Abstract: Anne learned quickly when she came to Boston that running a department meant she spent most of her time taking care of the fallout from some troublemakers and less time on productive team players. Anne highlighted the issues surrounding conflicts of interest; they were inevitable and common but difficult to navigate. Hospitals competed for people and resources. For example, Anne told the story of a young woman who was caught in the midst of secret moves by two hospitals to obtain resources from a third hospital all the while setting the woman up for national embarrassment. After being announced publicly that the woman had been appointed to a prestigious position, the offer from the first two hospitals was suddenly rescinded and her boss and mentor at the third hospital was appointed instead. The woman was told by the chief medical officer at the Brigham that she no longer had the appointment because the hospital had decided to appoint her boss at the Beth Israel Hospital to the position. She was shocked.

Ethical decisions must be made at every phase of a research study. Codes of ethics provide guidance on behaviors that are permissible or nonpermissible for research investigators. In contemporary science, investigators are required to have regular training on the responsible research conduct relevant to studies involving human subjects and animals. Despite this training, ethical lapses occur. This chapter explores some of the basic issues, including ethical mandates on what should be done, what must be done, and what must not be done. We consider the history of serious ethical concerns, such as the Tuskegee experiment. The chapter also reviews historical milestones such as the Belmont report, the Declaration of Helsinki, and the establishment of the Common Rule that is applied for research funded by US federal agencies. Further, the chapter explores challenges relevant to the reporting of conflicts of interests, imperfections in institutional review boards (IRBs), and ethical challenges in studies that use placebos. Among a range of research methods, randomized controlled trials tend to encounter the greatest number of ethical concerns.

After reviewing a wide range of topics, we conclude that good science requires greater efforts to manage biases and to promote the ethical conduct of research. An important problem is the belief that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are exempt from systematic bias. Throughout the book, we acknowledge the importance of RCTs, but also emphasize that they are not immune from systematic bias. A second lesson concerns conflict of interest, which must always be taken seriously. Most large RCTs are sponsored by for-profit pharmaceutical companies. We identify leverage points to address these problems. These include cultivating equipoise – the position that research investigators enter a study with the understanding that either a positive, negative, or null result is of value. We return to several other themes prominent throughout this book, including the reporting of research findings and serious problems with our system of peer review. The book concludes with recommendations for reducing conflicts of interest, improving transparency, and reimagining the peer review system.

The proclaimed duty of the state to safeguard the public interest provided a space for subordinates to engage with ruling authorities. It entailed the right of the ruled to remind the state to fulfill its obligation in the case of specific welfare grievances of its subjects. Such a right was passive, as it was derived from the state's duty to protect the public interest. The patterns of state response to popular claim-making were similar across Tudor and early Stuart England, Tokugawa Japan, and Qing China. The right to petition authorities was granted to individuals; yet the state did not allow crowd petitions, which were universally treated as disrespectful to authority and as a threat to social order. However, the state across these three cases was tolerant of collective petitions caused by cross-regional or cross-sectoral conflicts of interest, and it tried to arbitrate disputes as an impartial guardian of the public interest. The increasing scale of conflicts of interest that arose with population growth and commercialization led to larger-scale and well-organized popular petitions that were still accepted by the state. Such petitioning represented a political space that had great potential to expand with socioeconomic development.

This chapter examines the ethical regulation of participants in the arbitral process. The starting point is what is provided for and omitted by arbitration’s coordinating instruments, the New York and ICSID Conventions. While these conventions only expressly set out a few ethical rules, they determine the sources, obligations, forums, and alternatives related to ethics. Along with national arbitration laws, the conventions set limits on the content of the obligations that the parties can introduce into arbitral proceedings, such as institutional arbitration rules and soft law instruments. In terms of substantive obligations, they require that all participants uphold the fairness and integrity of arbitral proceedings while fulfilling their respective duties. The New York and ICSID Conventions also coordinate a multi-level network of forums to enforce these ethical obligations, the most prominent of which being arbitral tribunals. Yet, the imprecise delimitation of powers between national and international authorities on ethical issues is problematic today. The key to resolving this problem is not developing further substantive obligations, but rather better addressing the interplay between national and international frameworks regulating participants in the arbitral process.

As described in previous chapters, the touchstone of lawyers’ professional obligations to their clients are confidentiality and care. These duties can be understood as key elements in a relationship of trust and loyalty between client and lawyer. This chapter is chiefly concerned with this relationship of loyalty, and how it can be strained by, or overlooked because of, conflicting or competing interests and duties. The final part of this chapter traces how the different conceptions of the lawyer’s role might produce diverse legal principles, such as whether loyalty is or is not imposed beyond the end of legal relationship. As a matter of professional ethics, there are differing views about whether to allow certain conflicts to arise and be managed by the lawyer or law firm, and whether such management of conflicts should be done with or without client consent.

The one feature of a paper that needs to draw attention of potential readers is its Title. The importance of this being very carefully worded is stressed. The chapter also covers the small sections of a paper that give information about the authors, their affiliations, which author is dealing with correspondence, the contributions of co-authors, any conflicts of interest, who to acknowledge and how to prepare reference lists. It mentions how in this electronic age papers can be tagged using a 'DOI'.

Financial firms that offer investment advice to retail clients are beset by conflicts of interest: they may receive compensation tied to particular products, operate the financial products themselves, or be subject to other distortions. Regulators and lawmakers have looked to fiduciary and quasi-fiduciary duties to mitigate these conflicts. The paradigmatic example is the rigorous fiduciary standard imposed on registered investment advisers, but the Department of Labor’s now-defunct fiduciary rule, and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s recently adopted Regulation Best Interest similarly aim to mitigate problematic conflicts by imposing duties on those giving investment advice. These interventions largely focus on conflicts affecting which investment products investors are advised to hold, but other types of distortions, less discussed, may be just as important. This chapter offers an expanded account of conflicts of interest, how conflicts might interact, and how the fiduciary rule and Regulation Best Interest should be evaluated in light of this expanded menu of problematic incentives.

This chapter introduces normative recommendations for developing legal and science-based policy frameworks to address some of the genome-editing issues discussed throughout the book. The chapter, for instance, builds upon discussions in chapters 8–10 to propose a system to demarcate foundational rights and uses of germline genome editing (GGE) on the basis of four categories: (1) therapeutic uses to remedy disease; (2) prophylactic purposes, which may or may not be therapeutic; (3) cosmetic or enhancement purposes; and (4) uses involving modification of traits that raise concerns of unlawful discrimination. In so doing, the chapter explores conceptual and structural approaches to GGE clinical interventions and promotes dialogues about the extent to which editing the genetic composition of the human germline should be permitted and, in some instances, protected. Furthermore, to expand on concepts introduced in chapters 6–7, this chapter focuses on strategies to promote research- and science-based policy development related to GMOs and genetically modified crops. Within that backdrop, the chapter elucidates policy development as an inherently complex process that depends not only on strict science-based evidence, but on a multitude of legal, economic, social, political, and other factors that ultimately shape law and policy.

As arbitration specialists (arbitrators and practicing lawyers) build their credentials, their paths often cross in scholarship, conferences, and arbitral proceedings. Depending on their relationships with one another, both professional and personal, an appearance of impropriety (conflict of interest) may appear. This appearance is often more an illusion than reality because to the uninitiated the arbitral process seems to be the domain of a secretive group of insiders. In fact, there is a high level of transparency in the selection of arbitrators. Required disclosures flesh out any potential conflict of interest between the arbitrators and the parties. Most arbitrators will voluntarily remove themselves from consideration in order to ensure their professional integrity in the arbitration community. This is especially the case when there are justifiable doubts as to their independence and impartiality. Also, parties may challenge the appointment or retention of an arbitrator in cases of apparent bias.

Geographical remoteness has not prevented Australia from pursuing a persistent ambition to become a major hub for international commercial arbitration (ICA). While regional competitors in the Asia-Pacific region such as Singapore and Hong Kong have already achieved great success in the arbitration world, Australia’s ‘Tyranny of Distance’1 requires that extra efforts be made to attract ICA cases. Recent marketing from Austrade within the Australian government2 emphasises the relative strengths of ICA in Australia: (1) a harmonised legal framework for ICA in line with international standards, (2) sophisticated arbitration institutions and (3) some of the world’s leading arbitration practitioners.