Summary: There is no one recipe or formula for doing empirical bioethics. This makes it challenging to assess what exactly is empirical bioethics, and what kinds of skills and expertise are necessary to carve out space in academia for the field. There are major research and professional development challenges in pursuing empirical bioethics research and educational pathways that engage with diverse disciplinary scholarship, methodologies, and methods. In practice, this can involve navigating numerous disciplinary norms, expectations, and standards that can differ in profound and sometimes troubling ways. Simultaneously, career development pathways, even in a multidisciplinary field like bioethics, remain largely anchored in “home disciplines,” which often come with fixed expectations and duties for how to be a skilled researcher and what constitutes quality research.
How should researchers in bioethics, trained in empirical methods, navigate this? In this panel discussion, both junior and senior scholars will share their experiences in doing empirical bioethics; examining and critically assessing the challenges they have faced in pursuing their unique journeys into and through the discipline, as well as at the margins of other disciplines. The panel will also reflect on a new Getting Started in Empirical Bioethics guide produced by the Empirical Ethics stream leaders; a tool designed as a navigational aid for bioethicists and other researchers interested in empirical methods. Panel members will explore and reflect on how this guide could be applied in shaping bioethics research trajectories and in developing a career anchored in both one’s values and expertise.