The Multidimensional Nature of Research Ethics: Letters Issued by a French Research Ethics Committee Included Similar Proportions of Ethical and Scientific Queries.

Debate is ongoing concerning the activities and functioning of Research Ethics Committees (REC), especially a possible science-or-ethics dichotomy in research ethics review. We retrospectively analyzed 145 letters issued by a French REC over 18 months. All queries were classified in three levels: qualification (definition of the problem), category (aggregation of broader topics) and finally fields (ethical, scientific, or administrative).