Progress in Biomedical Sciences and Raw Data: Ethical Dilemmas

Abstract

How do we assure that a scientific result is sound, that no fraud has been committed and we do guarantee scientific progress in this new era of big scientific data? In order to guarantee reproducibility, especially in the biomedical sciences one need to give access to third parties to analytical datasets (either raw or processed), software used, code developed by the researchers, a very detailed description of the methodology as well as all the relevant metadata. We want to argue that that sharing data is mandatory in order for science to progress. Each published paper should not be seen as an untouchable revealed truth, but as an opportunity of dialogue, confrontation and verification. This can be done only if all raw data are shared and each researcher has the right tools to reproduce an experiment.