RESEARCH ETHICS: BETWEEN REGULATION AND REFLEXIVITY

In thirty years, research ethics spread across all scientific fields and strengthened its measures, criteria and procedures internationally. Linked to deontology and scientific integrity through multiplying regulations, it goes along with searchers and institutions in order to enable or obligate them to fulfil their responsibilities and heighten citizens' trust towards science and scientists. If it is supposed to ensure consensus-building of all relevant stakeholders and to clarify norms of what is or should be a good research, it also leads to pressures and constraints that generate confusion, tensions, even inconsistency with other norms such as efficiency, acceleration, globalization or competition, but also with serendipity, freedom or reflexivity. Analyzing rhetoric and practices highlights research ethics as a problem rather than a solution.