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Collaborative ethics: innovating collaboration between ethicists and life scientists

Nature Methods volume 21, pages 1571–1574 (2024)Cite this article

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Scientific breakthroughs can change how we understand and live in the world, disrupting long-held assumptions and concepts and raising new questions for philosophy and science. To address these challenges, we describe a model for collaboration of scientists with philosophers and ethicists, and its benefits to the research process and outcomes.

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Fig. 1: Collaborative ethics innovation funnel.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Benjamin Boettner and Seth Kroll of the Wyss Institute for discussion and media support. J.R. gratefully acknowledges funding through the Dutch Research Council (NWO) program Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies, grant no. 024.004.031

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, USA

    Jeantine E. Lunshof

  2. Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA

    Jeantine E. Lunshof

  3. Philosophy Group, Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Julia Rijssenbeek

Authors
  1. Jeantine E. Lunshof
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  2. Julia Rijssenbeek
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Contributions

J.E.L. developed the model. J.E.L. and J.R. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jeantine E. Lunshof.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Methods thanks Jonathan Moreno and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Fig. 1

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Lunshof, J.E., Rijssenbeek, J. Collaborative ethics: innovating collaboration between ethicists and life scientists. Nat Methods 21, 1571–1574 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-024-02320-8

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