Ethical Guidance in Human Paleogenomics: New and Ongoing Perspectives

Abstract

Over the past two decades, the study of ancient genomes from Ancestral humans, or human paleogenomic research, has expanded rapidly in both scale and scope. Ethical discourse has subsequently emerged to address issues of social responsibility and scientific robusticity in conducting research. Here, we highlight and contextualize the primary sources of professional ethical guidance aimed at paleogenomic researchers. We describe the tension among existing guidelines, while addressing core issues such as consent, destructive research methods, and data access and management. Currently, there is a dissonance between guidelines that focus on scientific outcomes and those that hold scientists accountable to stakeholder communities,such as descendants. Thus, we provide additional tools to navigate the complexities of ancient DNA research while centering engagement with stakeholder communities in the scientific process.

Keywords: Indigenous; ancient DNA; consent; ethics; paleogenomics; stakeholders.

Figure 1

Ethical ethos for paleogenomic research. Three main stakeholder groups—Ancestors, descendant communities, and other stakeholders (i.e., nondescendant communities, researchers, and institutions such as museums)—are positioned as central to the research process, with verbs identifying researchers’ primary relationship to them. The actions “collaborating with descendant communities” and “respecting Ancestors” occupy proportional space to each other but hold greater weight than “engaging other stakeholders” to reflect how researchers might balance the diverse values of these different communities. Two questions at the core guide researchers to think about the ethics of research methods and outcomes. These questions are surrounded by an outer circle containing themes that enhance ethical paleogenomic research practices: upholding community research capacity, supporting data sovereignty, co-interpreting and contextualizing research findings, and communicating research implications. Additional research questions to guide researchers and community stakeholders in obtaining a deeper understanding of these concepts are listed in the adjacent boxes. Together, the figure and accompanying questions encourage researchers to engage each stakeholder community throughout the research process.