UK Research Integrity Office welcomes new Chair

UKRIO has appointed Professor Bernard Silverman FRS FAcSS as its new Chair.

Bernard Silverman is the Home Office Chief Scientific Adviser and a highly cited researcher whose published work is centred on computational statistics. His work has ranged widely across theoretical and practical aspects of statistics, and Silverman has collaborated with researchers in many areas of medicine, social science, and the life and physical sciences. He has held senior academic posts at Bath, Bristol and Oxford, and has spent a substantial amount of time as a visitor at Stanford and various other universities in the USA and worldwide.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Academy of Social Sciences, a Past President of the Royal Statistical Society, and has served as Chair of the UK Mathematics Trust and the Joint Mathematical Council of the United Kingdom. He is a member of the Council of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and of the Emerging Technologies and Industries Steering Group of the Technology Strategy Board, and has been a chair or member of numerous Royal Society and senior University Committees.

Professor Silverman succeeds UKRIO’s founding Chair, Professor Sir Ian Kennedy.

Professor Silverman said:

‘The mission of UKRIO is both to support research institutions in sustaining an excellent research environment and to think more widely, across all disciplines, about important ethical issues underpinning the practice of research. My own experience, both in academia and in government, has brought home to me the public and scientific necessity of maintaining and promoting the highest professional standards.

The ethics of good research, essential to maintain public confidence and scientific integrity, cover both the conduct of the research itself – for example good design, careful use of evidence, and the proper collection and analysis of data – and the broader behaviour of individuals and institutions – such as the proper attribution of credit, provision of an appropriately supportive environment, and good training and handling of lapses and grievances.

We are seeing paradigm shifts in the ways that research is conducted and disseminated and these make it all the more important that we should pay proper attention to our professional ethos in a rapidly changing context.

By subscribing to UKRIO, member institutions demonstrate their commitment to sound research and to high standards of integrity. But, more than that, our ethical standards have a key role in maintaining and enhancing the UK’s role as a world leader in research. I am honoured and delighted to take on the role of chair of UKRIO at this exciting and challenging time.’

 

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