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Background on the Universal Ethical Code

Following conversations at a Carnegie meeting (a regular informal meeting of science ministers and advisers from G8 countries) in 2004, Sir David King, the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, convened a small working group to help him to consider the issues around developing a universal ethical code of conduct for scientists. The group agreed that it would be most useful to develop a set of guidelines that would:

• Have an educational role, raising awareness among scientists and the public of the ethical and professional responsibilities of scientists;
• Capture a small number of broad principles that are shared across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, so that it would be relevant to anyone whose work uses scientific methods including social, natural, medical and veterinary science, engineering and mathematics; 
• Be adopted voluntarily by individual scientists and scientific institutions. Many scientific institutions already have codes of conduct and ethical frameworks in place, generally specific to the interests and needs of that institution. A set of guidelines would not seek to replace institutions' own frameworks. Rather, it would describe principles common to the practice of all good science that institutions would be encouraged to adopt and integrate into their own structures, thus supporting and encouraging individual scientists to reflect on the guidelines as part of their normal work.

[the members of the group were: Sir David King (Chair), Dr David Coles, Dr David Fisk, Baroness Onora O’Neill, Professor Michael Reiss, Professor John Uff QC; and Council for Science and Technology (CST) members: Professor Geoffrey Boulton, Professor Janet Finch, Professor Kathy Sykes, Sir Paul Nurse, Dr Mark Walport.]

Sir David King has circulated the code to his G8 and EU colleagues, and promoted it with government scientists as part of his role as the Head of Profession. He asked the Council for Science and Technology (CST), the government’s top-level advisory body on strategic science and technology policy issues, to look at how the guidelines could be disseminated more widely and how, in practice, they could have a useful role.