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The “reproducibility crisis” in science affects microbiology as much as any other area of inquiry, and microbiologists have long struggled to make their research reproducible. We need to respect that ensuring that our methods and results are sufficiently transparent is difficult. This difficulty is compounded in interdisciplinary fields such as microbiome research. There are many reasons why a researcher is unable to reproduce a previous result, and even if a result is reproducible, it may not be correct. Furthermore, failures to reproduce previous results have much to teach us about the scientific process and microbial life itself. This Perspective delineates a framework for identifying and overcoming threats to reproducibility, replicability, robustness, and generalizability of microbiome research. Instead of seeing signs of a crisis in others’ work, we need to appreciate the technical and social difficulties that limit reproducibility in the work of others as well as our own.

Micro-ethics provides a framework for researchers to identify the everyday moral, ethical, and often unpredictable moments that arise through research (Spiel et al., 2020). Primarily associated with qualitative traditions, the application of micro-ethics in quantitative survey-based research remains underexplored. In this article, we reflect on the role of micro-ethics in SuperMIX, a longitudinal epidemiological cohort study involving people who use drugs in Victoria, Australia. Drawing on interview notes, meeting minutes, and team reflections, we provide examples of how we attend to micro-ethical moments through a practice of ethical reflexivity. Using Tracy’s (2010) ethical domains of situational and relational ethics, we present reflections across four themes: (1) blurring boundaries, (2) co-constituting research, (3) prioritising relationships, and (4) enacting care. We illustrate how an ethically reflexive practice has enabled us to attend to the autonomy, safety, and dignity of participants. Our reflections highlight the value of acknowledging and embracing the inescapable subjectivity of researchers in quantitative work, showing how this approach can lead to meaningful engagement, enhance rigour, and challenge researcher-participant power dynamics. By sharing these field-based insights, we hope to contribute to broader interdisciplinary conversations about ethics, care and the evolving role of researchers working with priority populations.

Background Research is fundamental to improving the quality of health care. The need for regulation of research is clear. However, the bureaucratic complexity of research governance has raised concerns that the regulatory mechanisms intended to protect participants now threaten to undermine or stifle the research enterprise, especially as this relates to sensitive topics and hard to reach groups. Discussion Much criticism of research governance has focused on long delays in obtaining ethical approvals, restrictions imposed on study conduct, and the inappropriateness of evaluating qualitative studies within the methodological and risk assessment frameworks applied to biomedical and clinical research. Less attention has been given to the different epistemologies underlying biomedical and qualitative investigation. The bioethical framework underpinning current regulatory structures is fundamentally at odds with the practice of emergent, negotiated micro-ethics required in qualitative research. The complex and shifting nature of real world settings delivers unanticipated ethical issues and (occasionally) genuine dilemmas which go beyond easy or formulaic ‘procedural’ resolution. This is not to say that qualitative studies are ‘unethical’ but that their ethical nature can only be safeguarded through the practice of ‘micro-ethics’ based on the judgement and integrity of researchers in the field. Summary This paper considers the implications of contrasting ethical paradigms for the conduct of qualitative research and the value of ‘empirical ethics’ as a means of liberating qualitative (and other) research from an outmoded and unduly restrictive research governance framework based on abstract prinicipalism, divorced from real world contexts and values.

The analytic method builds on honesty, specifically in the moment-to-moment events of the micro-process. Ferenczi was a researcher who experimented with the limits (including the limits of honesty) of the method to its extremes. Honesty is a moral virtue, and from that perspective all events and phenomena of the moment have an ethical aspect. Self-analysis—a prerequisite and an important component of the analytic stance—puts on trial the analyst's capacity and willingness to be honest. This paper examines these ethical aspects in the micro-process and the unavoidable dilemmas connected with it. The important settings where self-analysis is used are: being in analysis, conducting analysis and in supervision. The limits of honesty in these settings are also discussed. Recently, case discussion groups have been playing an increasingly important role in analytic conferences and also in training. The risks and limits of honesty in case discussion groups deserve to be studied.

By drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork and my field diaries in refugee decision-making in Canada, I make three arguments in this article. First, the binary of research in closed vs. open settings may have contributed to overlooking of ethical challenges of research in state organizations in democratic settings. We have to overcome this binary by opening a dialogue among ethnographers. Second, despite well-developed and diverse nature of scholarship on Research Ethics' Board's (REB) formal practices and their negative impact on ethnographers' research proposals, the scarcity of scholarship on 'ethics in practice' or 'everyday ethics' show that we seem to forget that ethnographers, after receiving research ethics approval, still have to do considerable interpretation for what being ethical means. Finally, paying attention to 'ethically important moments' during research practice may help us bridge the gap between formal ethics principles and ethics in practice. Using field diaries in these reflections instead of more sanitized subsequent accounts illustrate the immediacy and importance of ethical concerns during research practice.

By drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork and my field diaries in refugee decision-making in Canada, I make three arguments in this article. First, the binary of research in closed vs. open settings may have contributed to overlooking of ethical challenges of research in state organizations in democratic settings. We have to overcome this binary by opening a dialogue among ethnographers. Second, despite well-developed and diverse nature of scholarship on Research Ethics' Board's (REB) formal practices and their negative impact on ethnographers' research proposals, the scarcity of scholarship on \"ethics in practice\" or \"everyday ethics\" show that we seem to forget that ethnographers, after receiving research ethics approval, still have to do considerable interpretation for what \"being ethical\" means. Finally, paying attention to \"ethically important moments\" during research practice may help us bridge the gap between principles of formal ethics and ethics in practice. Using field diaries in these reflections instead of more sanitized subsequent accounts illustrates the immediacy and importance of ethical concerns during research practice.URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs150168

Teaching of responsible conduct of research is largely predicated on the assumption that there are accepted standards of conduct that can be taught. However there is little evidence of consensus in the scientific community about such standards, at least for the practices of authorship, collaboration, and data management. To assess whether such differences in standards are based on disciplinary differences, a survey, described previously, addressing standards, practices, and perceptions about teaching and learning was distributed in November 2010 to US faculty from 50 graduate programs for the biomedical disciplines of microbiology, neuroscience, nursing, and psychology. Despite evidence of statistically significant differences across the four disciplines, actual differences were quite small. Stricter measures of effect size indicated practically significant disciplinary differences for fewer than 10 % of the questions. This suggests that the variation in individual standards of practice within each discipline is at least as great as variation due to differences among disciplines. Therefore, the need for discipline-specific training may not be as important as sometimes thought.

Genomic microarray analysis is increasingly being applied as a prenatal diagnostic tool. Microarrays enable searching the genome at a higher resolution and with higher sensitivity than conventional karyotyping for identifying clinically significant chromosomal abnormalities. As yet, no clear guidelines exist on whether microarrays should be applied prenatally for all indications or only in selected cases such as ultrasound abnormalities, whether a targeted or genome-wide array should be used, and what these should include exactly. In this paper, we present some ethical considerations on the prenatal use of microarrays. There is a strong consensus, at least in Western countries, that the aim of prenatal screening for foetal abnormalities should be understood as facilitating autonomous reproductive choice for prospective parents. The tests offered should be valid and useful to reach that purpose. Against this background, we address several ethical issues raised by the prenatal application of microarrays. First, we argue that the general distinction between a targeted and a genome-wide microarray needs to be scrutinised. Then we examine whether microarrays are ‘suitable tests’ to serve either a screening or a diagnostic purpose. Given the wide range of findings possibly generated by microarrays, the question arises whether microarrays actually promote or interfere with autonomous reproductive decision-making. Moreover, if variants of unknown clinical significance are identified, this adds to the burden and complexity of reproductive decision-making. We suggest a qualified use of microarrays in the prenatal context.