigate the topics such as verbal disputes, moral and meta-ethical disagreements, political disagreements, the disagreement between experts, the relationship between disagreement and ignorance, epistemic self-trust, introspective disputes and the ethics of disagreement.

While empirical studies of research ethics and integrity are increasingly common, few have aimed at national scope, and even fewer at current results from Central and Eastern Europe. This article introduces the results of the first national research integrity survey in Estonia, which included all research-performing organisations in Estonia, was inclusive of all disciplines and all levels of experience. A web-based survey was developed and carried out in Estonia with a call sent to all accredited Estonian research institutions. The results indicate that the vast majority (89%) of respondents consider research ethics and integrity issues important and view falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism (FFPs) as the most severe forms of misconduct. Self-reporting of FFPs is generally comparable to levels published in other studies (6.2%). Gift authorship (41%) and hampering the work of a colleague (32%) were problematic practices most noticed among colleagues. At the same time, two of the noticed questionable research practices (QRPs) – salami-slicing and misuse of research funding – were seen as less severe, hinting at the existence of counter-norms that career advancement rules and structural factors like funding policies may encourage. The availability of research ethics and integrity guidelines was considered good. Ethical aspects of studying potentially stigmatising data in a very small research community are discussed in the article and results are analysed through counter-norms and normative dissonance frames.

Benefit sharing pertains to the distribution of benefits and burdens arising from research. More specifically, it concerns what, if anything, is owed to individuals, communities or even populations that participate in research (benefits to investors, to other populations or the social value of research more generally understood are not the focus of benefit sharing). In what follows, I will give a brief overview of the ethical arguments and historical dynamics behind benefit sharing practices, then outline major governance frameworks and discuss the potential problems around applying this concept in health research. The overall aim of this chapter is to highlight the complexity of benefit sharing and argue that success hinges on the careful balancing of universal research ethics duties with the particularities of concrete research projects taking place in distinct locations. Benefit sharing is no panacea for solving the inequalities of access and opportunities associated with global health research. Yet it can be a profoundly empowering tool, especially as the framework is shifting from compensation to collaboration.

The paper analyses issues related to supervision and support of early career researchers in Estonian academia. We use nine focus groups interviews conducted in 2015 with representatives of social sciences in order to identify early career researchers’ needs with respect to support, frustrations they may experience, and resources they may have for addressing them. Our crucial contribution is the identification of wider support networks of peers and colleagues that may compensate, partially or even fully, for failures of official supervision. On the basis of our analysis we argue that support for early career researchers should take into account the resources they already possess but also recognise the importance of wider academic culture, including funding and employment patterns, and the roles of supervisors and senior researchers in ensuring successful functioning of support networks. Through analysing the conditions for the development of early career researchers – producers of knowledge – our paper contributes to social epistemology understood as analysis of specific forms of social organisation of knowledge production.

Why is it that humanitarianism and theories of global justice seem to have relatively little engagement with each other? This article discusses some of the reasons for this being the case, and argues that instead of seeing these two fields as separate or adversarial they should be viewed as complementary. The article begins with a brief overview of humanitarianism, in order to argue for the relevance of justice in humanitarianism. The second section focuses on analyzing selected theories of justice— those of Peter Singer, John Kekes, and Thomas Pogge—through a particular lens, that of the question of responsibility for global well-being. The article concludes by arguing that theories of global justice can be beneficial for humanitarian causes, not in a comprehensive and consistent “all-or-nothing” manner, but rather on a case-by-case basis and through selective application of particular arguments

This article focuses on healthcare ethics discussions in Estonia. We begin with an overview of the reform policies that the healthcare institutions have undergone since the region regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The principles of distributing healthcare services and questions regarding just what ethical healthcare should look like have received abundant coverage in the national media. An example of this is the exceptionally public case of V—a woman with leukemia whose expensive drugs the national health insurance fund refused to compensate. In our subsequent discussion, we focus on a grand-scale local healthcare and research project—the Estonian Genome Project—that attempts to include 1 million DNA samples into one database.

The Human Genome Project and the related research and development activities have raised heated discussions around some very basic ethical and social issues. A much debated concern is that of justice in human genetic research and in possible applications, especially pertaining to questions of just benefit-sharing - who and based on what sort of argumentation has the right to require benefits arising from research and discoveries, and what can even be considered as benefits? In what follows I will be examining and clarifying the notion of benefit-sharing by focusing on its justifications. I will argue for certain qualifications and limitations in using this concept in specific and universal contexts.

This chapter studies the appropriation of the Nordic as a brand in the domestic political discourse of Estonia in 1997-2017. It departs from the assumption that the peculiarity of the Nordic branding is not confined to the strategies of place branding applied for representing the Nordics, but includes long-standing efforts to export the ‘Nordic’ also as a societal model and a set of values and norms to be copied and followed by others. The chapter concludes that despite the long-term adherence to the Nordics as a telos for Estonian society, in the domestic political discourse only selective appropriation of the elements associated with the Nordic identity and model have occurred. The meaning and significance of the Nordics has shifted according to the ideological stance of the political actors as well as to the particular political situations and themes, thus making it a ‘floating signifier’ in Estonian political discourse.

The article proceeds by first focusing on the history of the concepts of common good and public interest. I then use the example of biobanks to investigate the contemporary use of these concepts. Readers of this journal are well aware of the continued employment of the common good and the related concepts in the debates centering on developments in new medical technologies. Most research purports to support the common good, and novel medicosocial infrastructures (e-health projects, biobanks) have been established globally in the name of public interest. Although philosophy might not offer the final word on the correct way of defining or applying the concept, it can still offer crucial insights that help us to reflect on the role and the use of the concept in the current discussions.