Mitică DRAGUSIN, President of Romanian Ethics Council
He obtained in 1995 his PhD in Nuclear Physics at the Atomic Physics Institute-IFA- Romania.
He has more than 19 years of experience in Decommissioning Nuclear Facilities and Radioactive Waste Management resulted from decommissioning, and 17 years in R&D and water soluble polymers obtained by radiation processing with high activity radiation sources Co-60, so 36 years in the same National Institute for Physics and Nuclear Engineering- Horia Hulubei-IFIN-HH, in nuclear field.
From 2017 is expert in decommissioning and radioactive waste management of Joint Research Center European Union, and President of Romanian Ethics Council;
His present position in Institute is Nuclear Safety Director, Chairman of Center for Decommissioning and Radioactive Waste Management, Project Manager for decommissioning the Nuclear Research Reactor VVR-S , IFIN-HH, Magurele-Romania. This project is active and estimated year to finalize implementation the immediate dismantling strategy is 2019. The building release from Nuclear Regulatory Control will be reused also in nuclear field for R&D with gamma beam 19 MeV and accelerated particle.
Nuclear techniques and technologies – social and ethical impact, threats, vulnerabilities and risks
Nuclear techniques and technologies are applying in industry, agriculture, research, education and medicine. Utilization of these must to comply with nuclear regulations and must to be authorized by regulatory body with limits and conditions.
Based of these regulations any application in nuclear field will be documented to demonstrate useful effects comparative with radiation dose, environmental protection and health of the people. The assessment supposed to analyze social and ethical impact, threats, vulnerabilities and risks, including costs estimation from manufacture, utilization and radioactive waste management.
Many of the nuclear application are unique :
– in industry: metallic plate, plastics, paper, wood thickness, liquid or solid level in the vessels, Non Destructive Testing, verification of the packages, vehicles, people on the security gates, gamma spectrometry to found radionuclides elemental compositions, production of the energy;
– in agriculture: determination the humidity of soil;
– in scientific research, technological development and innovation: nuclear structures, preclinical, clinical tests using animals in authorized veterinary unit, production of the radiopharmaceutical, radiation sources;
– in education: utilization of the portable instrumentation, measurement of the radiation field,
– in medicine: for diagnostic, treatment, surgical interventions, preclinical and clinical tests, bio-ethics rules;
Gilles ADDA is a senior CNRS research engineer. After studying engineering at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon, he obtained a doctorate in computer science at the Université Paris-Sud 11 in 1987, and an Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches in 2011. He joined the CNRS in 1992. Its activities focused initially on the design and implementation of statistical learning methods for automatic natural language processing. He is interested in big data, their management and epistemological and ethical implications. He has published more than 180 articles. He was Director of the IMMI (Institute for Multilingual and Multimedia Information) laboratory, a Franco-German laboratory from 2014 to 2016. In 2010, he received the CNRS Crystal Medal.
Since 2018, he has been appointed member of CCNE and member of COMETS (CNRS ethics committee), where he works in particular on these big data issues.
Dr Ron Iphofen FAcSS is an Independent Research Consultant, a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Society of Medicine. Since retiring as Director of Postgraduate Studies in Health Sciences, Bangor University, his major activity has been as an adviser to the European Commission and a range of governmental and independent research institutions internationally. He was Vice Chair of the UK Social Research Association and convenes their Research Ethics Forum. He has advised the UK Research Integrity Office; the Irish National Disability Authority; and the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology among many others. He has advised on several major EC projects: RESPECT (on pan-European standards in the social sciences) and SECUR-ED (on passenger transport security). He currently leads a 3-year project influencing policy on research ethics and integrity: PRO-RES. Ron founded the gerontology journal Quality in Ageing and Older Adults; books include: Ethical Decision Making in Social Research: A Practical Guide, Palgrave Macmillan (2009/2011); book series Advances in Research Ethics and Integrity Emerald (2017); coedited the SAGE Handbook of Ethics in Qualitative Research (2018); currently editing The Handbook of Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity for SPRINGER Nature.
Research with vulnerable populations
The focus of this presentation is to try to find a way to ensure that vulnerability as a concept retains its value in research ethics review. We need to seek how best to apply it – avoiding the visceral application to the population category that then has ramifications for the individual who ‘we’ align with that category whether they choose to or not. It is hard to sustain vulnerability as a distinct concept since it overlaps with so many other concepts – sensitivity, resilience, risk, susceptibility etc. And, equally important, it is hard to separate research with vulnerable groups from the consenting process. Again, for research purposes, the question is not whether or not someone or some group is vulnerable – there is little we, in the context of research, may be able or allowed to do something about that – the key ‘ethical’ question is – what are the risks of making someone (group, community, society) more vulnerable than they would otherwise have been, as a consequence of their involvement in research? For the research ethics appraisal process, then, the key questions to ask of researchers are: what do you think makes your target group/population vulnerable? How can your proposed research minimise any harm consequent on such vulnerability? What measures do you propose to put into place to ensure that?
Dr Teodora Manea studied philosophy in Romania and Germany. Between 2000 and 2009 she was lecturer specialising in hermeneutics, rhetoric, and philosophy of culture at the University of Iasi, Romania. Following her interest in German philosophy she had various postdoctoral research stays in Germany and gave several talks at German Universities and Research Centres: Constance, Hannover, Freiburg, Bonn and Tubingen. She was Romania’s representative at the South-Eastern European Bioethics Forum and fought for the introduction of bioethics as a teaching subject in Romanian universities. In 2006 she continued the specialisation in bioethics at the International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities, Tubingen.
Between 2010 and 2018 she taught medical humanities, philosophy and ethics at the Medical School, University of Exeter.
She has been a member of the care ethics network eSOCSCI since 2012 and has also been working for the European Commission since 2011 as an ethic expert (FP7 and Horizon 2020).
Her latest project: The Other Voice of Medical Consultations is an analysis of medical interpreting. It aims for a better understanding of the experiences, particularities and challenges of cross-cultural medical interactions. Innovative research methods linking medical sociology, philosophy and hermeneutics are used to explore this new and exciting domain. The analysis ranges from the investigation of codes of ethics and practice that regulate medical interpreting to the experiences of interpreting reflected in clinicians’, interpreters’ and patients’ stories. The results of this project will be considered as a basis for the recommendation of new guidelines concerning the specific role and responsibilities of medical interpreters.
Publications (selection): Enhancing Care, in Moral Enhancement, eds. M. Hauskeller and L. Coyne, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2018, Medical Bribery and the Ethics of Trust: The Romanian case, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Our Posthuman Skin Condition, in Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television, eds. M. Hauskeller, T. D. Philbeck, C. Carbonell, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Care for Carers. Care Issues in the Context of Medical Migration, (Cap.17) in Ethics of Care: critical international perspectives, Edited by M. Barnes, T. Brannelly, L. Ward and N. Ward, Policy Press, Bristol, 2015.
BBC interview on medical interpreting (May 2017): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0528076
Prof. Matthias Kaiser is Director of the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and Humanities (SVT) at the University of Bergen, having studied at the Universities of Munich, Oslo, Stanford and Frankfurt. His areas of expertise include: philosophy of science (Dr.phil.), ethics of science, and technology assessment. His areas of competence include social studies of science and technology, history of science, ethics, logic, and history of philosophy. His topics of interest include but are not restricted to: risk, the precautionary principle, uncertainty & complexity, aquaculture, food ethics, governance, value studies, integrity in science, energy, public participation, gm-organisms. Kaiser is an internationally recognized specialist in fields relating to ethics of science, food ethics, and integrity of science; he is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Food Ethics (Springer), and past President of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics (www.eursafe.org). Kaiser has published widely, more than 150 articles.
Exploring unchartered ethical terrain: Value landscapes as terra incognita for research
This talk will defend the claim that in spite of values being very much en vogue these days, and in spite of long traditions in several academic disciplines, and in spite of some empirical studies with thousands of data points, we still have very little reliable information about people’s deep-seated values and how they can affect their attitudes and behavior. The reason for this is seen to be to a large degree conceptual. The metaphore of value-landscapes is introduced as a first remedy to regard values as something more than the meaning of an abstract term. When we turn to policy, and in particular when we want our policiues to be value-sensitive, we want reliable empirical information on values in order to assess our normative principles in relation to them.
Johannes Klumpers leads the recently created Scientific Advice Mechanism Unit (SAM) in the European Commission.
The Unit supports the Commission’s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors who, as their name suggests, give science advice to the European Commissioners. The Group of Advisors– with support by the Unit- collaborates in this endeavour with five European Science Academy Networks.
The Unit also supports the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE), which also advises the Commissioners. Finally, the Unit develops policies on research integrity and assesses Horizon 2020 applications and projects according to their ethical and some legal characteristics.
A German National, born in Geneva in 1964, he studied forestry and wood technology and obtained his PhD from the French Ecole Nationale du Génie Rural, des Eaux et Forêts (ENGREF). After several years of industrial research in Sweden, he joined the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research & Innovation in 1998 and has worked there on a variety of topics, from renewable raw materials and industrial processes to gender, science in society, finance and budget. He has been in his current post since its establishment, 1 October 2015.
Dr. Liviu Oprea is qualified as medical doctor and also holds a master degree in Bioethics from Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, USA and finished a doctoral degree in Public Health at the University of Adelaide in Australia (thesis under external evaluation) where he has conducted interdisciplinary research in bioethics, public health and general practice. Liviu is now research coordinator in ethics and health policy at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy „Gr. T. Popa“ Iasi. Since 2015, Liviu Oprea has been the President of the College of Physicians in Iasi.
Niels Mejlgaard is professor of political science at Aarhus University, Denmark. His areas of expertise include science policy, science communication, responsible research and innovation, and research integrity. He has led several cross-national research projects and studies commissioned by the EC, national governments, and research performing and funding organisations. He was formerly director of the Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy, and is currently associate dean at the Aarhus School of Business and Social Science.
Standard Operating Procedures for Research Integrity
This presentation* provides a roadmap for “Standard Operating Procedures for Research Integrity” (SOPs4RI), a four-year, multi-partner project funded by the European Commission. SOPs4RI aims to stimulate transformational processes across European research performing and research funding organisations. Specifically, SOPs4RI will establish an inventory of relevant tools that organisations can draw from when developing governance arrangements promoting a strong research integrity culture. The consolidated inventory will be provided as a user-friendly, web-based ‘toolbox’.
SOPs4RI takes a mixed-methods, co-creative approach to the development and empirical validation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and guidelines to cultivate research integrity and reduce detrimental practices. Empirical elements of the project include 20 expert interviews, a three-round Delphi survey, 32 focus groups across academic disciplines, a survey of researchers across 31 countries, and four co-creation workshops engaging stakeholders. SOPs4RI also includes a pilot programme, in which selected organisations apply the SOPs and guidelines in local practices.
* Previous versions of this abstract were accepted for poster presentations at the 6th World Conference on Research Integrity, Hong Kong, June 2-5, 2019, and at the EARMA 2019 Conference, Bologna, March 27-29, 2019.
Ηelen Rethimiotaki is born in Athens, Greece in 1964. She has studied Law in the Law School of Athens University. She has obtained a Master in Sociology of Law from Law Department of Pantéon-Assas (Paris II) University. She has also made her PhD study in the same University regarding medical deontology and bioethics from a perspective of Sociology of Law, for which she has obtained a honorable distinction. She is a lawyer, member of Athens Lawyers’ chamber. From 1997 to 2005 she has worked as legal advisor in a bank insurance company of commercial credit against the risk of business clients’ insolvency. In 2005 she became Lecturer in Law School of Athens University and in 2012 she became assistant professor. From 2015 she has been appointed as a member of Greek Bioethics Committee and since 2018 she is chairing the Committee. She has an excellent knowledge in English and French language and a good knowledge in German.
Her work focuses at Biomedicine as a field of social relations regulated through the entanglement of rules, processes and institutions deriving from European/ National legal rules as well as autoregulation’s norms and ethical principles. She has also studied European Union as a new kind of combination of Law and Politics as well as between multiple legal orders with complex relationships. Lately she examines the evolution trends’ of family law combined to social changes of family forms and parenthood in Greece.
Her main publications are: De la déontologie médicale à la bioéthique. Etude de sociologie juridique, Université Panthéon~Assas~Paris II, 2000, Atelier National de Reproduction des Thèses, Lille, 2001. Regulation or self-regulation: The paradigm of Medically Assisted Reproduction (in Greek), Ant. N. Sakkoulas, Athens-Komotini, Family and Law in 21st century Greece: trends to individualization and contractualization (in Greek), Proceedings of 3rd Congress of Greek Hellenic Association of Sociology, Greek Society 1975-2010, reconstructions and challenges, Athens, 2011. Sources of Law and Legal Pluralism in European Union (in Greek), Athens-Thessaloniki, Sakkoulas S.A, 2012. Regulation of Bioethics and the postmodern paradigm of relation between Law and Ethics, Bioethical Topics, Joint Graduate Program in Bioethics, Department of Biology and of Sociology, Editions of University of Crete , 2013. Bioethics as a model of regulation and control in Greece: stocktaking and future challenges in: Κanelopoulou- Bottis, Μ./ Panagopoulou-Koutnagi F. (dir.), Medical Responsibility and Bioethics, Modern Approaches and Future Perspectives, Interdisciplinary Congress, March 2013, Athens, Broken Hill Partners Ltd, 2014, p. 295-317.Homosexual couples and medically assisted reproduction: sexual freedom, family life and parental relationship, in: Medically assisted reproduction and alternative family forms, Κounougeri-Μanoledaki., E./ Georgopoulos, G./ Κalaigi, A. and al., Publications of Medical Law and Bioethics, t.18, Αthens-Thessaloniki, Sakkoulas S.A., 2014, p. 147-180. Old and new sources of disobedience towards the Law in Greek society after the crisis, Congrès Mondial organsé par le Comitè de Recherche en Sociologie du Droit de l’Association Internationale de Sociologie – ISA/RCSL, Sociologie du droit et action politique, Toulouse, 3-6 September. Child Law in Action: Evaluating experiences from the first legal clinic for the rights of children in Greece (|in Greek) in : Gasparinatou, Μ. (dir.), Volume in honor of Nestor Kourakis, Sakoulas, Athens-Komotini, 2016 (e book), p. 1984-2004.
Dr Will C. van den Hoonaard (PhD, Manchester, 1977), Professor Emeritus, the University of New Brunswick is Founding-Member of the Interagency Panel on Research Ethics. Author or editor of 13 books, incl. a 700-year history of women in cartography, the Bahá’í Community of Canada, Icelandic resource management, and a textbook on sensitizing concepts. He also recently authored a children’s book on the childhood of the Bab, a Persian prophet.
His trilogy (The Ethics Rupture, 2016, The Seduction of Ethics, 2011, Walking the Tightrope, 2002) constitute a critical analysis of research ethics regimes. He was honoured by The Health Improvement Institute (Award for Lifetime Achievement for Excellence in Human Research Protection), the UNB President’s Medal, a Merit Award, and the United Nations Association of Canada Global Citizen Award. The Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction awarded him with the George Herbert Mead Award for Lifetime Achievement.
The Future of Ethics Review
I will explain what prompted me to offer my own views on the ethics review process as it stands today, with an eye on the future of ethics review. It will become clear that ethics codes, as promoted throughout the world today, embodies the whole range of medical ethics for research, and provides us with methodology and terminologies more suitable for medical research, but not social science research. I will briefly outline the abundance books and articles that have critiqued the current system of ethics review. A portion of the paper deals with the failure and impact of research codes to guide social researchers. As a remedy, this paper proposed an entirely new basis of what constitutes the characteristics of doing ethical social research, laying the groundwork for future research ethics review.
Önver A. Cetrez is a Member of the Ethics Committee, Uppsala University, Coordinator of H2020 Project RESPOND – Multilevel Governance of Mass Migration in Europe and Beyond
Cetrez is Associate Professor in psychology of religion, at Uppsala University. He is currently the coordinator for the Horizon2020 project RESPOND – Multilevel Governance of Mass Migration in Europe and Beyond (www.respondmigration.com). During 2014-2016 he held the position as deputy director at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul. Cetrez’ peer reviewed articles, chapters, and scientific evaluation reports link to topics of migration, refugees, psychosocial health, meaning-making/religiosity, resilience, coping, acculturation, and youth, both qualitatively and quantitatively. He has edited three books, in the topics of identity, knowledge and borders, and psychology of religion. He is a member of the Ethics Board in Sweden.
Ethical dilemmas and challenges in fieldwork with refugees
RESPOND is a multidisciplinary, multi methodological scientific effort, involving 14 partners in 11 countries; to better understand the dynamics of forced migration into Europe. As such, our research involves contact with particularly vulnerable populations such as refugees and asylum seekers. Since research involving human subjects often raises unique and complex ethical, legal, psycho-social and political issues, from its inception, the organizational framework shaping RESPOND places ethics at the centre of its theoretical and empirical conduct.
Our main research material is empirical primary sources, which is collected through field research, interviews, and surveys as well as the study of secondary sources. Methodologically, our research relies on a multi-stage research design, incorporating a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods for data gathering and analysis.
In our sampling for refugees/asylum seekers we have an inclusive approach to legally/politically defined terms and cover those who have arrived in a given country in the time span covered by this project (2011-2017). The only criterion is the selection of refugees/asylum seekers relevant to “mass migration” and are originating from areas of conflict, war or other forms of existential threat.
Interviews are conducted on micro level with refugees/asylum (n=) seekers and on meso level with stakeholders (n=). Questionnaires are limited to Syrian refugees only, in Turkey and Sweden (n=700 respectively).
It is important to keep in mind that at the core of this research project are vulnerable individuals and groups who may have fled from persecution related to ethnic, religious, sexual or other group belonging. In order to protect their wellbeing and avoid stigmatisation, research participants will, in all instances, be treated with the utmost care and sensitivity all the while being respectful of their values and right to make their own decisions regarding the information they provide us.
When conducting research with refugees, there are risks such as psychological harm participants are facing when interviewed about their prior or current experiences of migration, prior experience of trauma, marginalization in society, family conditions, among others. In order to deal with these risks, in each data-gathering site, we made available contact with professional counselling or caregivers, to which participants can turn to. If interviewees feel unable to make use of this counselling, we make them aware of the freely available online service for victims of PTSD run through the clinical psychology department at FU Berlin, which has a complete Arabic interface.
Ethical applications were made by 12 partners to national/institutional ethical boards, and ethical clearance was granted for the entire fieldwork with all its components. Sven of the partners sent additional commentary or explaining the undertaken steps in applying for permission. The procedure looked different in our partner countries: While some partners applied through an ethical board at their own university, others applied through other collaborating universities, or yet another partner established its own institutional review board. In Turkey, additional to the reception of the ethical clearance from the university Ethics Board, they applied to the Directorate General of Migration Management (GİGM) in Ankara, which is the responsible public institution working within the structure of the Turkish Ministry of Interior, for having their permission.
Some fieldwork challenges, specific for different countries were getting access to women refugees, as in some countries, such as Greece, women were over researched and thus exhausted. In Lebanon on the other hand, where we had more female fieldworkers, their access to women was easier. In Iraq there has been an exploitation of refugees, where others pretending being researchers or help givers are making use of their sensitive conditions, selling information, giving wrong and false information, thus raising the suspicion towards all outsiders, including researchers. In countries like Germany, Turkey, and to some extent in Sweden, researchers feel objectified and there is a challenge in building up trust. In countries like Italy and Hungary, after anti-immigrant political developments, refugees are much more reluctant in taking part in any kind of research.
Other experiences in fieldwork, but more linked to the researcher, are related to safety and positionality, as expressed by our researchers in Turkey. Researching a sensitive topic in a country like Turkey, despite obtaining all official approvals, there is a general climate of uncertainty about what data may be found sensitive and even what may happen when one is in the field. The sense of safety by researchers is limited. In terms of positionality, it is difficult to explain the precise use of the research, as well as managing the power and privilege dynamics in research, issues which are general to ethnographic fieldwork experience.
One contribution of ethical perspective that our project can do to the wider research community, is in developing responses to the tension between ensuring interviewee anonymity, their sensitive day-to-day lives, and the need for curation, management, and exploitation of data for future use. For this purpose, we plan a future report that can be guiding the wider research community.
ALEXANDRU-FLORIN PLATON, Ph D. Professor of Medieval History, modern social history, historical anthropology, and history of ideas at the „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi (Romania), Faculty of History. Visiting Professor at the University of Montpellier (France) (2006-2016), Bourgogne at Dijon (France) (2005), and Angers (1998, 2001). Several research-grants: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (1991); „Albert-Ludwig” University in Freiburg-im-Breisgau (Germany) (1989, 2000), University of Nottingham (Great Britain) (1994), University of Konstanz (Germany) (1997), Budapest (Hungary) (1998), Angers (France) (1999-2003), Montpellier (France) (2011). President of the Commission for International Relations and Academic Exchanges of the Senate, „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi (2012-2019); president of the Commission of History and Cultural Studies – National Council for University Degrees, Romania (2011-2012); member of the Commission of History and Cultural Studies – National Council for the University Degrees, Romania (2011-2019); member of the Art &Humanities Task Force, Coimbra Group, representing “Alexandru. Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi (2010-2016); Dean of the Faculty of History, “Al. I. Cuza” University of Iasi (2004-2012); Director and Vice-Director of the Center of European Studies, “Al. I. Cuza” University of Iasi (2001-2016). Books published (selected): The „Body Politic” in European Culture. From Middle Ages to the Modern Era, Iași, Polirom, 2017; A History of Europe in the Middle Ages (Vth-XVIth c.), Iaşi, Polirom, 2010 (with Laurentiu Radvan and Bogdan-Petru Maleon); Fernand Braudel, la „nouvelle histoire” et les „Annales” en Roumanie. Interférences historiographiques franco-roumaines, Cluj-Napoca, Accent, 2009 (with Toader Nicoara); Nouvelles perspectives de l’histoire sociale en France et en Roumanie (with Cristiana Oghina-Pavie et Jacques-Guy Petit), Iaşi, „Alexandru Ioan Cuza„ University Press”, 2003; Society and Mentalities in the Middle Ages. An Introduction to Historical Anthropology, Iaşi, „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Press”, 2000; The Genesis of the Bourgeoisie in the Romanian Principalities (second half of the 18th century – first half of the 19th century), Iaşi, „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Press, 1997 („A. D. Xenopol” award of the Romanian Academy, 1997; second edition, 2015); The Moldavian Nobility in the 19th Century. European Context, Social and Political Evolution, Bucharest, Romanian Academy Press, 1995 (with Gheorghe Platon). Member of Centre de Recherches Historiques de l’Ouest (CERHIO UMR 6258) of the Universities of Rennes and Angers (France) (1998-present). Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques de la République Française (2002).
Values landscapes across borders in a historical perspective: Romanian intellectuals and Europe (19th-20th century)
Since Dinicu Golescu, who was among the very first Romanians to travel abroad in the first quarter of the 19th century, until Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Eugen Ionesco who were three members of the finest generation of Romanian intellectuals between the two World Wars, travelling to Europe was always seminal in the education of the Romanian cultural elite. At the beginning, most of the members of this elite studied in France. Later on, others travelled for the main purpose in Germany, Austria, Italy and so on. For all of them „Europe” became a model of civilization and behavior, and a political one, as well. All this men tried to bring home, among other things (political and cultural ideas), the moral values of this European advanced civilization, in order to contribute to the moral, cultural and political development of their own country. This paper deals with the short history of their achievements.
Cristina Gavrilovici, MD, is profesor of pediatrics, at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy « Grigore T. Popa » Iași, Romania. Apart from her medical background, she graduated the master studies in Bioethics from Case Western Reserve Unviersity, Cleveland, Ohio. She holds a Phd degree and a Doctor Habilitatus title. She is a member of the Romanian National Ethics Council and serves in several Research ethics committees. She worked as an expert in research ethics for the Ethics Sector of the European Comission since 2006. She is the author of 7 books and 48 books chapters in the field of bioethics and medicine. She published over 60 articles in the both bioethics and medicine domain.
Isidoros Karatzas is the Head of the Ethics and Research Integrity Sector, European Commission (EC), SAM Unit, DG Research & Innovation. He is responsible for the methodological and operational aspects of the Horizon 2020 Ethics Appraisal procedure. In addition, he is responsible for policy design and implementation and through the SWAFs programme , for the policy input of research projects related to research ethics and research integrity in areas such as emerging technologies (artificial intelligence, organoids etc.) and human rights, standard operating procedures in research ethics and research integrity and innovative methods for teaching and training.
Vedran Katavić
Professor of Human Anatomy at the University of Zagreb School of Medicine with background in bone biology and immunology. Vedran has extensive experience in teaching graduate courses of Anatomy (gross and clinical); postgraduate teaching in Bone biology and Molecular biology; and graduate and postgraduate teaching on Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR).
He has been a Member and President of the Croatian national Committee for Ethics in Science and higher education (2006-11); Member of the European Network of Research Integrity Offices (2006-11); Section head at the 1st World Conference on Research Integrity; and Research Integrity Editor at the Croatian Medical Journal (2001-10). He is an expert for scientific and ethics assessment of projects funded by the European Commission; and Member of the Committee for Research Integrity of the Luxembourg Agency for Research Integrity (LARI).
Principles of evidence-based medicine, research methodology and research integrity
In this short talk, I will give a brief (r)evolution of the concept of Evidence-based-medicine (EBM), its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). I will also give an overview on the similarities and important differences between research ethics (RE) and research integrity (RI). Finally, I will discuss the effects of both RE and RI on EBM, and vice versa, as well as the take-home messages we can derive from that relationship.
Lotta Eriksson is the head of the secretariat at the Swedish National Council on Medical Ethics, a position she has held since 2009. She has worked with policy making questions in the bioethical arena, for the council, in the Governmental offices since 2002. Previously she served as a research officer and project manager at the Council. For the Council she has for example managed several important projects on topics such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (pgd), prenatal diagnoses, rights of children and young people in health care, priority setting and ethics, assisted reproduction, mitochondrial replacement, m-health and a recent organizational health ethics project.
Lotta has served as a special advisor at the Swedish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. She has also a background in communication and internet-related services, and has worked as an editor and project manager for an internet company.
Lotta has a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, philosophy and sociology from Stockholm University, with additional studies at Poppius School of Journalism.
Lotta Eriksson has three daughters. In her free time she’s a hobby photographer and silver smith.
József Mandl M.D., Ph.D. professor emeritus at the Department of Medical Chemistry, Molecular Biology and Pathobiochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary,member of the Medical Section of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, president of the Hungarian Medical Research Council. His major fields of interest: drug metabolism, metabolism in the liver, antioxidants, endoplasmic reticulum stress, obesity related diseases. He published 142 papers in international scientific journals, 24 book chapters, 5 patents, and books: Medical Pathobiochemistry (eds Mandl J., Machovich R.) Medicina, Budapest, 2007, 2014, Codex of Bioethics. On the concepts and practice of biomedical research (ed. Mandl J.) Semmelweis, Budapest, 2016, 2019.
