EthicsBot: Fine-Tuning Open-Source LLMs to Assist Scientific Investigators in Analyzing Ethical Issues in Research

Ethical considerations are fundamental to responsible research, yet many investigators struggle to identify and analyze ethical concerns in their study designs. Institutional review boards (IRBs) and other regulatory bodies, while essential, are often perceived as bureaucratic obstacles rather than collaborative partners in ethical inquiry. Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) offer an opportunity to enhance the way researchers engage with ethical analysis. This paper introduces EthicsBot, an innovative project that proposes to leverage open-source LLMs to provide real-time, context-aware ethical guidance for researchers.