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. 2026 May 30;29(3):847–852. doi: 10.1007/s11019-026-10368-w

Improving bioethics by clarifying and elaborating its methodology: a response to Gomez-Virseda and colleagues

Bjørn Hofmann 1,2,✉
PMCID: PMC13633981  PMID: 42217123

Abstract

In a recent article Gomez-Virseda and coauthors criticize my previous work on methodology in bioethics and argue that bioethics is a discipline. While I think that Gomez-Virseda and co-authors misconstrue my argument, state the obvious, and fail to address pressing questions to their argument, I am most thankful for the inspiration and opportunity to elaborate on why methodology matters for consolidating bioethics’ professional standing, to improving its quality, ascertaining its academic and educational importance, and to advancing its trustworthiness and social impact.

Keywords: Method, Discipline, Quality, Demarcation, Consolidation, Trust, Impact

Introduction

In my article Bioethics: No Method-No Discipline? (Hofmann 2025) I examine whether bioethics qualifies as a discipline if we apply a method-based conception of discipline. The impetus to apply such a conception of discipline is fourfold: (1) to consolidate bioethics’ professional identity status, (2) to improve its quality, (3) ascertain its academic and educational importance, and (4) to advance its trustworthiness, funding, and social impact (Hofmann 2025).

In their article Is bioethics a discipline? Beyond methodological reductionism Carlos Gomez-Virseda, Lara Andreoli, and Roshni Jegan take my article as a point of departure for suggesting that bioethics is a discipline according to a “graduated framework” (Gomez-Virseda et al. 2026) based on criteria from a working paper by Armin Krishnan (Krishnan 2009).

While I very much welcome their critique of my article and their reflection on whether and how bioethics is a discipline, I think they break in open doors and fail in an important task in bioethics which was the aim with my article. My goal was not to find and use a framework that defends bioethics as a discipline, but to strengthen and consolidate it as a scholarly field. In particular, I think their contribution lacks (1) an assessment of to what extent bioethics is a discipline compared to other “disciplines,” (2) a framework for differentiating bioethics from other “disciplines” that also address ethical issues in biomedicine and the health sciences, and (3) an explanation of how bioethics can be disciplined to become better in terms of the fourfold criteria above. I therefore welcome their future elaboration on these matters.

Before addressing these issues, allow me briefly to recap their argument and to point to some flaws.

Strawmen and conditionals

In their “pars destruens” Gomez-Virseda and coauthors construe my argument as follows:

“p1: a well-defined methodology, applicable to the investigation of particular phenomena, is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a discipline.

p2: The entire field of Bioethics does not qualify as a discipline because it fails to meet the conditions outlined in p1”.

Nowhere in my article do I make a reductionistic claim that methodology is a sufficient and necessary condition for qualifying as a discipline. My claim in the article is rather a conditional, If A, then B, where:

A is “a discipline is defined in in terms of being a field of study following specific and well-established methodological rules” and.

B is “bioethics is not a discipline.”

Gomez-Virseda and coauthors must have been so eager in showing that bioethics can be construed as a discipline that they failed to see the question mark in the title of my article: “Bioethics: No Method—No Discipline?” Moreover, in the article I clearly stated that “[b]ioethics may, of course, qualify as a discipline according to broader definitions of discipline (…). However, this would reduce its demarcation, identity-building, and disciplining function.” (Hofmann 2025).

Hence, rather than a “pars destruence” their interpretation of my claim is a “pars mis-construens”. That is, they construct a strawman.

Gomez-Virseda and co-authors could of course claim that the antecedent of the conditional is not true. However, as I show in the article, there are definitions of discipline that refer to “specific and well-established methodological rules.” Moreover, they could claim that the antecedent is irrelevant. That is of course fair, as I also admit and state in my article, but then the claim that “bioethics is a discipline” does less heavy formative and normative lifting than what I think it can and should. That is, the concept of discipline becomes less disciplining.

Being disciplined by a discipline

The term discipline stems from the Latin term discipulus, meaning pupil, and from disciplina, meaning teaching (noun). As pointed out by Krishnan (on which they build their argument) “the academic discipline can be seen as a form of specific and rigorous scientific training that will turn out practitioners who have been ‘disciplined by their discipline’ for their own good. In addition, ‘discipline’ also means policing certain behaviours or ways of thinking. Individuals who have deviated from their ‘discipline’ can be brought back in line or excluded.” (Krishnan 2009).

Hence, clear criteria for subsuming under the discipline of bioethics could provide demarcation between bioethics and other activities. It would give bioethics a clearer profile and would clarify what counts as bioethics and what does not, and thereby hopefully increase its standing.

Method without meaning

As also acknowledged by Gomez-Virseda and co-authors, having specific methods is an important criteria for a discipline as “disciplines have developed specific research methods according to their specific research requirements” (Krishnan 2009). When accounting for bioethics having “specific research methods” Gomez-Virseda and co-authors refer to bioethics’ methodological pluralism to conclude that “bioethics has maintained epistemic integrity while navigating methodological pluralism—an achievement that reflects disciplinary sophistication rather than immaturity (Klein 1990).” (Gomez-Virseda et al. 2026).

As pointed out in my article, methodological specificity may be a challenge to bioethics disciplinarity. Very few bioethics articles declare their methods and their methods are not implicitly specific either (Hofmann 2025). Hence, referring to methodological pluralism may neither qualify as having “specific research methods” nor do any disciplinary consolidation.

This point can also be illustrated by their article. While it is praiseworthy that Gomez-Virseda and colleagues explicitly state the method they apply in their article, it fails to serve crucial methodological purposes, such as transparency and reproducibility. For example, the authors claim that they follow the method of conceptual analysis described by Olsthoorn (Olsthoorn 2017) in the following way: “(1) through decomposition, in search of a proper definition; (2) through extensional analysis, by determining the range of application of a concept; (3) by exploring conceptual relationships between notions; and (4) through disambiguation, identifying and separating overlapping meanings.” (Gomez-Virseda et al. 2026). First, it is not possible to identify the steps in their article, and second, it is impossible to repeat or verify the process and its outcomes. My point here is very simple: we must avoid letting our methodology become subject to the same critique as bioethics in general, i.e., being wooly and mere “icing on the cake.”

As also pointed out by Krishnan, disciplines are distinguished more by the methodologies they employ than by the topics they investigate as subject areas increasingly have come to overlap (Krishnan 2009). Moreover, as David Bridges observes disciplines “enhance the credibility of scientific research by maintaining the disciplinespecific rigour of inquiry” (Bridges 2006). Having a well-defined methodology and being explicit about our methods is one important way of doing so.

Assessing disciplinarity

As mentioned, when arguing for bioethics being a discipline, Gomez-Virseda and co-authors apply Kirshnan’s six characteristics: (1) Particular object of research; (2) Body of specialized knowledge; (3) Theories and concepts that can organize knowledge; (4) Terminologies and specific technical language; (5) Specific research methods; (6) Institutional manifestations (Gomez-Virseda et al. 2026).

Gomez-Virseda and co-authors have a rather liberal interpretation of these characteristics and are quite flexible in their analyses in their effort to ascertain that bioethics is a discipline. For example, to comply with characteristics #2, they argue that “principlism has served both as a foundation for ethical analysis and as a focal point for critical engagement” (Gomez-Virseda et al. 2026). By reducing bioethics to principlism they risk being subject to their own critique, i.e., reductionism. On the other hand, Gomez-Virseda and co-authors could be praised for delimiting bioethics to principlism, but could be criticized for ignoring a vast “body of knowledge” published in bioethics journals and for misunderstanding principlism.

Moreover, they ignore the exclusivity criterion of Krishnan: “disciplines have a body of accumulated specialist knowledge referring to their object of research, which is specific to them and not generally shared with another discipline” (Krishnan 2009). Several of the principles of biomedical ethics are shared by a host of other disciplines such as philosophy, law, sociology, and political science. Hence, from Krishnan’s framework, it is by far obvious that bioethics qualifies as a discipline.

It is also interesting to notice that while Gomez-Virseda and co-authors consider alternative conceptions of discipline to be too flexible and variable for the purpose of assessing bioethics, they themselves appear to be exactly that in their application of Krishnan’s framework: “While Trowler’s moderate essentialist approach is flexible and acknowledges that no discipline has fixed core characteristics, its emphasis on variability makes it less suitable for the systematic analysis we aim to undertake here. For this reason, we adopt Krishnan’s framework, which offers a more structured and conceptually consistent set of criteria for identifying and comparing disciplinary formations.” (Gomez-Virseda et al. 2026).

This is not the place to enter a myopic analysis of Gomez-Virseda and co-authors assessment of how bioethics fits Krishnan’s characteristics of a discipline. The point here is rather that applying Krishnan’s characteristics, and in particular in the way that Gomez-Virseda and co-authors do, does not add anything to what is widely agreed upon for a long time, i.e., that bioethics can be characterized as a discipline (according to a wide range of definitions of ‘discipline’). Even if one concedes to Gomez-Virseda and co-authors’ conception of discipline, key questions remain: (1) To what extent is bioethics a discipline (as it can score more or less so for each of the six characteristics)? (2) How are we to grade or weigh the six characteristics when assessing bioethics’ disciplinarity? (3) How disciplinary is bioethics compared to other disciplines, such as moral psychology, bioengineering ethics, normative anthropology, health policy ethics, public health ethics, STS, and health science and technology ethics? (4) How do the answers to these questions contribute to the consolidation and demarcation, quality assessment and improvement, as well as the trustworthiness and social impact of bioethics? Accordingly, investigating bioethics’ disciplinarity should contribute to the reflection of its future development.

Evolving bioethics

Disciplines develop over time, often in response to social needs (Klein 1990). According to Krishnan, “[o]nce the discipline is established a new type of researcher is needed. The new discipline needs people who can consolidate it by filling in the gaps left by the pioneers. Without these consolidators and synthesizers a discipline will never develop some stable identity and will eventually go nowhere. So in the consolidation phase disciplines will start restricting too original ideas and will become more and more focused on disciplinary coherence and orthodoxy.” (Krishnan 2009) After more than 50 years, bioethics should be able to reach its consolidation phase. One reason for this is the increasing critique of bioethics and the emergence of alternative approaches to handle normative issues in medicine and the health sciences (Hedgecoe 2004; Fox and Swazey 2005; Turner 2009; Petersen 2013).

In the face of such threats, Krishnan identifies three approaches: the discipline “can try to withdraw to its core areas and this way strengthen its identity and boundaries; it can move closer to a stronger discipline and form a strategic alliance; or finally, it can reconstitute itself within a newer and larger field of study aiming at dominating the new discourse” (Krishnan 2009) While I in my article was alluding to the first alternative (Hofmann 2025), others have indicated the importance of bioethics to stay closer to philosophy (Savulescu 2015). It could maybe also be argued that bioethics has engulfed the medical humanities in general, and history of medicine in particular.

While I think bioethics needs an open debate on all three alternatives, methodology may still play a crucial role in consolidating and demarcating, assessing and improving the quality, as well as furthering its trust and social impact.

Why methodology matters

Methodology in general, as well as methods in particular, matters for a range of reasons.

First and foremost, methodology can further transparency and accountability as well as validation and verification of bioethics’ outcomes. Clear, transparent methods enable assessment and critique of the application of theories, procedures, reasonings, and arguments. While principlism is widely applied, the specification, balancing, and infringement of principles is rarely made explicit (Dale 2023; Hofmann 2024). Hence, it is difficult to assess whether principlism is done well. This also applies to other approaches.

Accordingly, clear methodology could provide bioethics with quality criteria, i.e., whether bioethics is done well according to whatever method is applied. There has been a vast debate on what is good bioethics in general and good medical ethics in particular (Bowman 2015; Brock 2015; Callahan 2015; Calman 2015; Caplan 2015; de Beaufort 2015; de Zulueta 2015; Farsides 2015; Finlay 2015; Gillon and Higgs 2015; Harris 2015; Macklin 2015; McDougall 2015; Oakley 2015; Rhodes 2015; Ruger 2015; Saunders 2015; Serour 2015; Solbakk 2015; Steinberg 2015; Senghor and Racine 2022). So far, no agreement has emerged. One reason that warrants consideration is the lack of methodological explicitness in bioethics.

Third, as in other disciplines, clear methodology can improve curricula, teaching, training, and education as well as the practice of bioethics. This could clarify the competency of bioethicists and their professional standards - consolidating the identity and status of bioethicists. This does of course not mean that there should be only one method in bioethics.

Fourth, clear methodology can demarcate bioethics from other disciplines and ascertain a division of labor. It can avoid that “bioethics often looks more like public engagement” (Franklin 2019) or having blurry lines to social sciences (Petersen 2013; Sheehan and Dunn 2013). Moreover, in interdisciplinary work, methodological clarity can increase disciplinary demarcation and accountability and clarify interaction.

Fifth, clearer methodology could also promote awareness, reflexivity, and methodological self‑critique. Explicit reflection on methods can avoid unexamined assumptions and bias in ethical analysis (Hofmann 2023). It can also spur explicit methodological refinement and development.

Sixth, methodological clarity can contribute to the assessment and improvement of the epistemic grounding for normative analyses and claims. For example, explicit and robust methods can make it easier to assess whether and how empirical premises justify ethical arguments and conclusions. The same goes for epistemic premises for normative arguments.

Seventh, specificness in methodology can help revealing and reflecting on power and institutional dynamics as well as conflicts of interest. Ethical problems are embedded in social structures which may direct ethicists, e.g., in terms of gender or race discrimination (Hoberman 2016), stigma (Crandall and Moriarty 1995; Pachankis et al. 2018) and bias (Hofmann 2023).

Eight, methodological explicitness and rigor may increase credibility, trust, and impact in informing law and policy with methodologically robust arguments as policymakers require clear, sound, and procedurally defensible recommendations linking ethics to practicable regulation (Cypress 2017).

These are but some reasons why methodology matters. Further research must assess the importance of the various reasons for specific kinds of bioethics in various fields.

Discussion

In this article I have elaborated on the importance of methodology in consolidating and elaborating on bioethics as a discipline. While greatly appreciative of the critique from Gomez-Virseda and co-authors, I have tried to show how they have misconstrued my argument and state the obvious, i.e., that bioethics is a discipline according to broad definitions of discipline. Moreover, they fail to address crucial questions following from their assertion that bioethics is a discipline.

As acknowledged by Krishnan, “the concept of a discipline is not a straightforward one” and “‘discipline’ can be many things at the same time” (Krishnan 2009). See also (Jegan and Dierickx 2023). The impetus to focus on methodology is its potential to consolidate bioethics, improving its quality, increasing its trust, and enhancing its social impact. I have provided eight reasons for why methodology is important in disciplining bioethics.

There are certainly many other ways to consolidate bioethics, improving its quality, increasing its trust, and enhancing its social impact. This article has only explored one measure. Nonetheless, it is an important, formative, and normative measure.

Bioethics can of course be considered to be a language-game in the Wittgensteinian sense according to which there cannot be a universal and consistent language game, as for science in general (Lyotard 1993). Admittedly, then the question of disciplinarity would lose much of its importance. As Krishnan acknowledges, the “move towards anti-foundationalism opened the way to a position of the relativism of scientific truth. For social contructionists and postmodernists alike the academic disciplines would be seen as discourses that are created and maintained for serving special interests without actually referring to some objective discoverable reality. The disciplines would be simply incommensurable and any efforts of overcoming disciplinary divisions would be a futile exercise, as the disciplines operate on the basis of completely incompatible rationalities and methodologies that cannot be bridged in a meaningful way.” (Krishnan 2009).

However, I have taken as a point of departure that it makes sense “to consolidate bioethics as an organized professional field with a transparent and justifiable methodology” in order to “strengthening the professional identity and demarcation of bioethics.” (Hofmann 2025). There are still reasons to believe that academic disciplines are identity-forming (Becher and Trowler 2001) and homogenic disciplines tend to obtain greater respect and impact (Bourdieu 1988).

There is certainly still much to be said and done. We need to demonstrate how methodology can consolidate bioethics. That is clearly a joint effort of the bioethics community. Moreover, in this article I myself have not declared or followed any stringent method. However, the lack of method does not necessarily undermine the relevance of the content of this article, as the formative and normative function of methodology may still be crucial for bioethics as a discipline, even if it is not so in (or established) in meta-methodological work in bioethics.

It is also important to note that I do not presuppose that bioethics can or should have one method. Bioethics, like other disciplines, will have a range of methods corresponding to specific research questions. Bioethics is and will be heterogeneous and involves interdisciplinary collaborations. However, being explicit on method used, active in applying methods, and reflecting on methodology is crucial for bioethics as a discipline.

I do therefore not claim to have clarified or evolved bioethics methodology. I have, however, tried to clarify why such efforts are important to consolidate and elaborate bioethics as a discipline.

Conclusion

While I think that Gomez-Virseda and co-authors misconstrue my argument, state the obvious, and fail to address pressing questions to their argument, I am most thankful for the inspiration to elaborate on the demanding question I posed in my article: why methodological commitments and practices are needed for bioethics to perform the consolidating, quality‑assuring, and socially impactful functions typically associated with mature disciplines.

I think that methodology matters for bioethics because it makes analysis transparent and accountable, enabling validation and critique of how theories, principles, and arguments are specified and applied. Clear methods provide defensible quality criteria for judging “good” bioethics, strengthen curricula and professional competencies, and thereby consolidate the field’s identity. They also demarcate bioethics from related disciplines and clarify roles in interdisciplinary work, promote reflexivity and methodological self‑critique that exposes hidden assumptions and biases, and improve the epistemic grounding of normative claims by showing how empirical premises support ethical conclusions. Altogether, methodological explicitness increases credibility, trust, and practical impact—especially when informing law and policy.

Funding

Open access funding provided by University of Oslo (incl Oslo University Hospital). No funding bodies had any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Declarations

Conflict of interest

I certify that there is no actual or potential conflict of interest in relation to this manuscript, and there are no financial arrangements or arrangements with respect to the content of this comment with any companies or organizations.

Footnotes

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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