It's Time to Return to the Bioethics of Research (and the System Supporting it)

Abstract

The article by Lombardi and the comments by Timio and Floccari underlined the ethical biases of the peer review process and, more generally, of the so-called “industry of scientific evidence”. We further analyze the problematic nature of the peer review mechanisms, both on the Editor's and the Reviewer's side, with the Declarations of Conflict of Interest and Financial Support being the most qualifying proposals for a change. The diffusion of the “open science” helps to improve the sharing of Author's data with the scientific community. However, the active role of institutions, like FDA and EFSA, in the deep analysis of the results of major articles dealing with drugs and nutrients is highly welcome. The world of scientific publishing is growing fastly, driven more by the law of economic profits than by the interest of science and patients' care. The average quality of the papers is then decreasing, but this is merely functional to inflate researchers' I.F. and curriculum. In front of such a critical situation, a couple of bioethical values must be recalled: the first is the responsibility, transparency and honesty of the researcher, which are the result of a process of continuous education and adherence to the principles of the Federazione Italiana delle Società Medico-Scientifiche. A structural reform of the Academic system is also the “conditio sine qua non”; new, ethically based figures of researchers may arise in the next future. The second value is the control of quality and ethics of research, with special focus on the role of the Ethical Committee in filtering methodologically inadequate or financially non transparent study proposals.