In 2014, CEEEC was awarded a SSHRC Insight Development Grant to conduct research on the ethics of ecological research. The core team for this project includes Crozier (PI), Schulte-Hostedde (Co-applicant), Peña-Guzmán (Post-doctoral Fellow), and Hansen (Co-applicant), with Buchanan, Litzgus, and Lesbarrères as collaborators.

This project aims to foster an ethics culture in ecological research by, in part, helping to develop a voluntary ethics code for Canadian ecological researchers. The values ecologists use when designing field studies are being determined through an online survey using the decision theoretic software 1000Minds, distributed to ecologists Canada-wide through the listserv of the Canadian Society for Evolution and Ecology. We have also undertaken new research with Dr. Dylan Gault — a philosopher of science with a specialization in scientific reasoning under conditions of uncertainty.

This project has produced three peer-reviewed publications to date (the first two of which are available via open access: 1, 2, 3), with more in the pipeline. Stay tuned!