Ethics articles within Nature Communications

Featured

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Millions of skeletal remains from South Asia were exported in red markets (the underground economy of human tissues/organs) to educational institutions globally for over a century. It is time to recognize the personhood of the people who were systematically made into anatomical objects and acknowledge the scientific racism in creating and continuing to use them.

    • Sabrina C. Agarwal

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Innovative pharmacogenomic approaches (genetic variation related to medication response) are needed to reduce disease and disparities in Indigenous communities. We support community-based pharmacogenomics research, inclusive of Indigenous values and priorities, to improve the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples.

    • Katrina G. Claw
    • , Casey R. Dorr
    •  & Erica L. Woodahl

  • Review Article
    | Open Access

    In this Review article, the authors discuss emerging efforts to build ethical governance frameworks for data science health research in Africa and the opportunities to advance these through investments by African governments and institutions, international funding organizations and collaborations for research and capacity development.

    • Clement A. Adebamowo
    • , Shawneequa Callier
    •  & Sally N. Adebamowo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    To ensure the privacy of processed data, federated learning approaches involve local differential privacy techniques which however require communicating a large amount of data that needs protection. The authors propose here a framework that uses selected small data to transfer knowledge in federated learning with privacy guarantees.

    • Tao Qi
    • , Fangzhao Wu
    •  & Xing Xie

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    This comment explores ethical aspects in developing and testing minimal-risk devices, such as wearables and biomedical sensors. Authors outline the process of independent review, emphasizing the different levels of review depending on the research design and risk level. They also share examples of practical scenarios, highlighting key ethical considerations.

    • Anna Wexler
    •  & Emily Largent

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Disability has too often been peripheral to efforts to widen the STEMM pipeline, hampering research quality and innovation. Inspired by change in education delivery and research collaborations during the pandemic, we offer a structure for efforts to recruit and retain disabled scientists and practitioners.

    • Siobhán M. Mattison
    • , Logan Gin
    •  & Katherine Wander

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    The colonial practices of geoscience have created long term vulnerabilities to natural hazards. In this comment the ongoing consequence are explored of colonialism as well as the actions that are needed to be taken to reduce natural hazard risk.

    • Jazmin P. Scarlett

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An ethically-based method for allocating climate change mitigation effort among subsidiaries, applicable worldwide, is proposed. Applied to the EU Green Deal, this results in a wider range of targets than the Commission’s proposal of 2021.

    • Karl W. Steininger
    • , Keith Williges
    •  & Keywan Riahi

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Understanding gaps in academic representation while considering the intersectionality concept is paramount to promoting real progress towards a more inclusive STEM. Here we discuss ways in which STEM careers can be sown and germinated so that inclusivity can flourish.

    • Luisa Maria Diele-Viegas
    • , Thamara Santos de Almeida
    •  & Flávia Virginio

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mainstream personalization methods rely on centralized Graph Neural Network learning on global graphs, which have considerable privacy risks due to the privacy-sensitive nature of user data. Here, the authors present a federated GNN framework for both effective and privacy-preserving personalization.

    • Chuhan Wu
    • , Fangzhao Wu
    •  & Xing Xie

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    While the technological revolution is accelerating, digital poverty is undermining the Sustainable Development Goals. This article introduces a justice-oriented digital framework which considers how fair access to digital capabilities, commodities, infrastructure, and governance can reduce global inequality and advance the SDGs.

    • Katriona O’Sullivan
    • , Serena Clark
    •  & Malcolm MacLachlan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Publishers’ policies have the capability to increase transparency in scholarly literature. Malički and colleagues carried out a systematic review of over 150 studies that have examined scholarly journals’ recommendations. They find that requirements in terms of authorship, conflict of interests, data sharing, funding disclosure or ethics approval declaration vary greatly over time, among journals and across disciplines.

    • Mario Malički
    • , Ana Jerončić
    •  & Gerben ter Riet

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Scientists increasingly post images and photos on social media to share their research activities. However, posting images and photos could potentially exclude people with visual impairments. Here, we outline actions that should be taken to foster accessibility and inclusion in posting scientific images on social media.

    • Domenico Chiarella
    • , Justin Yarbrough
    •  & Christopher A.-L. Jackson

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    The AI for Social Good movement aims to apply AI/ML tools to help in delivering on the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs). Here, the authors identify the challenges and propose guidelines for designing and implementing successful partnerships between AI researchers and application - domain experts.

    • Nenad Tomašev
    • , Julien Cornebise
    •  & Claudia Clopath

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Prediction of face from DNA followed by matching to facial images has been proposed for forensic applications. Here, Sero et al. present a different approach that can establish facial identity from DNA without directly predicting the face but is based on classifying given faces by individual DNA-encoded traits.

    • Dzemila Sero
    • , Arslan Zaidi
    •  & Peter Claes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors show that individuals apply different ‘moral strategies’ in interpersonal decision-making. These strategies are linked to distinct patterns of neural activity, even when they produce the same choice outcomes, illuminating how distinct moral principles can guide social behavior.

    • Jeroen M. van Baar
    • , Luke J. Chang
    •  & Alan G. Sanfey

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ensuring the integrity of clinical trial data is crucial to securing trust in the process. Here, the authors present a prototype of a blockchain-based clinical trial management system that ensures immutability and traceability of trial data, and demonstrate a proof of concept web portal service.

    • Daniel R. Wong
    • , Sanchita Bhattacharya
    •  & Atul J. Butte

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There have been growing concerns about the exploitation of workers in the fisheries sectors. Here, Tickler et al. use a country-level metric of slavery to determine the risk of fisheries-level slavery across 20 countries, and find it rises as unreported catch increases and mean value of catch decreases.

    • David Tickler
    • , Jessica J. Meeuwig
    •  & Dirk Zeller

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Indigenous peoples are still underrepresented in genetic research. Here, the authors propose an ethical framework consisting of six major principles that encourages researchers and Indigenous communities to build strong and equal partnerships to increase trust, engagement and diversity in genomic studies.

    • Katrina G. Claw
    • , Matthew Z. Anderson
    •  & Joseph M. Yracheta

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Systemic dissection of sexually dimorphic phenotypes in mice is lacking. Here, Karp and the International Mouse Phenotype Consortium show that approximately 10% of qualitative traits and 56% of quantitative traits in mice as measured in laboratory setting are sexually dimorphic.

    • Natasha A. Karp
    • , Jeremy Mason
    •  & Jacqueline K. White

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