Abstract
Laboratory safety regulations have been traditionally viewed by its learners and practitioners as a matter of law and policy, which simply requires compliance. A compliance mindset tends be passive and dissociates individuals (or even institutions) from the important reasons and principles underlying the safety rules and regulations, leading to disinterestedness and disdain. I posit that laboratory safety regulations would need to be crafted, presented and taught in a manner that is coupled to, or at least with an emphasis on, research ethics. Learners and practitioners of laboratory safety must be led to fully grasp the ethical underpinnings of the rules and regulations, however perceivably cumbersome or inconvenient the latter may seem. In extended definitions beyond the classical fabrication, falsification and plagiarism, laboratory safety violation (LSV) should indeed be considered a form of research misconduct (RM). A full appreciation of the ethical principles underlying laboratory safety regulations would intuitively make LSVs morally impermissible, and as such defiance would be morally unacceptable. Importantly, LSVs framed as moral transgressions would be equally applied to all perpetrators in terms of culpability regardless of one’s endowment and power status. LSV perpetrators should thus also be punishable in accordance with the federal or institutional laws or bylaws of research ethics and integrity. Pedagogical and content modifications to laboratory safety education to adequately reflect a research ethics emphasis, as well as promotion of epistemic acuity in this regard, would be desirable.
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Take for an example the mandatory donning of basic personal protective equipment (PPE) such as the lab coat and safety glasses at the wet lab bench, which is one of the most often ignored/violated safety rules.
Other examples include the World Conferences on Research Integrity (WCRI)’s Singapore Statement on Research Integrity 2010 (https://wcrif.org/guidance/singapore-statement) that included four main principles of honesty, accountability, professionalism, and stewardship and 14 responsibilities for the ethical conduct of research. The WCRI Hong Kong Principles 2019 (https://wcrif.org/guidance/hong-kong-principles) stipulated five principles (to assess responsible research practices, value complete reporting, reward the practice of open science, acknowledge a broad range of research activities and recognise essential other tasks like peer review and mentoring). David Resnik has provide a more comprehensive list of ethical principles in research at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences website (https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/whatis/index.cfm).
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Tang, B.L. Laboratory Safety Regulations and Training must Emphasize the Underpinning Research Ethics Perspectives. J Acad Ethics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-024-09531-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-024-09531-w