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The Ethics Committee of the CNRS has just held its first meeting in
its newly appointed configuration. Chaired by Pierre Léna, an astrophysicist,
the committee comprises twelve members, appointed for
a four-year term.
For the CNRS, this new
committee will constitute the bedrock on which to develop shared ethics
for scientific research within the Center and in particular among its
staff. The committee will be able to lead a think on the consequences
of the research conducted at the CNRS, in terms both of potential risk
and of acceptability for society. It will also address the balance between
intellectual freedom and duty to the Center. It will contribute to laying
and formalizing the foundations of a code of ethics for research: recommendations
as regards internal or external scientific communication, researcher accountability
to the Center and to society, in particular in terms of the researcher
activities of assessment, extracting added value from research, and providing
expertise. The think and the component elements of these ethics should
be shared, as far as possible, with the main research partners of the
CNRS and with the ethics players in France and elsewhere.
The CNRS Ethics Committee is now under the auspices of the Center’s
Board of Directors who have determined its members and its operating conditions.
It can have matters referred to it by the President, the Board of Directors,
the Scientific Council, and the Director-General of the CNRS. It can also
decide itself to address any issue that it deems pertinent. Its opinions
and its annual report are made public.
The action of this committee follows on from the activity of the Committee
on Ethics for the Sciences (COMETS) set up in 1994 by François
Kourilsky, who was then Director-General of the Center. Its sphere of
action concerned ethical problems raised by research except for those
addressed by the National Consultative Committee on Ethics for Health
and Life Sciences (CCNE). The COMETS was chaired successively by Hélène
Ahrweiler and Pierre Joliot.
CNRS
Ethics Committee
List of members
Chairman:
Pierre LENA, astrophysicist, Paris
Members:
Bernadette BENSAUDE-VINCENT, science historian
Jean-Michel BESNIER, philosopher
Jean-Pierre BOURGUIGNON, mathematician
René CARRE, information science and technology researcher, Paris
Robert DANTZER, neurobiologist
Isabelle de LAMBERTERIE, legal sciences researcher
Bernard MEUNIER, chemist
Alain POMPIDOU, medical doctor, Paris
Ketty SCHWARTZ, biologist
Gwen TERRENOIRE, ethics sociology researcher
Jean-Didier VINCENT, neurobiologist
Dominique WOLTON, sociologist, Paris
Observers:
Michel IMBERT, representative of the Operational Committee for Ethics
in Life Sciences (Copé) of the CNRS
Dominique WOLTON, representative of the National Consultative Committee
on Ethics for Health and Life Sciences (CCNE)
Contacts :
CNRS Ethics Committee
Christiane Bouchard
Tel: +33 1 44 96 43 55
email: christiane.bouchard@cnrs-dir.fr
Press
Martine Hasler
Tel : +33 1 44 96 46 35
e-mail : martine.hasler@cnrs-dir.fr
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