Research ethics do not include

Concept: Research ethics is the body of norms that governs how an inquiry is planned, carried out and reported. Three requirements sit at its core: reporting truthfully what was done and found, keeping actual conduct consistent with the commitments the researcher has declared, and letting evidence rather than the investigator’s own preference decide what a finding means.

Application: The stem asks which of the listed qualities lies outside that body of norms. Truthful reporting, consistency between declared commitment and conduct, and evidence-led judgement are each written into standard codes of research conduct as honesty, integrity and objectivity. Reliance on the investigator’s personal standpoint to decide what counts as evidence is exactly the influence the third requirement exists to control, so subjectivity is the quality research ethics does not include.

Cross-check — what each term denotes:

• Honesty — data, methods and results are reported as they actually are, without fabrication, falsification or selective omission.

• Integrity — declared commitments and actual conduct agree: agreements are honoured, authorship is attributed correctly and conflicts of interest are disclosed.

• Objectivity — judgement is anchored to the evidence rather than to the investigator’s interest, with safeguards such as pre-specified criteria and disclosure of competing interests keeping personal preference from shaping the reading of the data.

• Subjectivity — conclusions follow from the individual’s own perception and preference, so they shift with who is judging; codes of research conduct require this influence to be controlled rather than adopted as a standard.

Result: research ethics does not include subjectivity. Qualitative traditions do not pretend a researcher has no standpoint — they require it to be disclosed and reflexively managed, which is still a way of controlling subjectivity, not a licence to let it decide the finding.