연재10. 연구자의 사회적 책임

The domain of social responsibility of researcher is one of core areas of RCR instruction. In general,researchers have both individual and social responsibility. The former is related with honestly observing,recording and interpreting aspects of the data, using experimental methods to ensure objectivity, the honestuse of ideas of others. and respect for human participants and animal care in one’s research. The latter isrelated with expressing researcher’s responsibilities to society in many other ways such as choosing anresearch project that will likely provide important information for the good of society, alerting society to thebenefits and harms of the outcomes of studies in progress, to participate in the discussion of ethical issuesthat arise from a discovery and to help educate the public and policy makers about these issues that mayarise from the discovery. According to Singapore Statement on Research Integrity(2010), researcher’s socialresponsibilities include two dimensions. One is that researchers should limit professional comments to theirrecognized expertise when engaged in public discussions about the application and importance of researchfindings and clearly distinguish professional comments from opinions based on personal views. The otheris that researchers and research institutions should recognize that they have an ethical obligations to weighsocietal benefits against risks inherent in their work. I discussed two ways in which researchers can exercisetheir responsibilities to society such as conflicts of interest and expert’s witness.